This survey examines a relatively small area of the Norfolk countryside to discover as far as possible how settlement patterns have evolved from Roman Anglo Saxon and medieval through to recent times The area chosen the Launditch Hundred in west central Norfolk contains forty one medieval villages Research involved a combination of detailed fieldwork around those villages where conditions were suitable the excavation of a deserted village at Grenstein the excavation of a Middle and Late Saxon settlement near the ruins of the pre Conquest cathedral at North Elmham and a study of maps both printed and manuscript as well as other documentary sources A study of three deserted village sites in the Launditch Hundred Godwick Pudding Norton and Bittering is to be published in a forthcoming volume of East Anglian Archaeology An appraisal of the four Dark Age linear earthworks in west Norfolk including the Launditch involved a re interpretation of their plan and function The overall pattern of these monuments was considered in relation to the expansion of Anglo Saxon settlement in Norfolk