Studies in Regional and Local History Series

Seeking to draw new conclusions about settlement distributions and population densities, patterns of wealth, underprivileged assistance, and land usage, this reference uses multiple criteria to subdivide England into regions. This unusual and probing study establishes the presence of an informal cultural frontier between two proposed societies, which would lie astride the LeicestershireLincolnshire border, in order to identify cultural differences and divides that are clearly visible in the English countryside. Taking the unique approach of stressing early-modern-period rural landscapes, this examination looks at the enduring social and economic links between the area’s population and its landscape.

Based on oral histories and farm books, this account offers a fascinating analysis of some 300 years of hop-cultivation history in the Weald of Kent, a rural area in the South of England, and in the Borough at Southwark, London. The diverse processes of hop agriculture are examined within the wider context of events, such as the advent of the railroads and the effects of war, as are changes to the working practices and technologies used and their reception and implementation in the Weald. Also examining hop trading and dealing, this comprehensive record demonstrates the impact this rural industry had upon the lives of the people engaged in it.

Many of London's Victorian buildings are built of coarse-textured yellow bricks. These are 'London stocks', produced in very large quantities all through the nineteenth century and notable for their ability to withstand the airborne pollutants of the Victorian city. Whether visible or, as is sometimes the case, hidden behind stonework or underground, they form a major part of the fabric of the capital. Until now, little has been written about how and where they were made and the people who made them. Peter Hounsell has written a detailed history of the industry which supplied these bricks to the London market, offering a fresh perspective on the social and economic history of the city. In it he reveals the workings of a complex network of finance and labour. From landowners who saw an opportunity to profit from the clay on their land, to entrepreneurs who sought to build a business as brick manufacturers, to those who actually made the bricks, the book considers the process in detail, placing it in the context of the supply-and-demand factors that affected the numbers of bricks produced and the costs involved in equipping and running a brickworks. Transport from the brickfields to the market was crucial and Dr Hounsell conducts a full survey of the different routes by which bricks were delivered to building sites - by road, by Thames barge or canal boat, and in the second half of the century by the new railways. The companies that made the bricks employed many thousands of men, women and children and their working lives, homes and culture are looked at here, as well as the journey towards better working conditions and wages. The decline of the handmade yellow stock was eventually brought about by the arrival of the machine-made Fletton brick that competed directly with it on price. Brickmaking in the vicinity of London finally disappeared after the Second World War. Although its demise has left little evidence in the landscape, this industry influenced the developme

With a special emphasis on the exchange of land between medieval servile tenantsespecially from the 13th century onwardthis scholarly examination of the peasant land market of the Middle Ages explores the identification of peasant families with particular lands to which they had a hereditary right. Using this theme to explore village life and showing how peasants were affected by the changes over time and place, this study employs primary source material from the Winchester estates. Analyzing thousands of land exchanges and interactions from more than 50 different manors on Winchester, this volume reveals unparalleled opportunities for comparing regional and local differences of experience.

Securing the long-term survival and status of the family has always been the principal concern of the English aristocracy and gentry. Central to that ambition has been the successful management of their landed estates, whilst failure in this regard could spell ruination for an entire family. In the sixteenth century, the task became more difficult as price inflation reduced the value of rents; improved management skills were called for. In Norfolk, estates began to change hands rapidly as the unaware or simply incompetent failed to grasp the issues, while the more astute and enterprising landowners capitalised on their neighbours' misfortunes.When Sir Hamon Le Strange inherited his family's ancient estate at Hunstanton in 1604 it was much depleted and heavily encumbered. The outlook was bleak: such circumstances often led to the disappearance of families as landowners. However, within a generation, he and his remarkable wife Alice had modernised the estate and secured the family's future. After 700 years, the Le Stranges still survive and prosper on their estate at Hunstanton, making them the longest surviving gentry family in Norfolk. The first part of this book presents new research into the secret of their rare success. A key aspect of their strategy was a belief in the power (and economic value) of knowledge: Hamon and Alice wanted to ensure that their improvements would endure for posterity. To this end, they curated their knowledge through meticulous record-keeping and carefully handed it down to their successors. This behaviour, instilled in the family, not only facilitated on-going reforms, but helped future generations overcome the inevitable reversals and challenges they also faced.The second part of the book collects together four related papers from Elizabeth Griffiths' research about the Le Stranges, Hobarts and Wyndhams, republished from the Agricultural History Review and edited from two Norfolk Record Society volumes. For anyone interested in early modern rural society and agriculture and the history of Norfolk gentry estates, this volume will be essential reading, offering as it does new perspectives on the history of estate management, notably the role of women, the relationship with local communities and sustainability in agriculture.

With special emphasis on the period following the Black Death, this new collection of essays explores agriculture and rural society during the late Middle Ages. Combining a broad perspective on agrarian problems—such as depopulation and social conflict—with illustrative material from detailed local and regional research, this compilation demonstrates how these general problems were solved within specific contexts. The contributors supply detailed studies relating to the use of the land, the movement of prices, the distribution of property, the organization of trade, and the cohesion of village society, among other issues. New research on regional development in medieval England and other European countries is also discussed.

Despite increased commercialization and an efficient network of local markets in 1300s Europe—as well as significant costs and risks associated with the production, transportation, and storage of food—some landed lords, monasteries, and convents continued to rely on the produce of their own estates. This detailed study sets out to account for the puzzling situation, covering the period between 1260 and 1536, with an in-depth analysis of the changing patterns and fortunes of the provisioning of Norwich Cathedral Priory. As it examines the entire process of food delivery from field to table, the record explores the question of food security within the context of the various crises in the 14th century, and also illustrates the aftereffects of the Black Death. Although providing unparalleled insight into the Priory, the book also serves as an important resource on understanding the Late Middle Ages economy of England and society during a time of upheaval.

'Ancient woodland' is a term widely used in England for long-established semi-natural woods, shaped by centuries of traditional management. Such woods are often assumed to provide a direct link with the natural vegetation of England, as this existed before the virgin forests were fragmented by the arrival of farming. This groundbreaking study questions many of these assumptions. Drawing on more than a decade of research in Norfolk, the authors emphasize the essentially unnatural character of ancient woods.

English rural society underwent fundamental changes between the thirteenth and eighteenth centuries with urbanization, commercialization and industrialization producing new challenges and opportunities for inhabitants of rural communities. However, our understanding of this period has been shaped by the compartmentalization of history into medieval and early-modern specialisms and by the debates surrounding the transition from feudalism to capitalism and landlord-tenant relations. Inspired by the classic works of Tawney and Postan, this collection of essays examines their relevance to historians today, distinguishing between their contrasting approaches to the pre-industrial economy and exploring the development of agriculture and rural industry; changes in land and property rights; and competition over resources in the English countryside.

This detailed and original study of early-modern agrarian society in the Somerset Levels examines the small landholders in a group of sixteen contiguous parishes in the area known as Brent Marsh. These were farmers with lifehold tenures and a mixed agricultural production whose activities and outlook are shown to be very different from that of the small 'peasant' farmers of so many general histories. Patricia Croot challenges the idea that small farmers failed to contribute to the productivity and commercialization of the early-modern economy.

With authority and sound methodology, this study compares archaeological evidence from the fourth to seventh centuries AD in the Chilterns and Essex region with the considerable body of data taken from the place names of the same area. The distribution of supposedly early Old English place name elements suggests that, contrary to orthodox opinion, these elements are not particularly useful indicators of early Germanic influence. Additionally, some elements traditionally thought to be relatively unimportant may belong to an earlier stratum of place name formation. By reexamining data, this book presents a new theory about the emergence of Anglo-Saxon culture at the end of the Romano-British period and suggests that some revision of place name chronology is necessary.

At the cutting edge of new social and demographic history, this book provides a detailed picture of the most comprehensive system of poor relief operated by any Elizabethan town. Well before the Poor Laws of 1598 and 1601, Hadleigh, Suffolk—a thriving woolen cloth center with a population of roughly 3,000—offered a complex array of assistance to many of its residents who could not provide for themselves: orphaned children, married couples with more offspring than they could support or supervise, widows, people with physical or mental disabilities, some of the unemployed, and the elderly. Hadleigh's leaders also attempted to curb idleness and vagrancy and to prevent poor people who might later need relief from settling in the town. Based upon uniquely full records, this study traces 600 people who received help and explores the social, religious, and economic considerations that made more prosperous people willing to run and pay for this system. Relevant to contemporary debates over assistance to the poor, the book provides a compelling picture of a network of care and control that resulted in the integration of public and private forms of aid.

Based on a case study of a particular countryside and town in southern England—namely, the county of Wiltshire and the city of Salisbury—this record seeks to explore the changing nature of English society during the period from 1380 to 1520. It examines the influence of landscape and population on the agriculture of Wiltshire, the regional patterns of arable and pastoral farming, and the growing contrast between the large-scale mixed farming of the chalklands and the family farms of the claylands. Discussing how economic growth generated problems of its own, this study is the first to fully investigate Wiltshire’s agriculture history during the late Middle Ages, a period recognized as one of considerable change.

This compelling new study forms part of a new wave of scholarship on the medieval rural environment in which the focus moves beyond purely socio-economic concerns to incorporate the lived experience of peasants. For too long, the principal intellectual approach has been to consider both subject and evidence from a modern, rationalist perspective and to afford greater importance to the social elite. New perspectives are needed. By re-evaluating the source material from the perspective of the peasant worldview, it is possible to build a far more detailed representation of rural peasant experience. Susan Kilby seeks to reconstruct the physical and socio-cultural environment of three contrasting English villages - Lakenheath in Suffolk, Castor in Northamptonshire and Elton in Huntingdonshire - between c. 1086 and c. 1348 and to use this as the basis for determining how peasants perceived their natural surroundings. In so doing she draws upon a vast array of sources including documents, material culture, place-names and family names, and the landscape itself. At the same time, she explores the approaches adopted by a wide variety of academic disciplines, including onomastics, anthropology, ethnography, landscape archaeology and historical geography. This highly interdisciplinary process reveals exciting insights into peasant mentalities. For example, cultural geographers' understanding of the ways in which different groups 'read' their local landscape has profound implications for the ways in which we might interpret evidence left to us by medieval English peasant communities, while anthropological approaches to place-naming demonstrate the distinct possibility that there were similarities between the naming practices of First Nations people and medieval society. Both groups used key landscape referents and also used names as the means by which locally important history, folklore and legends were embedded within the landscape itself. Among many valuable insights, this st

This book focuses on the period from the seventh to eleventh centuries that witnessed the rise and fall of Mercia, the great Midland kingdom, and, later, the formation of England. Specifically, it explores the relationship between the bishops of Lichfield and the multiple communities of their diocese. Andrew Sargent tackles the challenge posed by the evidential 'hole' at the heart of Mercia by synthesising different kinds of evidence - archaeological, textual, topographical and toponymical - to reconstruct the landscapes inhabited by these communities, which intersected at cathedrals and minsters and other less formal meeting-places. Most such communities were engaged in the construction of hierarchies, and Sargent assigns spiritual lordship a dominant role in this. Tracing the interconnections of these communities, he focuses on the development of the Church of Lichfield, an extensive episcopal community situated within a dynamic mesh of institutions and groups within and beyond the diocese, from the royal court to the smallest township. The regional elite combined spiritual and secular forms of lordship to advance and entrench their mutual interests, and the entanglement of royal and episcopal governance is one of the key focuses of Andrew Sargent's outstanding new research. How the bishops shaped and promoted spiritual discourse to establish their own authority within society is key. This is traced through the meagre textual sources, which hint at the bishops' involvement in the wider flow of ecclesiastical politics in Britain, and through the archaeological and landscape evidence for churches and minsters held not only by bishops, but also by kings and aristocrats within the diocese. Saints' cults offer a particularly effective medium through which to study these developments: St Chad, the Mercian bishop who established the see at Lichfield, became an influential spiritual patron for subsequent bishops of the diocese, but other lesser known saints also focused c

Dr David Dymond is a Vice President of the British Association for Local History and of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History, President of the Suffolk Records Society, and an honorary fellow of the University of East Anglia. The author of several valued books about the practice of local history, his contribution to the study of local history generally, and in his adopted county of Suffolk in particular, has been immensely influential. The essays in this Festschrift are offered as a token of esteem and affection by colleagues, friends, and students of David. They consist of new research on aspects of local history from the medieval period to the twentieth century, with a particular focus on Eastern England. Taken together, they illustrate David's philosophy of local history (that it should be wide ranging, inclusive, integrating, and interdisciplinary'). These essays, in turn, aim to reflect the values that have always characterised David's approach: a focus on primary sources meticulously interrogated and a concern to avoid the pitfalls of parochialism by remaining sensitive to the wider influences upon communities. The very varied contributions to this collection aptly reflect the breadth and depth of David Dymond's own scholarship whilst offering a rich choice of material to anyone with an interest in local history.