by w. G. HOSKINS , author of The Making of the English Landscape
Apart from the small number of planned towns, we know almost nothing of the processes by which our historic towns grew physically. What determined the actual lines the oldest streets took, and how did they get built? What determined the layout of the individual house-plots in these streets, and how far has this ancient pattern persisted?
This talk is occasioned by the recent publication of an Atlas of Historic Towns - the first volume of a large-scale enterprise to reconstruct the oldest towns in Britain,