THIS chapter has its origin in a study published in connection with the AHRC-funded research project ‘The Norman Edge: Identity and State-Formation on the Frontiers of Europe, c. 1050–c. 1200’. Taking as its focus a sample of settler families in the Anglo-Scottish marches, it explored the survival of some sense of Norman identity over the generations, or rather the centuries. As might have been expected, the arguments depended heavily on the records available for the higher nobility and among medievalists it is, indeed, something of a truism that ‘the range of possible identities [increases] further up the social hierarchy’. But one dynasty of the gentry or knightly class, the Normanvilles, did receive brief consideration and what follows aims to give this family the fuller coverage it merits. The Normanvilles’ role as lords of Maxton in Roxburghshire had previously earned some attention from Scottish historians, just as their lordship of Stamfordham in Northumberland had not escaped the notice of English historians. In each case, however, there was no acknowledgement that the Normanvilles had more than just local concerns within a single polity, so that even their connections across the border gained no recognition. Less surprisingly, no historian – not even Geoffrey Barrow in his work on Scotland's ‘Norman’ families – had realised that the Normanvilles were also landowners in the Pays de Caux of Upper Normandy, because much of the documentation in question remained unpublished and was (and still is) virtually uncatalogued. The chief sources survive in the collections of the Archives départementales de Seine- Maritime at Rouen, particularly among the muniments of the abbeys of Fécamp (fonds 7H), Saint-Wandrille (16H) and Valmont (19HP). Nowadays it is reasonably well understood that in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the Anglo-Scottish border was no barrier to the creation of gentry as well as magnate estates; the Normanvilles’ cross-Channel landholding before and, indeed, after the Capetian conquest of Normandy in 1204 gives them a wider significance for British and French history alike. By the same token, their activities allow us to explore a universe that may well be as revealing as the trans-frontier worlds inhabited by those great nobles on whom other studies have concentrated.

THE year 1979 saw a series of momentous events whose consequences still reverberate today. Margaret Thatcher became prime minister of the United Kingdom, Saddam Hussein took over in Iraq, Rhodesia was supplanted by Zimbabwe, the U.S.S.R. invaded Afghanistan – and Sandy Grant arrived to take up a lectureship in history at Lancaster University. He came from Queen's University, Belfast, and was naturally highly recommended by, among others, Lewis Warren – though if memory serves it was stressed that allowances would have to be made for his fervent support of clubs competing in the Scottish football league. For the next thirty-five years, until Sandy's retirement in September 2014, Lancaster's history department was his professional home and it is on his role as a contributor to departmental life that this appreciation begins. Sandy replaced Anthony Tuck, who left for the mastership of Collingwood College, Durham, and Sandy made an immediate impact, not least by strengthening the department's ability to offer medieval and renaissance courses in genuinely British history at a time when such were far from fashionable. He progressed to senior lecturer in 1992 – in an era when such appointments were exceptionally difficult to obtain – and he was awarded a very well-merited readership in 1995. Never a shrinking violet, Sandy also established himself as a lively and vociferous – as well as, in some guises, a challenging and dissenting – colleague, one who was and remained very much part of the lifeblood of the department. What marked out his many contributions to the department's affairs can be summed up in two words: passion and commitment.

Only the most introverted of Sandy's colleagues remained unaware of his impressive range of academic contacts beyond Lancaster, especially north of the border; none failed to appreciate his burgeoning scholarly reputation, particularly (but by no means exclusively) in the field of medieval Scottish studies. We shall say more about his research and publications shortly but it was characteristic of Sandy's loyalty to the department that as a co-editor and/or contributor he was involved in the production of as many as seven books that bore something of a distinctive ‘Lancaster stamp’.

This volume has its genesis in a two-day conference held at Durham University in January 2012, which was organised by the late Richard Britnell under the auspices of Durham's Institute of Medieval and Renaissance Studies. The aim was to explore shared elements in the development of socio-political institutions, landscape and agriculture on either side of the Anglo-Scottish Border before the onset of the Wars of Independence in 1296. As Richard Britnell expressed it, his desire was to encourage ‘focused exchanges of knowledge between historians of Scotland and northern England concerning common or cognate features of the two regions’. To that end, he invited scholars specialising in particular fields to re-visit the primary evidence in the light of the latest scholarship, taking a comparative approach across ‘middle Britain’, the region bisected by the Anglo-Scottish Border. Before he fell ill, he had secured the agreement of speakers at the Durham conference to develop their papers with a view to publishing a volume of collected essays. The present editors took over responsibility for the volume after Richard Britnell's death in December 2013. Since then some changes have been made to its scope by commissioning additional chapters from Janet Burton on religious institutions and culture, David Ditchburn on towns and trade, and Philip Dixon and Chris Tabraham on fortifications, in order to ensure more comprehensive thematic coverage.

The book's development has also resulted in a shift of emphasis from similarities to similarities and differences. Although the ‘common foundations’ that underlie medieval middle Britain, be they institutional, environmental or otherwise, are carefully investigated in the pages that follow, there is also much discussion of how far and why northern England and southern Scotland developed differently from one another, not least in the context of the gradual emergence of two independent medieval ‘nation-states’ and their distinctive trajectories. Common foundations were a pervasive and striking aspect of middle Britain, but they tell only one part of its story in the formative centuries of the central Middle Ages.

We would like to acknowledge Richard Britnell's initiative in organising the conference from which this volume stems, and to express our appreciation to our fellow contributors for their support and patience. We are likewise much obliged to the Department of History, Lancaster University, and to the Institute of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Durham University, for funding the production of the maps by Cath D'Alton.