Building on the Past

This book brings together a collection of chapters reflecting the scholarship of Tom Beaumont James, Emeritus Professor at the University of Winchester, in advancing the study of medieval and early modern artefacts, buildings, gardens, and towns. The seventeen essays represent substantive contributions on specific topics and many of the authors started out as Tom's students. Some focus on buildings, others on people, some on documentary evidence and some on material culture. The chapters range chronologically from early medieval Southampton through sixteenth-century Winchester to an analysis of that city's nineteenth-century censuses. Although the work coheres around central Southern England there are also papers on Edward I's Tower of London, the medieval and early modern gardens of two Oxford colleges, and the English occupation of Normandy in the fifteenth century.