Landscape, environment, and agriculture in medieval Ireland: resource management and decision-making on the manors of Roger Bigod, C.1279-1290

These seized lands were held by significant transmarine lords who established a hierarchy of officials and administrators to manage their Irish estates, often in their absence, and to generate profit. This thesis applies a new methodology to analysing their manorial accounts, with the aim of understanding how environmental variables (such as soil type) were determining factors in agrarian decision-making.

Taking each manor as its own economic and agrarian unit allows us to investigate localised management practices, before comparing each manor and how they functioned within a wider economic network throughout the economic and social turbulence of the 1280s and ‘90s. <br><br><i>Thesis is embargoed until 31 July 2027</i>.