Strip parish

A strip parish is a parish with a narrow elongated shape, typically formed during the Anglo-Saxon and early medieval period. The shape is influenced by landscape, political and economic factors. Evidence of such parishes can be found throughout England although they appear to have been more common in a number of southern counties particularly but not exclusively associated with locations encompassing both lowland and upland landscapes or alternatively coastal communities.

A number of common factors influenced the creation of strip parishes: the establishment of the parish unit; the topography of the landscape and the scarcity of valuable resources.

The fragmentation of hundreds in England during the 8th and 9th centuries, due to the split up of larger estates and the transfer of land, progressively resulted in the emergence of smaller manorial estates. One of the most important contributions to this process was the endowment of lands associated with the establishment of churches and their accompanying estate, the patronage of the lower levels of nobility and the legal inheritance of land within families. Accelerated by the arrival of Norman rule all these factors paved the way for simultaneous creation of the patchwork of parish units and formalisation of their administrative boundaries alongside the re-assembling of manorial lands.

In locations such as the Chilterns, South Downs and coastal areas of Devon and Cornwall where there was a limit of important resources, a further development of the parish system can be observed. For example, in Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire settlements established in the lowland areas of the Vale of Aylesbury and Thames Valley respectively, along the base of the Chiltern Hills, extended their territories by accumulating territory on the largely uninhabited hillside, scarp and hilltop areas to exploit scarce resources such as, woodland, and upland summer pasture also known as transhumance. The result of this land reorganisation produced estates and parishes, which were narrow elongated strips exhibiting a range of land types ensuring the widest possible availability of resources.

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