During the post-medieval period rural landscapes and settlements underwent significant change. Many of these alterations were driven by programmes of ‘improvement’ in which elites set out to re-organise the management of the environment and the design of rural communities. Lothian in particular was at the forefront of elite efforts to ‘improve’ the Scottish landscape and to introduce new forms of cultivation and animal husbandry. Such changes were intended to ensure greater profit for landholders and to align the countryside with elite expectations of an ordered landscape. However, the degree to which grand schemes of drainage, enclosure, tree planting, and the re-siting and re-building of farms and villages actually increased productivity is less certain. Indeed, the impact of elite ‘improvements’ on the lives of less prosperous rural residents could be highly disruptive, and probably drove some communities and individuals to experience greater hardship. Much of researcher’s current understanding of processes of improvement remain profoundly shaped by the extensive written records generated by elite landowners. Field surveys, study of standing buildings, and excavations hold the potential to provide an important corrective to elite narratives about the post-medieval countryside, and to enable a more nuanced understanding of the complexities surrounding so-called ‘improvement’ and its implications for different localities.
The lens of improvement has also potentially distorted researcher’s understanding of the state of agriculture and the experiences of rural communities in South East Scotland during the earlier part of the post-medieval period. From the late 17th century onwards, many elite authors argued that Scotland had seen ‘a great neglect of husbandrie’, driving rural society into ‘utter misery’ (Belhaven 1699). The reality was almost certainly more complex, and greater research into early 17th-century rural life would be desirable. Recent decades have seen significant investigations at some abandoned or relocated post-medieval settlements in South East Scotland.
Excavations at the former site of Hume village have cast light on the complex story of the settlement following the destruction of the local castle at the beginning of the post-medieval period (Hill and Gamble 2023). Significantly, despite the loss of the elite estate centre, Hume village continued as a viable community throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. The settlement then underwent significant re-ordering around 1800 as local landowners sought to impose ‘improvement’ on a community they deemed backwards and ‘burdensome’. Archaeological interventions at the former settlement of Eldbotle have also proved illuminating (Hindmarch and Oram 2012). This medieval farming community was abandoned in the early 18th century. The community had been facing environmental challenges and decline since the late medieval period. However, it is thought that it was ‘the new rationalism of estate-management practice’ in the late 17th and early 18th centuries which dealt the final blow to settlement at Eldbotle (Hindmarch and Oram 2012, 295). Eldbotle provides a reminder of the complex ways in which underlying environmental trends and specific human interventions interact with each other.
More research is needed into the factors which led some post-medieval rural settlements to decline whilst others thrived. The extensive building work planned for South East Scotland is likely to provide valuable opportunities for archaeological interventions. For example, work at Nether Gogar in advance of the construction of the tram route uncovered evidence of post-medieval farming and milling activity in and around the site of a largely abandoned medieval village (Bob and James et al 2018). As well as rescue excavations, there is also a need for further field surveys and standing building recording. Current changes to farming mean that many post-medieval landscape features and surviving rural buildings face an uncertain future. Existing levels of recording are surprisingly patchy. Field boundaries, drains, trackways, and agricultural buildings, are amongst some of the features that could cast considerable light on the post-medieval rural landscape, but have received less study than they deserve. The upheavals in the modern countryside make the recording of rural landscapes a priority.