This is a remarkable mid-16th-century field book by Edmond Twyngho, surveyor to the Duchy of Lancaster and later to the Queen, revised in 1570 and 1578, surviving in a later copy.  It covers the entire parish except Kneesworth hamlet strip by strip, giving the statute measure of each, whether free or customary tenure and if the latter to which manor it belongs.   The editor provides a full transcript and introduces it with a discussion of the dating issues of the manuscript and its value for enabling a construction of the fields as they were at this time.  The edition is complemented with appendixes of Twyngho’s other known works and contemporary field books for the area consulted for comparison, a glossary, bibliography and indexes of subjects, persons and places.  The book will be of value to anyone interested in the parish, its population and topography, but also further afield to those who are fascinated by the documentary legacy and what it can tell us about agricultural management in the early modern period.

Valory Hurst has been a member of the South West Cambridgeshire Project and Landscape Group of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society, studying the landscape of the area, since 1998.