BIOGRAPHIES OF PEOPLE AND PLACE: THE HAREWOOD ESTATE, 1698-1813

This thesis explores the development of the Harewood Estate during the eighteenth century. The work focuses around the three themes of scale, multivocality and biography to provide a new perspective on post-medieval estate landscapes. A biographical approach is used to conciliate different scales of analysis and give meaning to the local, fleeting lives of the estate’s inhabitants. It is argued that at the local scale we find evidence that helps to challenge the taken-for-granted stories of historical archaeology.

A detailed account of the Harewood Estate is presented in order to contextualise the landscape developments, led by Edwin Lascelles, 1st Baron Harewood (1712-1795) from 1755. It is situated within the broader context of eighteenth-century ‘improvement’, a pervasive process that influenced many aspects of the Harewood landscape. By using a range of sources including, archaeological and documentary evidence, it is possible to gauge the impact of both the landowning family and the broader influences on the local scale. Surveys of a range of buildings such as workshops, farms and houses, show how eighteenth-century improvement had a variable impact at the local scale.

The ‘biographies of people and place’ have been used to introduce multivocality, or new ‘voices’, into the interpretation. By articulating several perspectives of the same landscape and recognising how people play a significant part in its formation - how they interact and are shaped by it - this thesis acknowledges the ways people inhabit their surrounding environment and furthers our understanding of post-medieval estates.