The influence of forest, defined as a legal entity of land subject to Forest Law, on the form and siting of medieval elite residences is a neglected subject. There has, however, been an increasing awareness of the role of forests in enhancing the power of place of elite residence: palaces, castles and great houses. A number of pre-Conquest English royal residences where assemblies took place were almost certainly located within areas subsequently called forest, since councils normally met within territories attached to royal vills. While it is only after 1066 that we have the first references to the term foresta in England, it is now generally interpreted that the concept of the legal term of the forest was not in fact an Anglo-Norman importation. Indeed, the word ‘forest’ may have demonstrated pre-Anglo-Norman existence and significance: its early derivations of Latin foris (‘outside’), and of Continental Germanic first (‘enclosure’), both appear to have meant an area of land set apart under the king’s right. The application of Anglo-Norman Forest Law therefore took into account the legacy of Anglo-Saxon royal rights, the legal theory behind the post-Conquest land settlement, and the way the laws were applied. By 1086, we can see that land belonging to others had been placed in the royal forest, effectively demonstrating a continuation of ‘royal monopoly over the ownership, rights, control, management, and distribution of resources formerly enjoyed by lords and communities.’

Most post-Conquest forests were royal creations, but Anglo-Norman Cheshire was a quasi-independent county, legally afforested by the earls of Chester, rather than by the king himself. Despite little documentary evidence for early Anglo-Norman builds of elite residences in Cheshire within a generation of the Norman Conquest, the continuity of pre-Anglo-Norman cultural significance is nevertheless implied, when the wider social, political and landscape context of the earls’ residences is considered. It is probable that the earls of Chester located their elite residences in order to appropriate pre-Anglo-Norman power centres and ancient locales within a forestal landscape. This exploratory study tests, and potentially revises, established general explanations for the likely inter-influence of medieval forests and elite residences.

Cheshire was held by powerful Anglo-Norman earls between c. 1070 and 1237, when the county ‘rejoiced in the prerogative of regality’.