Agricultural History Review, Volume 55 Part 2 (2007), p. 313

In 1997 Bryan Waites published Monasteries and land scape in north-east England (Oakham: Multum in Parvo Press), which brought together a number of his earlier papers, notably in the Yorkshire Archaeological Journal and Borthwick Paper 32 published by the University of York. The preface to Monasteries and landscape of the North York Moors and Wolds describes it as a ‘new edition in a completely different format, with extra illustrations and some revision of the text’ of Waites’s earlier book. However, the revisions are not numerous. With some changes in paragraphing and the addition of a new concluding paragraph for the Introduction, the text is basically the same as the earlier edition. Some of the Latin has now been translated for the benefit of non-Latinists but some minor errors have been perpetuated. The notes have not been updated and there are still some references from earlier articles to cartularies in the British Museum rather than the British Library; only a handful of references to works published in the last decade has been added to the notes and bibliography. It is disconcerting that all matter in the endnotes – text as well as authors, titles, and page numbers – are in italics rather than following the conventional format. The text is nicely laid out and the maps are more professionally produced than in the 1997 edition. The number of illustrations has been increased; however, many are of a quality inferior to their counterparts in the 1997 edition: for instance, that of Rosedale on p.154 (1997) is clearer than that on p.169 (2007), and the photograph of Rievaulx Abbey in 1956 (p.145) has been replaced by a much less clear illustration of the abbey in 1840 (p.158). Some errors seem to have crept in during the process of reprinting (e.g. p.232, note 58 has Burton Flerning for Burton Fleming). In this respect the book is rather disappointing.

However the text remains a thorough assessment of the importance of the monastic orders in the development of the landscape of the North York Moors and Wolds. The major houses discussed are those of Whitby, a Benedictine abbey enjoying a location on the cliff tops above the North Sea; Cistercian Rievaulx on the southern edge of the Moors; and the priory of Augustinian canons at Guisborough on the northern fringes of the Moors. However Waites’s analysis is set in the broader context of the expansion and dominance of abbeys and priories of all orders within the geographical region. There is a wealth of information here on arable and pastoral farming on monastic estates, monastic industrial enterprise, and the monastic contribution to the medieval wool trade. This book will remain a valuable resource for monastic historians and those with an interest in the North.