Food production and consumption on Durham Priory's estate, c. 1250-1500

Few periods have proved as contentious in explaining the modern economy as the late Middle Ages, long sparred over by Marxists and neo-Malthusians, as well as historians of commercialisation, gender and the environment. By comparison, food history has largely been seen as a peripheral area in these debates, when in reality it is of central importance. The field has been especially impeded by an excessive tendency to demarcate between interpreting food as an economic resource on the one hand, and a cultural and social symbol on the other. In reality, food transcended these categories, its economic character symbiotically connected to its cultural. Markets, for example, were shaped partly by taste, while gift giving and gender dynamics shifted according to wages and recession. This thesis will provide a holistic view of both the production and consumption of medieval food and will recalibrate the scope, methodology and conceptual underpinnings of medieval food history. This will be achieved through a study of Durham Priory, one of the most influential and well-documented households in late medieval England, and of vital importance to the north-eastern economy. Using the rich and underutilised records of Durham Priory, this project will create novel quantitative datasets to assess the estate's production, prices, profits, market relations, wages, gift giving and alms, among other datasets. This will offer a case study of the changing role of food during dichotomous period of English history, which experienced environmental catastrophe, famine, disease and recession but
paradoxically also cultural renewal and rebirth.