Research into medieval parks has undergone something of a renaissance over the last 10 years, a decade that has seen the publication of a raft of books and articles examining park origins, layout, function and symbolism. The majority of these works have focused on England, where the medieval fashion for emparkment was most concentrated and, therefore, for which we have the most evidence. This abundance of data, from a range of sources (documents, place-names, landscape survey and (zoo)archaeology) has facilitated considerable understanding of the social dynamics and significance of English medieval parks, providing new insights into these important landscape features.

It is within this context of integrated social analysis of medieval parks that Belgane's book is situated. It sets out to achieve for Ireland, in a single volume, the kind of transformative investigations that have been undertaken for England. And it succeeds. By weaving together a genuinely jaw-dropping amount of evidence (outlined in Chapter 2), collated from a desk-based assessment of cartographic and historical sources, as well as first-hand fieldwork observations and zooarchaeological analyses, Beglane achieves her ambition of investigating the role of Anglo-Norman parks in both the Irish landscape and mind-set. But this book is about more than Anglo-Norman parks, which are simply a lens through which the subtleties of Irish culture and identity are examined. The temporal coverage of the volume certainly extends beyond its purported focus of AD 1169–1350, with content ranging from the rise of parks in prehistory to their decline and reinvention in the early modern period.

Perhaps one of the most important contributions of this book is that it highlights how particular topics—in this case, Anglo-Norman parks and castles—can go almost entirely un-researched for reasons of politics and national identity. In Chapter 1, Beglane explains how, as perceived symbols of oppression, medieval parks and castles have been largely ignored in Ireland. Their physical remains were, for a long time, allowed to collapse so that they might also fall from the wider cultural consciousness, the exceptions being where these landscape features were re-cast as the backdrop to Gaelic mythology. This situation not only renders Irish Anglo-Norman parks something of a lacuna in terms of our knowledge and understanding of them, but also adds an additional element of contemporary interest to an already fascinating topic.

Following Chapter 2's full review of the sources examined in the book, Chapter 3 explores the role of parks as hunting reserves and, in particular, their connection to fallow deer—a subject of great interest to this reviewer but about which I now realise I knew astonishingly little with regard to Ireland. Beglane concludes this chapter with the observation that, in contrast to the situation in England, the primary aim of Anglo-Norman parks in Ireland was not deer keeping. Rather, in Chapter 4, she examines their significance as ‘economic units’, and their importance for the management of timber resources, cattle and horses. In Chapter 5, the way in which the function of parks translated into their design is examined through six, detailed case studies set against a broader synthesis of the data. Having demonstrated the evidence for the ‘design’ of parks, the complexities of their symbolism are further explored in Chapter 6, taking in turn the psychological impact of park boundaries, the significance of controlled and productive landscapes as markers of elite status, and how such markers could be subverted through park-breaking and poaching. Finally, this chapter examines how parks became signifiers of both Anglo-Norman and Gaelic identities, and subsequently woven into their respective myths and memories.

Chapter 7 goes well beyond the book's remit, charting the mixed fortunes of the six parks explored in the case studies, initially detailed in Chapter 5 (plus an additional example). When considered independently, it becomes clear that there is no such thing as a typical ‘park’, each having its own unique history that requires investigation in order to extract vital social and cultural information about the Irish landscape. With this in mind, the book finishes, in Chapter 8, with a warning about the potential loss of evidence that may occur as unstudied parks and their ephemeral remains vanish in a landscape increasingly under pressure from development. It must be hoped that Beglane's book, which represents a comprehensive one-stop shop for information about Ireland's Anglo-Norman parks, will both raise the profile of, and encourage research into, these neglected elements of the island's landscape history.