Tickets will not be available until after the March talk

What happened to Cambridgeshire's free men after 1066? A new reading of the evidence. By Susan Oosthuizen

Around 91 per cent of the free peasantry across England were displaced by the Norman Conquest. Of the 932 free men in Cambridgeshire who had farmed on their own accounts in 1065, for instance, only 177 (18%) remained in 1086. Although those who lost their land are assumed to have been absorbed into Norman manors, their fate is invisible in documents, landscape archaeology and excavation. However, a new reading of the Cambridgeshire evidence suggests that, in some places, their forcible relocation can be identified and the violence they suffered suddenly laid bare.

Susan Oosthuizen is Professor Emerita of Medieval Archaeology in the University of Cambridge. She is particularly interested in the origins and development of fields, commons and settlements between about 400 and 1100, and in what that landscape history reveals about the individuals and communities that made, worked and lived in them. Tonight’s talk presents her recently published work focusing on four Cambridgeshire villages.