Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Nottingham in the Late Middle Ages: Plague, Climate, and Resilience

Nottingham in the Late Middle Ages: Plague, Climate, and Resilience

Lomax, Scott C.

Paperback

Medieval & Renaissance HistoryArchaeologyArchitecture History

PREORDER - Expected ship date May 31, 2028

ISBN13: 9798888573327
Publisher: Oxbow Books Limited
Published: May 31 2028
Pages: 208
Language: English
Nottingham in the Late Middle Ages offers a new interpretation of late medieval Nottingham, challenging long-standing assumptions of post-Black Death urban decay and decline. Through the detailed study of a single English town, using archaeological and historical documentary evidence, it explores wider themes of climate change, demographic collapse, economic transformation, environmental pressure, and urban resilience that affected towns and cities across medieval England and beyond. Focusing on the period between 1300 and 1540, the book examines how plague, famine, flooding, and climatic instability during the Little Ice Age repeatedly disrupted urban life, bringing mortality, economic uncertainty, and social change. Yet rather than presenting Nottingham as a town in terminal decline, the study reveals a community characterised by adaptation, recovery, and resilience. Population loss reshaped society and the economy, while inward migration from surrounding villages, alongside immigration from continental Europe and Iceland, gave the town an increasingly dynamic and international character. A key theme of the book is the relationship between environment and economy. At the transition from the Medieval Climate Anomaly to the Little Ice Age in c. 1290, colder, wetter conditions transformed Nottingham's riverside zones and marshlands, while flooding, unstable weather, and frozen rivers affected trade, industry, and daily life. The town's cave systems and subterranean spaces were adapted for industrial processes such as tanning, illustrating how people responded to changing environmental and economic conditions. Investment in bridges, a guildhall, the town wall, and the wider urban environment reflected not only economic cycles but also political pressure, civic identity, and periods of instability such as the Wars of the Roses. Drawing on archaeological evidence, much of it published here for the first time, alongside documentary sources including borough court rolls, the book reconstructs the lived experience of crisis, work, adaptation, and environmental change within a medieval town. While rooted in Nottingham, the study addresses questions relevant to urban communities far beyond the town itself, offering a broader contribution to understanding how societies responded to climate stress, population change, and economic uncertainty in the late medieval world. The book originated from the author's role as City Archaeologist for Nottingham, alongside doctoral research at the University of Nottingham. Eighteen years of engagement with Nottingham's archaeology, and seven years of PhD research focused on the city's late medieval development, have provided a unique opportunity to work directly with the city's archaeological archives and to draw together a wide range of evidence not previously studied in a synthetic way. This includes material held within development-led excavation archives as well as extensive documentary sources, most notably the borough court rolls. Together, these resources have enabled a more comprehensive examination of the medieval town than has previously been possible and provides important insight into the life and development of a town in the late medieval period.

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