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In medieval and Early Modern England, a deer park was an enclosed area containing deer. It was bounded by a ditch and bank with a wooden park pale on top of the bank, or by a stone or brick wall.〔Dry stone wall at Dyrham Park〕 The ditch was on the inside increasing the effective height. Some parks had deer "leaps", where there was an external ramp and the inner ditch was constructed on a grander scale, thus allowing deer to enter the park but preventing them from leaving. ==History== Some deer parks were established in the Anglo-Saxon era and are mentioned in Anglo-Saxon Charters; these were often called hays. After the Norman conquest of England in 1066 William the Conqueror seized existing game reserves. Deer parks flourished and proliferated under the Normans, forming a forerunner of the deer parks that became popular among England's landed gentry. The Domesday Book of 1086 records 36 of them. Initially the Norman kings maintained an exclusive right to keep and hunt deer and established forest law for this purpose.〔(Forests and Chases of England and Wales: A Glossary. ) St John's College, Oxford.〕 In due course they also allowed members of the nobility and senior clergy to maintain deer parks. At their peak at the turn of the 14th century, deer parks may have covered 2% of the land area of England. James I was an enthusiast for hunting but it became less fashionable and popular after the Civil War. The number of deer parks then declined, contemporary books document other more profitable uses for such an estate.〔An example is the planting for woods for firewood and shipbuilding in John Evelyn's ''Sylva, or A Discourse of Forest-Trees and the Propagation of Timber''〕 During the 18th century many deer parks were landscaped, where deer then became optional within larger country parks several of which created or enlarged from wealth from trade and colonization in the British Empire, while later mostly giving way to profitable agriculture dependent on crop prices, a workforce attracted elsewhere following increasing industrialization. This created pressure to sell off parts or divide such estates while rural population growth pushed up poor law rates (particularly outdoor relief and the Labour Rate) and urban poverty led to the introduction of lump sum capital taxation such as Inheritance Tax and a shift in power away from the aristocracy. Deer parks are notable landscape features in their own right. However, where they have survived into the 20th century, the lack of ploughing or development has often preserved other features within the park, including barrows (tumuli), Roman roads and abandoned villages. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Deer park (England)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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