2: Norfolk: The Agrarian Revolution and the Emergence of an Elite

The Norman Conquest of England would not seem to flow from the earlier concern with everyday life and the microsphere but, as Bennett suggests above, legacies are long-term. Broadlands village is located in the English county of Norfolk in East Anglia. Chapter 1 introduced dramaturgy (that social life is like a stage) and also expanded the idea of the stage to think about rural space more widely. The stage or social situation of Norfolk as a county is unique and reaches into the Broadlands village of the present-day. The past has a foot in the present in the sense that it is foreshadowed by expectations or norms forged before any actual situation where people meet one another. Therefore, what we think of as the norm or character of the countryside is formed by a potent combination of our tacit knowledge/imaginaries.