ABSTRACT
The analysis of the physical characteristics of English towns through devising morphologically based regions has its origins in the research of M. R. G. Conzen (1960,1962). That research, in turn, is a development of the work of central European researchers in the period before 1945 (for example, Geisler 1924; Strahm 1935). Conzen's papers on Alnwick, Northumberland and the city of Newcastle upon Tyne, whilst conceptually rich and, in many ways, extremely detailed, concentrated on the morphological evolution of the town plan in the early-modern, industrial and twentieth-century periods. They do not provide a detailed exposition on how to devise morphological regions, nor do they concentrate unduly upon the medieval development of the core of the towns. Subsequent work by Conzen, most notably upon the town of Ludlow, Shropshire (Conzen 1968, 1988), has expanded upon his earlier work in the context of a place with much more distinctive plan divisions deriving from its medieval phase of development but, again, techniques for deriving morphological regions are not dealt with as such. He does, however, expand upon the concept of the morphological region in towns. This, he says, is a combination of the regionalized pattern of the three systematic form complexes of town plan, building fabric and land use. Of these, the town plan (street and plot pattern) is the most resistant to change and the pattern of land utilization the most liable to change, particularly over the past 150 years. The building fabric is the most visually obvious carrier of historical information in the townscape and, because it represents a major fixed capital investment on the part of individuals, has also been reasonably resistant to major change until comparatively recently, though not to the extent of the town plan (Conzen 1988: 255-9).
