This a well-researched and reflective text comprising an introductory essay followed by a gazetteer of the majority of the seventy or so medieval parks identified in Hertfordshire – although the number in use at any one time was probably between twenty-five and thirty. The book’s time-span – from the Norman Conquest to the end of the Middle Ages – is amplified by a brief discussion of pre-Conquest conditions and of the fate of parks after 1500. Hugh Prince’s Parks in Hertfordshire since 1500 (2008) focused on the post-medieval. Nothing changed in 1500; indeed the Dissolution, the plundering of episcopal lands, the Civil War and interregnum were more significant breaks with the past than 1500.

Both Introduction and Gazetteer are based on detailed knowledge of Hertfordshire sources. The list of documents consulted is impressive and testimony to the author’s determination to get to grips with a topic which demands a broad interdisciplinary approach. She has developed a mastery of Latin and palaeography which is very pleasing. Topics covered in the Introduction include discussions of the extent to which Hertfordshire was a ‘parky’ county, sources, chronology, longevity, park creators, spatial relationship between ‘the lord’s residence and his park’, geographical distribution, woodland, settlement patterns and lordship, parks in the Hertfordshire landscape, park residents (this includes deer and other animals), economic viability, park management, lodges and, finally, personnel. The Introduction forms something over 15 per cent of the book and is supplemented by notes on dates, measurements and money. The Gazetteer is followed by a helpful Glossary. It is clear that the author is aiming at as wide a readership as possible by providing these elucidatory props for readers.

The Introduction is thoughtful. We learn about the topics dealt with above, with attention paid to wider issues, such as the underlying geology: parks were often on hilltops where the soil was poor. The author records change through time in the location of deer parks in Hertfordshire, or rather the location – nearer to the park – of the houses of the wealthy. This is discussed in relation to such developments in hunting as the bow-and-stable hunt, where the deer were driven on to the hunters’ bows and arrows. She might have added that this could also have been due to an increase in park-break in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, although these cases may arise from fortuitous documentary survivals.

Only one reference each to roe and red deer have been found in records relating to Hertfordshire (the white doe and five white bucks ordered to Queen Eleanor’s park at Langley in 1282) and a single reference to red deer (1427/8 in relation to the abbot of St Albans’s new park at Tyttenhanger). All the other references found in this extensive record search are to fallow deer – the more surprising as their reintroduction under the Normans meant that in the early Norman period they would have been ‘observed and admired rather than chased and eaten’ as Naomi Sykes has so elegantly put it (Sykes 2007). Their popularity must rapidly have increased for their spread through the countryside is demonstrated by their monopoly of the records. There is a fascinating documentary insight into the moving about of fallow deer, which inevitably glosses over the physical work involved in catching and checking the deer and then loading these wild animals into carts to transport them – from Bernwood to Great Gaddesden (38km) in 1241, for example, or the thirty fallow does taken from Odiham, Hampshire, to Langley, some 75km away, in 1276.

There are useful distribution maps showing, for example, royal, ecclesiastical, baronial and ‘other’ parks and charts of the revenues and costs of various parks. These highlight the significant and ongoing costs of staff (parkers) and the upkeep of boundaries throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the declining revenues from timber and wood and the rising income from agistment (the profit derived from pasturing cattle and horses). Given that deer had no monetary value – and that Hertfordshire royal parks produced no income – the significance of parks as status symbols is clearly shown, with losses outweighing profits where accounts survive, for example, at the Bishop of Ely’s park at Little Hadham, until agistment improves income in the fifteenth century.

The Gazetteer provides systematic detail about parks, mostly previously known only from scattered references, together with many new references. The Gazetteer is illustrated with fine maps that distinguish areas confidently identified as parkland from ‘probables’ and from more weakly evidenced examples. There are aerial photographs and some photographs in the landscape, the latter presumably taken by the author. The detailed documentary studies bring the parks to life. Likewise the photographs are helpful – notably fig 40, showing the continuation of medieval management in the pollarded hornbeam at Knebworth, branches lying on the ground, the leaves as food for deer, the branches for firewood. This contributes to the author’s aim of encouraging the ‘protection and preservation’ of surviving fragments of the medieval parks.

This is a good book. The large format renders the maps and aerial photographs easily legible. This reader would have liked to have seen a resounding conclusion to the Introduction, and the maps and aerial photographs put on facing pages for ready comparison. The price is good value and much to the credit of the University of Hertfordshire Press. There are few obvious blemishes, although notes referring to one page are occasionally orphaned overleaf (eg, fn 77), and the occasional book title is misstated in the bibliography. More exhaustive use of archaeological evidence to flesh out sometimes meagre documentary references would have helped, as would more comparative material. But these are minor matters in a successful work by a dedicated author who has taken the best advice available to her and has been supported by a generous and willing publisher.