Emparkment reshaped the English countryside from the Middle Ages into the eighteenth century.

But what exactly does it mean and what changes did it bring? At the simplest level, “to empark” simply meant to create a “park”. The Anglo-Saxon “pearroc” can be translated as “a piece of land with a fence around it”.

These were not the neat, landscaped parks we associate with later country houses, however; those didn’t come into fashion until the eighteenth century. In the Middle Ages, the word “park” meant that the land had been fenced off for exclusive use by the lord. This mostly meant that he was for keeping deer for hunting.

The historian of the countryside Oliver Rackham has estimated that, around 1300 AD, there were roughly 3,200 parks in England. This meant that they covered almost 2% of the land.

Empark a Privilege for Kings and Lords

In the Middle Ages it was written in the game laws that only lords were permitted to hunt. This limitation was maintained for a couple of reasons.

For a start, hunting was a sporting activity enjoyed by the nobility, which they did not wish to share. In addition, the meat and hides produced by the hunt were valuable economic assets which they wanted to control.

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These restrictions were easier to enforce if the deer were kept in a fenced area; and so parks emerged. Parks made hunting easier (the deer couldn’t stray far and wouldn’t be difficult to find) and it kept interlopers who might thin the herd out.

Parks were distinct from other areas reserved for recreation of the nobility such as “forests”, chases and warrens because they were intended for deer and as such were encircled by fencing and securely enclosed.

Lords sought royal permission to empark, for which they needed a special licence. These were valuable and protected assets.

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The boundaries of these parks weren’t only fenced. They were often more elaborate, with banks and ditches topped by hedges or fences.

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In areas where ample stone was available, deer parks might have stone walls instead of a park pale made of split oak, which was more standard. Walled parks could be seen at Barnsdale in Yorkshire and Burghley on the Cambridgeshire/Lincolnshire border.

Some parks included deer “leaps”; these were comprised of an external ramp and the inner ditch which allowed deer to enter the park but made it impossible for them to jump out again.

These design features show a desire to protect and even grow the herd. Parks could vary significantly in size. They could have a circumference of many miles or be little more than a paddock.

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The landscape within a deer park was shaped by its use; it had to be a suitable habitat for deer to live in while also creating a good hunting ground. This meant that they would usually combine grassy expanses with clusters of trees and even areas of woodland.

As they were part of a lord’s estate, they were also designed to be aesthetically pleasing. This was a distinctive use of land which left marks. The historian O.G.S. Crawford has noted that boundary earthworks have survived “in considerable numbers and a good state of preservation”.

Empark – Tracing the Boundary

Where there are no physical remains, however, the boundary can still sometimes be traced. Field boundaries often follow their former course.

The boundaries of early deer parks often followed parish boundaries. These clues can point to the shape of vanished parks. In cases where the deer park was subsequently used for agricultural purposes, the field system within it is likely to be at odds with the established pattern in the surrounding fields, creating a visible outline.

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As well as themselves being ancient landscape features, deer parks also often inadvertently preserved other landscape features which might otherwise have vanished.

Where deer parks survived for extended periods of time, the lack of ploughing often preserved other antiquities within their boundaries, features which were destroyed where farming was more intensive. For example, parks often include the remains of Roman roads, barrows, and abandoned villages.

Deer parks were also mentioned as landmarks in Anglo Saxon charters. The Charter of Reading Abbey, describes the deer park at Hamnish. In this charter, Walter de Clifford was granted 28 acres of land to enlarge his existing park.

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While traces in the landscape can let us know where some parks once were, these written sources can tell us specifically when the land was emparked and by whom.

1000 Acres Emparked

For example, we know that Sir Rowland Leinthall of Hampton Court was given permission to empark 1000 acres, while Richard de Beauchamp received a licence to empark at Bronsil near Eastnor, and that the Harleys created a park at Brampton Bryan.

Inevitably, however, after so much time has passed, many parks have not left a trace in the land or in the written record.

They might have vanished entirely or, in some cases, there might be clues in place names. Parks were often called hays, a word derived from the Old English heġe (meaning “hedge, fence”) and ġehæġ (“an enclosed piece of land”).

These words in the names of places might suggest that there was once a park in the neighbourhood. In the earlier Middle Ages, parks were often placed at a distance from the lord’s house.

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The later medieval aristocracy, however, tended to place parks next to or encompassed within the ground of their houses. Creating a park was a privilege reserved for an elite.

It was, therefore, a show of power and wealth – a way to show importance in the esteem of the monarch and to conspicuously take up costly space – as well as a valuable resource. These parks were an opportunity to display their lordly privileges to others.

Empark and the Norman Conquest

Deer parks flourished under the Normans after the Conquest of 1066. The Domesday Book already records thirty-six of them in 1086 AD. At first, rights to hunt deer were reserved for the king and protected by the so-called “forest law”.

This right to create parks and hunt deer later spread to the wider nobility who could seek licences to “empark” their own deer parks. They became a widespread, if high-status, feature of the landscape.

Deer parks were often associated with castles. Crenellation licenses (documents which gave their holder permission to build fortifications) were often granted together with permission to create a park.

Fortification might be built either for genuine defensive purposes or as a status symbol. Both castles and deer parks, then, were status symbols and displays of power and they frequently went hand in hand. The popularity of the English deer park ebbed and flowed over the centuries that followed.

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James I was an enthusiastic hunter of deer, for example, but the puritanism ushered in by the English Civil War made hunting for sport less common, during which time the number of deer parks declined. The land was given over to more profitable purposes. In the 18th century it became fashionable to have deer parks ostentatiously landscaped and carefully manicured.

Keeping herds of deer was no longer de rigueur, and instead became an optional extra. There was also a tendency during this period for larger deer parks to give way to agricultural uses.

Venison and Grants of Deer: A Social Purpose

Venison could only be bought and sold when its provenance was known, meaning that it was an exclusive and expensive delicacy. Those who owned a deer park could grant a signed warrant for a specified number of deer (usually one only).

The grant would specify the number and also whether this animal should be a buck or a doe. The park keeper who would kill the animal and give the carcass to the grantee. Examples of this practice can be found in the Lisle Papers from the 1530s; these contain letters from people seeking the grant of a deer from the lady of the manor of Umberleigh in Devon, Honor Grenville.

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This practice reveals a culture of gifts and obligations in and around deer parks which speaks to their social and economic importance. Despite his culture of granting the favour of a deer to friends and supplicants, there were also thefts.

Noblemen would break into each other’s parks to kill animals, perhaps to repay a grudge or out of jealousy over valuable territory. In 1523, for example, Sir William St Loe of Sutton Court, Chew Magna, Somerset, led an armed gang into Banwell Park in Somerset, which was attached to Banwell Abbey.

This was the residence of William Barlow, the Bishop of Bath and Wells. The next August he made another such raid, killing more than 20 deer.

He displayed their severed heads on the boundary palings. The deer park, and the valuable beasts within it, were apparently objects of envy and also seen as a good way to settle a score.

Power and the Landscape

Deer parks reshaped the English landscape after the Norman Conquest, fencing off large portions of land for the exclusive use of the nobility.

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They were places where noblemen displayed their wealth and status, and where they wrangled for power and influence.

They had a unique ecology and, as a place where valuable deer were farmed, had a large economic significance as well as being status symbols and settings for lordly residences where social and political wrangling went on.

Emparkment was also part of a struggle for space in the countryside which would culminate in the later enclosure movements when yet more fences went up around more land, forcing commoners out of the countryside.

Documents like the Charter of the Forest – a sister document to Magna Carta which limited some aristocratic privilege and allowed ordinary people to access forests – testify to the struggle which ensued when landlords first began putting up fences around private property in the English countryside.