NORDEN, John

by John Norden

£3,250 · Offered by Sokol Books

A very good copy of the second edition of the first English book on surveying of the seventeenth century. There were three editions between 1607 and 1618. The Surveiors dialogue, draws on Norden s experience as surveyor of the Duchy of Cornwall, as well as of the royal castles and crown woods in various counties. Important because of Norden s clear account of the operation of the court of survey and because of his efforts to reconcile the differences between surveyor and tenant. A.W. Richeson, English land measuring to 1800, 1966 . Norden s text unlike Rathborne s was intended more for a general audience than a readership of fellow or aspiring surveyors, and Norden emphasises not the specialised, technical aspects of the craft but instead the social, legal, and agricultural components of surveying. For Norden, the surveyor possess a social role that is inextricably linked to the management and preservation of agrarian life. As the Surveyor points out in his first dialogue with the farmer, plotting , while necessary, is not the chiefe part of surveying practise In the early modern period, surveys were conducted under the jurisdiction of the manorial court system, the Court Baron, and were typically known as Courts of Survey in reference to their authorising body and institutional context. The survey was not primarily a technical endeavour conducted by an individual surveyor that produced a visual document in the form of an estate map. On the contrary, as Norden ..indicates, it

• Binding: Hardcover

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