THE LOCAL HISTORIAN • ISSN 00245585 • Volume 42 • Number 2 • May 2012 •

CONTENTS Themes in local history The local history of British sport: approaches, sources and methods MIKE HUGGINS

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Built to last? The rise and fall of the church house JOANNA MATTINGLY

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Holiday plotlands and caravans in the Tendering district of Essex 1918-2010 SEAN O’DELL

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Country carriers revisited BARRIE TRINDER

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Review article: publications by record and special interest societies VARIOUS CONTRIBUTORS

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Review article: new directions in local history since Hoskins MICHAEL WINSTANLEY

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Reviews round-up EVELYN LORD

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Reviews

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VCH Somerset vol.10 Castle Cary and the Brue-Cary watershed (ed Siraut)

Alan Crosby

The keelmen of Tyneside 1600-1830 (Fewster) Victorian Ironopolis: Middlesbrough and regional industrialisation (Yasumoto)

Win Stokes

Early religious reformers in the Bristol region (Bettey)

Roger Ottewill

Yorkshire’s forgotten fenlands (Rotherham)

John S. Lee

An archaeological study of Anglo-Saxon Stafford (Carver)

Andrew Sargent

The people of Cirencester 1117-1643 (Rollison)

Paul Anderton

The church dedications and saints’ culture of medieval Essex (Cooper)

Nicholas Orme

New publications in local history

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The local history of British sport: approaches, sources and methods MIKE HUGGINS There are still relatively few good-quality local histories of British sporting life. This is surprising, given that sport can (and should) be the stuff of serious history, and there are powerful rationales to encourage more work. Modern sport is a global phenomenon, a multi-billion pound industry, and most historians accept that for a number of modern competitive sports and games Britain played ‘an undoubted role as an originator, leader and teacher’ in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. It took the lead in introducing new models of sport, and organising, regulating and standardising them,1 and shaped the modern sporting world. Sport has long been a mainstream British cultural interest, probably the single most significant leisure activity if playing, watching events live or on TV, and betting are taken into account, and it has long been a major source of employment. The enjoyment, excitement, adrenaline rush and community involvement are all appealing, and its history ensures that its social and cultural forms and impacts vary from place to place and between sports. Yet the British have been relatively slow to develop scholarly studies of local sport, and to see local archival material as worthy of preservation. This is in contrast with France where, despite the cultural uniformity the state tried to impose, there was early scholarly interest in regional diversity, regional archives retained local records of sport, and there are now many major local studies at university level.2 In Australia an article on sport in local history appeared in a collection of ideas for local history over 25 years ago.3 Academic British local historians were somewhat slower, perhaps partly because of the huge number of books published every year on local players and sports clubs. The significance of sport was underplayed in The Amateur Historian, and recognition in local history textbooks of the need to research, analyse and celebrate sport is even now relatively thin. Alan Rogers, in his Approaches to Local History (Longman, 1977) covered leisure and cultural provision, but hardly mentioned sport. W.B. Stephens, Sources for English Local History (Cambridge UP, 1981) and David Iredale and John Barrett, Discovering Local History (Shire Books, 2003) also overlooked the topic. Even the monumental book edited by David Hey, Oxford Companion to Family and Local History (Oxford UP, 2010) has only a brief entry. The relevance of sport has only recently become apparent in the world of local history, diffusing outwards from the outpouring of specialist academic work. Historically-informed scholarship, transformed by new approaches, has encouraged a more sophisticated approach to the subject. Sports history, though a relatively new field of academic enquiry, is now developing a substantial and rapidly-expanding research literature and global impact, addressing important debates and questions and making significant contributions to social and cultural history. Specialised academic journals on the history of sport have emerged, and the subject has attracted some major scholars. Internationally, organisations such as the British Society of Sports History, the International Committee for the History of Physical Education 90

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and Sport, and the European Committee for Sport History hold conferences, publish proceedings, and maintain specialised academic journals, where the standard of the best work is high. Here, as elsewhere, there are debates about the appropriateness and reliability of particular approaches, a useful tension between strongly empirical methods, more theoretical perspectives and post-modernism, and an increased recognition of the need to be more reflexive.4 Much of the work has considered sport from a national perspective, meaning that even in 2006 it could be claimed that this tended to obscure ‘the rich and varied local histories’ of sport.5 This paper provides a commentary on the relationship between this relatively recent area of research and the discipline of local history. It begins by trying to convey some sense of the existing corpus of research, some major themes or research strands within the sub-discipline, and some key questions and debates that have been explored. These include problems of chronology, the challenging of sporting myths, the discussion of class and gender, and regional variation. It then moves on to an indicative selection of appropriate reading, and some useful sources which can be used for studying the local history of sport.

The existing corpus of research In recent years, ‘localized studies of sport have made up an important part of British sports historiography’.6 As with family history, most have their roots in social history though coverage has spread to include economic, political and cultural dimensions, and explored the interactions of community type, class and status variation, change and continuity. Local studies can play a key role in shedding light on the national history of sport, testing the tentative generalisations and broader research narratives of nationally-focused historians, challenging over-simple views and revealing similarities and differences between towns and regions. Studies test the extent to which broader conclusions apply to a specific locality, though it must be emphasised that a single local study cannot on its own be used to be the basis of a wider generalisation. Perhaps the classic example of how a local study can shed much light on issues elsewhere is Jeff Hill’s brilliantly insightful analysis of the collective cultural meanings of the rituals surrounding Wembley’s Cup Final (including the journey there, the match itself, and the welcoming home of the team) and the ways in which these annual experiences express local, regional and national identities.7 As well as contributing to broader histories of sport, such work also contributes to local history. Ten years ago Martin Johnes argued in this journal, in a case study of Mid Rhondda Football Club between 1912 and 1928, that a scholarly and informed approach to sport, where standards of research, scholarship and analysis are high, ‘sheds light on daily life in communities, the joys and tribulations of their inhabitants and the local impact of wider events and agencies’, such as periods of unemployment. A local study of sport, carefully set in its wider context, enables us better to understand community leisure life, and provides an antidote to top-down accounts. Johnes further argued that such local studies matter because the obscure is more representative than the famous, and that more local studies are really necessary.8 Ian Nannested suggests that a good study of a local sporting theme, like any local history, involves ‘answering questions, analysing the evidence and placing events within a wider context’, so reading general works on the history of an area and existing published material on local sport, alongside broader studies, will help to identify questions and gaps. There are increasing numbers of serious amateur historians of sport, carrying out detailed case studies and placing their work in the

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context of wider sporting developments, and national and regional social, economic, political and cultural change. So the history of local sport, if written sensitively, is not self-contained, but does have much to say more generally. It is the raw material upon which writers of national histories of sport must in part rely. In recent years sports historians have worked hard to establish the importance of place and community in shaping sporting life, but no commercial publisher has yet published a collection of essays on local sport, and there is still heavy concentration on the past two centuries, to the neglect of earlier periods. The national chronology of sporting change is still a matter for debate, made more complex because different sports have their own internal chronologies and all sports were affected by urban and rural, regional, social class and gender dimensions. Any general guide must at best be tentative. Peter Borsay has suggested that during the last five centuries sport and leisure have gone through a number of phases.9 He postulates a post-Reformation period from circa 1530 to 1660, during which popular leisure became more contested, followed by a post-Restoration phase from 1660 to the 1780s when attacks became fewer and, during the Enlightenment, sports such as racing or boxing became more commercialised as it was realised that money could be earned through sport. Thereafter, as the Industrial Revolution developed, some sports such as bear-baiting, cock-fighting or older forms of football came under attack (or simply became less popular) while others, often associated with betting and status, such as cricket, pedestrianism, horseracing or coursing grew in popularity. There is still debate about the strength and effects of such attacks, and the exact timing of any ‘sporting revolution’ after the mid-nineteenth century when many ‘new’ sports emerged (including soccer, rugby union and league, golf, tennis, and polo). People were increasingly willing and able to pay to attend, leading to the widespread enclosure of sports grounds. Sport continued to expand after the First World War though, as Peter Bailey has remarked, largely ‘in reflection and extension of pre-war patterns’, with new sports such as greyhound racing, speedway or ice hockey being introduced.10 The period since the late-1950s has seen the ever-increased commercialisation, globalisation and internationalisation of sport. Social class in its major manifestations, and the ways in which sport could be used as a form of cultural capital and play a part in identity, are the themes that have produced the most innovative and interesting work by sports historians. More interest has been shown in working-class sporting life, and working-class agency in the shaping of modern sport, than in upper and middle class British sport,11 but in recent years the shortcomings of class as a main tool of analysis have become more apparent. Greater attention has therefore been paid to culture and various forms of identity, and to language and discourse, in uncovering the actual experience of sport in the past. Sport has not merely reflected class divides, and cultural, social and economic forces, but has impacted upon and interacted with them, helping to shape and fashion them in turn. It might be a positive force for solidarity, regional and local affiliations or friendship, but could also generate strong rivalries, whether personal, local or between towns. Sport at times became a focus for class conflict, while different sports manifested very diverse participation and spectatorship levels and social involvement. Polo and yacht-racing emphasised social exclusivity and status, while golf attracted those aspiring to middle-class lifestyles. Some sports initially replicated social order, by allocating different roles to different classes—in the nineteenth century county cricket bowlers were often working-class professionals, the batsmen more likely to be rich amateurs. Other sports such as quoits, whippet racing, boxing

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or wrestling were largely working class. But quite often sports could involve all classes, sometimes mixed in complex ways or for different purposes and reasons. Many among the middle and upper classes espoused the rhetoric of ‘amateurism’, as did some workers, at least publicly, until relatively recently, but in practice there were very different degrees of amateurism, and clear differences of view within as well as between the classes. In some sports, such as horseracing, support or opposition cut across simplistic class lines, as was also the case with attitudes to professionalism and financial rewards in sports like rugby and soccer. Beliefs in hardness, effort and luck supposedly characterised working-class sports, but could sometimes be found elsewhere. Sport also reflected contemporary society, being at certain times and places a focus for religious division, and a vehicle for racism or prejudiced assumptions about ethnicity. Analysis of these phenomena has contributed much to wider debates about the complexity of class attitudes to leisure, and to class identities more broadly. Women’s sport is notably under-researched. Many basic questions have still to be addressed about the sorts of sport considered acceptable for women to play in particular places at different times, and the extent to which they were accepted or rejected as members or associate club members. This deficiency is now being remedied, though there is little on topics such as the sporting life of upper-class women or the early stages of women’s professional sport.12 Attitudes to women and sport have changed over time, as the shifting perspectives of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography illustrate. Its nineteenth-century editors included only 153 sporting individuals, almost all male and usually involved in field sports, boxing or horse racing (not a single soccer player), and clearly saw sport as superficial or trivial. The recent Dictionary demonstrates the now far greater recognition of sport’s importance, and the way it links to class, ethnicity and gender: it includes sporting women ranging from the lacrosse player Margaret Boyd (1913-1933) to the golfer Joyce Wethered (1901-1997). Local studies of sport have also reflected a growing interest in cultural heritage. Where we play and watch sport matters, and contributes to cultural memory. Sports buildings from football stadia and swimming baths to playing fields, golf courses and bowling-greens form a significant part of the historic landscape, well captured in English Heritage’s excellent Played in Britain series, which has explored the landscape and architectural heritage of sport in cities such as Birmingham, Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool, and Newcastle.13 Major sporting sites of the present and the past have their individual histories, from Archie Leitch’s many football stadiums to the army shooting range at Bisley (where the majority of the 1908 Olympic shooting took place) or Manchester’s Victoria Baths which won the first BBC Restoration programme. The MCC museum at Lords, which claims to be ‘the world’s oldest sporting museum’, Wimbledon’s Lawn Tennis Museum, Manchester United’s museum featuring trophies and ‘men of legend’, the Scottish Football Museum and Twickenham’s World Rugby Museum (‘the finest collection of rugby memorabilia in the world’) are just five examples of the recent emphasis on sporting heritage.14 Sports and other museums may hold fascinating archival material: books, paintings and sculpture, film and video, photographs, postcards, negatives and slides, posters and advertisements, cartoons and cigarette cards, trophies and medals, badges and coins, all shedding light on sport and its multiple meanings. Some museums are interactive, contextualising present sports by offering more democratised interpretations of the past, rather than simply archiving and displaying artefacts. Historians of local sport can contribute much to this process.

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Myth and identity One of the dangers of heritage in sports history is that it can perpetuate powerful myths. Much popular writing has a nostalgic, ‘golden age’ feeling, of local interest and value but with little sense of changing context and consequently of little wider use. Some authors readily accept dominant myths about a particular sport long after these have been debunked by scholars—examples include the still widely-accepted story, based on the flimsiest of much later evidence, that in 1823 a young Rugby schoolboy, William Webb Ellis, picked up the ball and created the game of rugby, or that 1863 was the date when modern soccer first began. Martin Polley has argued that a sport’s origins are linked to ‘local and regional issues, and to the power relationships of a game’s promoters, rather than any moment of invention’, and that popular works tend to draw on ‘ahistorical and mythologised invocations of the past’, such as over-simplistic and erroneous beliefs that ‘amateur’ players never took money for sport, or that sport was free of politics in the past.15 Some popular local sport histories draw largely on nineteenth and twentieth century works and newspaper reports, seemingly unaware that these were often written by those personally involved in the events described. This might appear to lend credibility to the source, but often such accounts involve personal bias, omission or distortion of key events, and the assembly of supposed facts to legitimate and justify actions and bring comfort to the sport in the face of disagreement, opposition and competition from other sports, rival clubs, organisations or individuals. The way in which reporting, playing and administration might overlap is clearly illustrated by the life of John Bentley, who began playing for Turton Football Club (Lancashire) in 1878 and started sending in match reports to local newspapers the following year. He became secretary and treasurer of the club, and in 1885 secretary to Bolton Wanderers. In 1886 he also became assistant editor of the Athletic News and later its editor, as well as writing for national papers such as the Daily Express. When the Football League was formed he became a committee member, and in 1894 its president, also playing a role in the Football Association, all the time continuing his work as a journalist. His reports must therefore be read carefully with an awareness of his other roles, and not taken at face value.16 Even published figures for match attendances, which supposedly demonstrate changes in support, are fraught with problems. Before the advent of turnstiles they were often highly inaccurate estimates, which varied from reporter to reporter. Later, they sometimes only recorded those who paid on the day, omitting season ticket holders. Complementary tickets, under-recording by clubs to siphon off money for illegal payments or extra profit, or over-recording to increase status further complicate the picture, while in some sports women spectators were sometimes allowed in free. Attendances often dropped substantially during periods of depression, though some clubs reduced entry charges for the unemployed to maintain crowd size if possible. So the supposed ‘facts’ are very often mere opinion, contentious and constructed, even before being filtered through an author’s interpretative lens. Many modern popular histories, relying over-much on such apparently persuasive material, perpetuate as fact what was really special pleading or distorted interpretation. As noted already, the local history of sport may demonstrate the importance of regional and local identities which sport helped to shape and sustain. As Alan Metcalfe has pointed out, such work can ‘call into question the very idea of an “English” sports history’, not least since there was in the past an over-emphasis on

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sports centred on London.17 For example, recent studies of Sheffield football in the 1850s and 1860s have shown that the London-based Football Association was not the only early centre of English soccer. The recognition that the Sheffield area played an important role in the new game’s development, and in the emergence of semiprofessionalism, has prompted debate about the need to reassess soccer’s early history.18 Rob Lewis has shown how in East Lancashire the origins and development of professional soccer in the 1870s and 1880s were centred round the cotton towns of Blackburn, Bolton and Darwen, where clubs recruited skilled Scottish players, found them jobs, and poached players from each other. These developments played a key part in the legalisation of soccer professionalism and the creation of the Football League.19 The work demonstrated the importance of imported professionals to local sides in competitive modern spectator sport, and showed that while some spectators bemoaned the lack of local men in the side, most always placed success for the town on the field of play above the need for a side of locally-born players. In Scotland, similar work on the early stages of modern soccer has been equally stimulating.20 In-depth analysis of regional and local variations in the popularity of types of sport watched, and of related differential participation rates, is still relatively unusual. Though there was increased homogeneity in the twentieth century, with the spread of modern sports such as golf, rugby or soccer, there had previously been significant differences between regions. Bull-baiting, for example, survived longer in the Black Country than elsewhere. There were very different forms of wrestling, with different rules, in different parts of England. Cumberland and Westmorland ‘back-hold’ wrestling survived in those counties and extended to parts of Northumberland, Durham, the Borders and Lancashire. But much of Lancashire had a quite different ‘catch-as-catch can’ freestyle variant with floor work. Devon had a wrestling style in which contestants wore jackets on which all holds were taken, with points awarded for partial ‘pins’ to the ground while a ‘back’ was a winning throw. In Cornwall they wrestled wearing clogs and kicking was allowed. In parts of Ireland collar and elbow holds were used. If we examine the growing appeal of modern professional soccer to the northern working class in the later nineteenth century, similar variations become apparent. Localised forms can be seen in early nineteenth century football games, and when the modern form of soccer began to spread into north-east England it took root in the Tees and Tyne areas somewhat earlier than around the Wear. In Yorkshire, as professional soccer began to develop, Sheffield was an early centre, but the textile districts of West Yorkshire, including the Leeds and Bradford areas where rugby had a stronger hold, took it up strongly only in the twentieth century.21 There was also local variation in the nature of sporting celebrity, and ways in which local pride sometimes focused on a single player who was believed to embody the essence of the perceived character of the locality. Sport in Ireland had unique characteristics, and there the relationship between sport, religion, nationalism and politics was strong. Much Irish work has emphasised the role of the Gaelic Athletic Association, and the role of the GAA clubs within the local community.22 In Scotland the connections between religion, sectarianism and social prejudice have largely focused on Glasgow soccer.23 Racism in sport is now being examined in less simplistic ways, and at the local level racial issues are being deconstructed. Thus Jack Williams, in a study of South Asian cricket clubs in Bolton, shows how far they were fragmented by religion, geography, caste, clan and language.24 There is also more awareness of the way in which key urban institutions helped to shape, and were shaped by, sport. Wray Vamplew and Tony Collins have emphasised

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the importance of the public house, while Jack Williams has explored the connections between Christian churches and cricket.25 The increased role of local authorities and local firms in providing sports facilities between the wars is also receiving more attention.26 Connections between sport and tourism are of growing interest, while the suburbs are becoming recognised as a key location for sociability.27 And what about sport in the countryside, whether of the gentry, farmer or labourer? Research on hunting, coursing, shooting and fishing and other country sports at local level is still developing,28 but there have been a few studies of neglected semi-rural occupational groups such as miners. Alan Metcalfe, in his study of sport and leisure in the mining villages and small towns of south Northumberland, showed how sport gave meaning to community life, to miners and their families, but also expressed or generated inter-community rivalries. He collected, noted, analysed, and sifted material on continuity and change, the modern and traditional forms of sport, and the social and power relations of village life, in a context where mining companies and officials had much power.29

The historiography of sport: what to read Anyone with a real interest in sport is likely to have read some of the many popular works about its past, some written by journalists, others by fans with word-processors. This is a rich and extensive literature on national teams, major urban clubs, and famous sportsmen and sportswomen, though with far less on club officials, spectators, the families of players, the journalists, the directors and shareholders, or the payment of subscriptions, finances, and the constant struggle to remain solvent. David Hunt’s A History of Preston North End Football Clubs: The Power, the Politics and the People (PNE Press, 2000) is one of the exceptions: rather than focusing on the players and results, it has a stronger historical focus on the lives of players, directors, fans and managers, earnings, ground developments and finances. The professional sports of soccer, test and county cricket, rugby, golf and horseracing dominate the publishing market. Fans can enjoy many commercially produced books of ‘illustrated records’, ‘complete’ seasons, ‘complete’ records, and centenaries, as well as ‘statistical’, ‘official’, ‘alternative’, ‘concise’ and ‘oral’ histories, and studies of ‘heroes’ or ‘greats’, alongside works on major competitions, such as the FA Cup. Fans are often expected to read about the club history almost as a form of initiation into the wider community of supporters. Such works convey little sense of wider context, or understanding that in sport many traditions are invented and communities imagined, and their chronologies are often rudimentary. They generally focus on ‘sporting facts’, the ‘what, when, where and who’, and rarely ask the more difficult ‘how and why’ questions. But even recent academic studies have focused more on popular or prestigious sports, institutions, promoters and performers, especially soccer, cricket and rugby and, as Neil Tranter has argued, this has led to the neglect of ‘the less famous and more obscure organisations and personalities’.30 Jeffrey Hill points out that ‘the life of the club is one of the untold stories of modern British social history’.31 At the local level, popular studies mirror such approaches, though studies of golf, athletics, speedway and a few other sports sometimes surface, as do more jubilee and commemorative tributes. Many studies are ‘official’ celebratory and uncritical histories, largely intended for supporters, sometimes enthusiastically written and readable, and capturing the pleasure and fun of sport in ways that academic historians often fail to do, at other times providing bland match statistics and uneven

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descriptions, focusing largely on the field of play and leading players. Hill, in his call for more work on the British sports club, suggests that many works’ do not raise the sorts of questions historians should be asking’, such as issues of sociability or social exclusion, or social, cultural and institutional functions and effects.32 Some make effective use of contemporary quotations, though these are often unsourced, but more analytical and critical studies at the local level are still rare. Many lack a more scholarly approach, and are the sporting equivalent of civic booster local histories, aimed at improving public perceptions of the place and its sport, building an urban identity and focusing on positive images. Two major specialist academic journals, the International Journal of the History of Sport (initially called the British Journal of Sports History) and Sport in History (formerly the Sports Historian) are published in Britain.33 At university level the subject has begun to generate textbooks for students doing sports studies courses. Martin Polley’s useful Sports History: A Practical Guide (Palgrave, 2007) included helpful guidance for students doing project work, including a case study of the history of swimming facilities and swimmers in Southampton. It could be read in conjunction with Jeff Hill’s recent Sport in History: An Introduction (Palgrave, 2011) which reviews the historical development of sport through themes such as modernisation, globalisation, identity, gender and the media, all important issues which have interested historians more generally. Britain also has several organisations which publish material focused on a single sport.34 Many clubs have their own historians, and there are also specialist journals for particular sports, including the British-focused Soccer History Magazine, with five or six short essays per issue, first published in 2002. Many issues have a short article on ‘Researching the game’s past’ which usually focuses on a single source and the way it can be exploited. Context and thematic focus are crucial to any serious attempt to write the history of sport. For those who enjoy using bibliographic aids, the prodigious, meticulous and prolific bibliographical compilations of Richard William Cox offer an excellent avenue into the study of sporting history. His systematic approach identifies the most useful types of sources for the historian, he knows their merits and gives guidance as to their use, and his work helps to identify and locate items of particular interest. His book, Sport in Britain: A Bibliography of Historical Publications 1800-1988 (Manchester UP, 1991) provides a really useful list of secondary works. More recent publications include useful lists of published work in the local history of sport (with over 6000 entries) as well as a parallel work on biographical studies of sportsmen and women, whose life histories and moral (or immoral) landscapes sometimes lie at the very heart of public sporting interest.35 Many major sports have their own specialist bibliographical publications which can aid researchers, often with valuable essays, annotations or reviews. Among the better examples are those by Jenkins on rugby, Loder on horseracing, Padwick on cricket, and Seddon on football. All provide useful troves of material for the researcher.36 Recognition of the popularity of sport also comes with the many ‘complete’, ‘ultimate’ and ‘pocket’ encyclopaedias of particular sports, though a few comprehensive and authoritative encyclopaedic overviews of the history and organisation of British sports pick up on aspects neglected by mainstream publishers. Coverage can include organisations, individuals, and key themes such as commercialisation, gender, professionalism, drugs and alcohol, as well as recognising the importance of cultural, economic, political and social aspects, and helping to clarify the historic similarities and differences between sports in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Examples include published works on British sport in general,

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on sports such as football or horseracing and even, for those more interested in countryside rather than urban sport, a very useful collection on traditional British rural sports, though there is still little on the relationship between sport in towns and that in the surrounding countryside.37 Online encyclopaedias are also beginning to emerge.38 There is now a substantial literature on the national history of sport. Such work can provide useful overviews and background and identify potential starting points for researchers embarking on a study. Scotland and Ireland are far less well covered than England and Wales. In terms of general overviews, Richard Holt’s magisterial study is still the standard starting point for work on sport history. His themes include pre-industrial sport, Victorian amateurism, sport and urban society, sport and imperial and national identity, and commercialism and violence.39 Neil Tranter provided a concise summary of the debates within the field in the 1990s, and Martin Johnes a more recent overview.40 Johnes has also provided a succinct and accessible study of sport in Wales from the early nineteenth century to the present, rooted in wide reading, linked to the wider history of Wales, and stressing Welsh identity and the way sport has both expressed it and actively shaped it.41 Overviews of specific periods are now emerging. In terms of the early-modern period, Robert Malcolmson’s arguments for the decline of many forms of sport, such as bull-baiting, cock-fighting or cudgelling, under attack from puritanism and social reformers, growing urbanisation and industrialisation, have come under challenge. His work implied that there was massive disruption of traditional forms of sport as industrialisation took hold, but recent historians have countered with examples of the continuities from the pre-modern to the industrial period, or argued that the transition was far more gradual. Therefore in recent years there has been more interest in popular sports and pastimes in early modern and Georgian England.42 Debates have also continued about the extent of commercialisation.43 The Victorian period has received the most vigorous, detailed and sustained study of its particular sports, but there are surprisingly few overviews, though Croll, Huggins and Birley deserve mention.44 Works of synthesis about the inter-war period are starting to emerge, but this phase still offers enormous scope for further study and analysis. Scholarly attention is also turning to the post-1945 sporting world.45 Britain’s major sports—soccer, rugby and cricket—together with studies of boxing, golf and horse racing, over-dominate the secondary literature. Many others, such as those related to lifestyle and fitness, still await a detailed monograph. In terms of soccer, there has been a major concentration on its late-nineteenth and earlytwentieth century manifestations. Works including studies of England by Tony Mason, Dave Russell, and Matthew Taylor, of Wales by Martin Johnes, and of Ireland by Neil Garnham, all adeptly drew out local peculiarities as well as national significances.46 Matthew Taylor’s The Association Game A History of British Football (Longman, 2007) is particularly accessible, covering as it does the amateur and recreational sides of soccer as well as the professional leagues, and being sensitive to gender and race issues. The history of rugby union and rugby league in England and Wales has been covered by Tony Collins, David Smith and Gareth Williams, who have shown how rugby was largely divided on class lines, though Scottish rugby awaits a full academic study.47 Cricket, as one might expect of an icon of English culture, has been well worked over by academic historians, though the work of Jack Williams on the interwar years is the most useful by far, exploring as it does contemporary images and the relationship with Christianity, gender, sportsmanship, class and commercialisation. He uses Lancashire cricket as his major case study.48

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Among the limited broad coverage of sport at county and regional level, by far the best work is Tom Hunt’s innovative study of the small, reasonably prosperous Irish midlands county of Westmeath, which covers inter alia hunting, polo, cricket, soccer, rugby, hurling, Gaelic football and athletics and the importance of commercialisation.49 Another Irish study, Liam O’Callaghan’s recent study of Munster rugby, centred on Cork and Limerick, examines the internal politics of the game and its cultural meanings in a wider Irish context. An edited collection by Jeff Hill and Jack Williams has explored the way in which sport has expressed and consolidated various perceived senses of identity in northern England, largely focusing on industrial towns, and the conflicting loyalties and assumptions that underpinned identity.50 There is no similarly in-depth southern equivalent, and how far such perceptions of northern identity had any statistical basis is a moot point. There have been a number of city-based studies of sport and leisure, but coverage is patchy. A recent example of the potential of collaborative work by historians is a collection of essays on Manchester, which included an overview of its sport, and detailed papers on topics such as sports journalism, horse racing and betting, bowling, and the impact of the Munich air crash, and discussion of useful sources.51 The north-west has received the bulk of attention, partly because its working class forms of sport were commercialised quite early; north-eastern England has also attracted significant work in recent years.52 In Scotland, Neil Tranter has produced a number of meticulous comprehensive studies of nineteenth-century sports round Stirling, from quoiting to soccer.53 In recent years general urban studies have begun to include chapters on sport. Adrian Smith’s recent study of Coventry, for example, focuses on the middle and later years of the twentieth century and has a chapter on the rarely explored world of work-based sports clubs, as well as one on Coventry rugby, while Hill integrates sport, including league cricket and soccer, into his general history of Nelson in East Lancashire.54

Primary sources Local historians of sport have exploited varied sources, despite their inherent subjectivities, but most of these are scattered and inordinately time-consuming to access and interrogate. They have to be treated very critically, and offer the usual problems of reliability, representation and interpretation. Surviving primary material helps to shape our understandings of past sporting life and these sources were themselves shaped by the priorities and concerns of those who created and read them. Different periods provide different types of evidence and, while the sources are a reflection of the conditions and priorities of the world which produced them, the availability of data helps to determine the questions that historians are best able to examine. Moreover, and perhaps inevitably, the larger clubs, and any sporting activity or institution with a formal legal or statutory basis, are always favoured in the historical record. Newspapers, despite their evident problems, are heavily exploited by researchers attempting to reconstruct the history of local sport. They are sometimes uncritically overused, though they cannot be surveyed quickly. Most central libraries have copies of local newspapers, but to work through even a single year of reports in a weekly newspaper, of just one local sport, will take several hours. In the past, as indeed today, newspapers gave most coverage to those sports which were popularly locally, usually conveying the impression that sport was a male preserve unless there was novelty value in covering women’s events—as in the interwar period when women’s

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football and cricket became more widespread. To a significant extent the local press simultaneously communicated and helped to shape the way local people thought about sport. Match reports were from the perspective of a particular club, not least since, as we have seen, club secretaries themselves often wrote the reports. Directors of larger clubs often used the local paper as a mouthpiece, making the relationship between them and the press problematic and one which could become unbalanced. Looking at coverage in the opposition’s home paper often provides a very different discourse. But the life of a club was far more than the matches played, and the sometimes very full reports of annual and other public and general meetings, letters to the editor on sporting matters, transport and travel arrangements, and descriptions of the various social and money-raising events run by a particular club (or appearances of players in court reports, which are often more detailed than the court records) may be found scattered across the newspaper. Sometimes such reports include statements of accounts from the treasurer, which can be tracked over time.55 By the interwar period local papers were covering local amateur and schoolboy sport and, like the national papers, were becoming more sensational, gossipy and lively in their coverage. Surviving match programmes and fanzines may have useful material, though often they tell the purchaser only what he or she wanted to hear from the club. Material on urban sport can sometimes be found in national newspapers and some, such as the Daily Mirror, Daily Express, Glasgow Herald, Guardian, Observer, Scotsman and Times, now have files that can be searched online. In some counties libraries give access to fully searchable files of nineteenth-century local or regional newspapers such as the Derby Mercury or Lancaster Guardian. The central and increasingly digitised national collection at the British Newspaper Library at Colindale may need to be exploited since it holds runs of the sporting press that are rarely available locally. If dealing with an urban sporting theme, copies of the specialist weekly press can be valuable, offering a different perspective from that of the local press. Bell’s Life in London, for example, published from 1822 to 1886, also had much material from elsewhere and was particularly useful on Lancashire and Midland sport. Initially it covered professional and amateur sport though later, while still including much on horseracing and cricket, moved to a more amateur approach and showed little interest in football or rugby. The Athletic News, published in Manchester from 1875 to 1931, focused particularly on soccer, rugby and cycling and avoided coverage of horseracing. It was especially strong on Lancashire, Yorkshire and Midland sport, but included regional reports from across Britain. By the end of the 1880s, for example, its soccer coverage from the north-east had separate reports from Tyne, Wear and Tees. It enjoyed good links with professional clubs and the various football authorities.56 Archival material from clubs is particularly useful in answering questions about the underlying social history of local sport, and useful sources can often be located using The National Archives ‘Access to Archives’ link, which describes material held in local record offices in England and Wales.57 Increasingly, sports clubs are beginning to make available, usually but not always through local record offices or county archives, various forms of club documentation, though sometimes these are in libraries or even local museums and history centres. The History Centre at Poole in Dorset, for example, contains a very useful collection of records of the Poole Amateur Rowing club dating from 1873 onwards, and good records of Poole Pirates speedway from 1948. A quick overview of the major sports clubs in a town can usually be obtained

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from local trade directories, giving a list of organisations to search for in archive catalogues and indexes. The records of leading cricket, rugby and soccer clubs often include material such as minute books, administrative papers, ledgers, cash books and other financial records, gate receipt books, scorebooks, scouting reports, fixture lists, correspondence and other documents, all of which can be exploited for research purposes.58 Pam Dixon and Neil Garnham, for example, used club minute books together with newspaper reports to explore the conditions of cricket club professionals in Sunderland and Durham.59 Keith Gregson used the comprehensive records of Ashbrooke Sports Club, which had retained its multi-sport profile on its Sunderland site, to tell the story of Sunderland Rugby Football Club.60 There is still much work to be done on Britain’s many middle-class suburban clubs, though a 1993 study of Stanmore Golf Club, in an affluent and leafy suburb or north-west London, showed how use of the minutes of the Club Committee and the Ladies Committee and reports of annual general meetings could shed light on changing social, ethnic and gender attitudes.61 Most sports clubs have always been run by their members, many of them present or former players or keen spectators who paid annual subscriptions. But we often know little about the gender, age, social connections, ethnic mix and occupational background of the membership, officials and staff, or of the economics and politics of the club and its social functions. There is huge potential in the annual reports, minutes, accounts, shareholder lists, membership and financial records, photographs, correspondence, and miscellaneous papers. A random selection of the resources locally available include the records of the Borough of Reigate and District Rifle Club (Surrey History Centre), Huddersfield Otters Amateur Swimming Club (West Yorkshire Archive Club, Kirklees), Bournemouth Gymnasts Association (Dorset History Centre), Bowdon Bowling and Lawn Tennis Club (Trafford Local Studies), Doncaster Hockey Cub (Doncaster Archives Department), and Compton Croquet Club (East Sussex Record Office). Studies of sports clubs have shown that splits and breakaways were not uncommon. Many early football clubs began as cricket clubs which began additionally to play soccer or rugby. Harrier or athletic clubs might also take up the game, while personality splits within a club could lead to another being established. Liverpool FC was founded after a dispute between the predominantly Liberal and Methodist temperance-leaning committee of Everton FC and their president, the Tory brewer John Houlding, who had a very different political, personal and business model for the Anfield ground he had leased. Everton were forced to move to Goodison Park, while Houlding created Liverpool FC.62 More studies of internal club politics would prove fascinating, as would, despite its challenges, historical ethnographies of clubs, rooted in local history. Financial records have been less well explored, though there has been limited work on the changing economics of leading clubs. Vamplew has suggested that they have had ‘peculiar economics’, often in the longer term losing money or breaking even rather than seeking to maximise profit—sporting success, status or simply pleasurable association were prioritised.63 Few scholars have shown interest in a local business study of a club, though there has been recent interest in football’s business archives.64 Club minutes often merely record decisions, not discussion, but material on income and expenditure can be especially illuminating. For example, to learn that car park fees provided a third of Bolton Greyhound Racing Company’s entire revenue as early as 1935 is a salutary reminder that this is not a recent phenomenon.65 However, even where such material survives clubs have often been reluctant to make it available. In

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the past, especially for the more successful clubs, this may have been to conceal illegal payments made to supposedly amateur players, or similar offences. In general sports clubs at any level focus on the present, and keep only more recent documents. Often records were kept at the homes of officials, and were lost or destroyed on their retirement or death. But where it survives such material can be of real use in providing details of the discussions and debates neglected by, or unheard by, the local press.66 Football records are now particularly well represented in county and local archives. Lancashire Archives, for example, now has not only the board and committee minutes and associated papers of the English Football League from 1888, but also long runs of records of county organisations such as the Lancashire Football Association and the Lancashire Football Combination. The records of a few major soccer clubs also survive. Liverpool Record Office holds interesting twentieth-century material relating to Everton Football club, including contracts and memorabilia. The history of local refereeing, sadly neglected, could be explored using material such as the minute books of North Staffordshire Referees Club, covering the period from 1913 to 2005, now held at Stoke on Trent City Archives. In general, academic historians of sport have paid more attention to the records of national administrative bodies than those of the regions, counties and towns, so the latter offer exciting opportunities for research. Trawling more widely than just club archives can pay dividends. The records of religious organisations often have useful material, especially from the laternineteenth century as they turned to sport to attract young people—an example is the St. Andrew's Sunday School Cricket Club Minutes, 1902-1922 (Manchester Archives and Local Studies). School records such as log books, magazines, photographs and minutes of school sports associations shed light on the sporting activities of pupils and the role of teachers in encouraging them. Local authority records can be a treasure trove—at Redcar, for example, material in the minutes of the Parks Committee, General Purposes Committee, Coatham Enclosure Committee and Advertising Department of the borough council informed a study of sport facilities used by visiting tourists.67 Building plans such as the architects' plans for Turf Moor football ground held with the Burnley borough records at Lancashire Archives are also useful. Company records are useful in studying the most successful clubs, which became more commercial and professionalised, attracting richer investors keen to move to limited liability status. This allowed them to take control away from members and into the hands of shareholders. This aspect of sporting business history can be explored, for those companies still in existence, in Companies House.68 These provide annual returns, with vital details of the names of directors and shareholders, the number of shares held, their address and (until the Second World War) their occupation, which provides some sense of social class. There are also many urban limited liability clubs that failed, and whose data can be accessed through the BT31 file at The National Archives—examples include the Jarrow Cycling, Athletic and Football Ground Company incorporated in 1896, or the Bedminster Cricket and Football Company incorporated in 1895, both reminders that many early commercialised grounds were expected to have multiple sporting functions.69 For the period from 1841 to 1911 the census enumerators’ books can provide rich pickings on individual players and officials of cricket, soccer, rugby and other sports clubs, providing interesting details of background, age, address and main occupation (or family origin drawing on parental data). Press lists of those in the grandstand make it possible to discover who played, who was paid, who served or sometimes

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even who watched. We can often study particular groups, such as those describing themselves as ‘professional’ cricketers or footballers, and at the local level the players for specific teams can often be analysed in detail. This is more difficult where a player has a common name, or there were transcription errors by the enumerator, or the newspaper report gives a nickname rather than a ‘proper’ name. In my own studies of Teesside players in the early 1880s, I could not find some players anywhere in the local census returns. Eventually I discovered that they lived up to twenty miles away from the ground, and even at this early date were clearly prepared to travel a long distance by rail to play for a better ‘town’ club, rather than their local team. Visual material is sometimes available. Photographs can be a useful source since they can include players, grounds and crowds, and although often carefully posed by photographers, and manipulated at various stages of production and reproduction, they are suggestive of issues such as the class and gender mix of the period, though it is important to remember that their readings change over time. Very occasionally local sports appear on surviving film, such as the early-twentieth century Mitchell and Kenyon material, which includes much evidence of north-west England sporting life.70 Newsreel content is also a possibility, though it tended to have a southern England bias, and can be searched on line.71 For the more recent past, oral history (rather than the ghost-written autobiographies of players, concealing far more than they reveal) provides the best insight into playing cultures, and the fun, banter, rivalry and tension of the changing room. With careful questioning it can shed light on attitudes and feelings, values and practices. Oral historians began turning to sport in the 1990s, as a special edition of Oral History illustrated.72 Interviews with spectators can pick up that sense of the packed crowd, the reek of cigarettes, urine, dirt and sweat, the excitement and suffering, shouts and songs, the passion, devotion and allegiance to a club and locality, attitudes to directors and players, that texts cannot provide.73

Conclusion Sport is inescapable. It permeates society and for many of the population, in the past mainly male, but now increasingly also female, sport has been a consuming passion. It is conspicuously woven into the fabric of everyday local life, leisure and culture. A look at any local newspaper, past or present, shows substantial coverage of sport, clear evidence of the way in which it meets community needs. Local sport and its history matter to people. Any comprehensive assessment of British cultural life has to pay regard to sport and its social significance. And like local newspapers, record offices are full of the raw material of sport history. There is already a huge corpus of secondary work on the subject, but that of real quality is still relatively rare. Sports fans and club officials, in their understandable keenness to boost their club, often provide uncritical, uncontextualised and over-narrow treatments, rather than exploiting a more impressive array of sources and setting their work in a wider social and cultural context. Sport history deserves better. Most local history journals rarely address sport. By exploiting the sources more creatively and thoughtfully, and questioning more effectively, local historians can make invaluable contributions to a more rounded understanding of the complex role played by sport, individual sports, clubs, players and supporters in the life of British communities, and to our sporting heritage. Pride in the achievements of ‘our’ club, ‘our’ team, ‘our’ players is a natural part of support, but better local studies would allow us to compare and contrast local

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experiences in different communities in the past far more effectively, helping to avoid the sometimes narrow parochialism of current work.

Acknowledgements The author would like to acknowledge his debt to many other historians of sport, but most especially Tony Collins, Richard Cox, Richard Holt, Martin Johnes, Dave Russell, Matt Taylor, John Walton and Wray Vamplew, who all offered suggestions for key texts at various times in discussion. NOTES AND REFERENCES 1

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Peter J Beck, ‘Leisure and sport in Britain, 1900-1939’, in Chris Wrigley (ed) A companion to early twentieth century Britain (Blackwell, 2003) 454 Paul Dietschy and Richard Holt, ‘Sports history in France and Britain: national agendas and European perspectives’, Journal of Sport History [JSH] vol.37 no.1 (2010) 83-98 See Wray Vamplew, ‘Time to get a Guernsey: sport in local history’, in Brian Dickey (ed), Ideas for local history (Adelaide UP, 1985) 1-4 Doug Booth, The field: truth and fiction in sport history (Routledge, 2006) Alan Metcalfe, Leisure and recreation in a Victorian mining community (Routledge, 2006) 163 Martin Johnes, ‘Great Britain’ in S.W. Pope and John Nauright (eds), Routledge companion to sports history (Routledge, 2009) 450 Jeff Hill, ‘Rites of Spring: cup finals and community in the North of England’, in Jeff Hill and Jack Williams (eds), Sport and identity in the North of England (Keele UP, 1996) 85-112 Martin Johnes, ‘Mushrooms, scandals and bankruptcy: the short life of Mid Rhondda Football Club’, The Local Historian [TLH] vol.32 no.1 (2002) 41 Peter Borsay, A history of leisure (Palgrave McMillan, 2006) 12-16, 220 Peter Bailey, ‘The politics and poetics of modern British leisure’, Rethinking History vol.3 no.2 (1999) 135 See for example John Goulstone, ‘The working class origins of modern football’, International Journal of the History of Sport [IJHS] no.17 (2000) 135-43. For the middle classes and sport see John Lowerson, Sport and the English middle classes 1870-1914 (Manchester UP, 1995). For the upper classes see the special collection ‘The British upper classes and sport’, in Sport in History [SIH] vol.28 no.3 (2008). Useful examples include Peter J. Davies, ‘Bowling maidens over: 1931 and the beginnings of women’s cricket in a Yorkshire town’, SIH vol.28 no.2 (2008) 280-298 and Sarah Cowell, ‘Working class women and rounders in interwar Bolton’, North-West Labour History no.24 (2000) 15-29; see also Carol Osborne and Fiona Skillen (eds),

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‘Women and Sport’, SIH vol.20 no.2 (2010). See for example, Simon Inglis, Played in Manchester (English Heritage, 2004) Wray Vamplew, ‘Facts and artefacts: sports historians and sports museums’, JSH vol.25 no.1 (1998) 268-282; Kevin Moore, ‘Sports heritage and the re-imaged city; the National Football Museum, Preston’, International Journal of Cultural Policy vol.14 no.4 (2008) 445-461 Martin Polley, Moving the goalposts: a history of sport and society since 1945 (Routledge 1998) 4; Martin Polley, ‘History and sport’, in Barry Houlihan (ed), Sport and society: a student introduction (Sage, 2003) 59 For another example see Steve Tate, ‘James Catton, ‘Tityrus’ of the Athletic News (18601936): a biographical sketch’, SIH vol.25 no.1 (2005) 98-115. Alan Metcalfe, ‘Foreword’, in Richard William Cox, British sport: a bibliography to 2000: vol.2 Local histories (Frank Cass, 2002) ix See, for example, Adrian Harvey, ‘An epoch in the annals of national sport: football in Sheffield and the creation of modern rugby and soccer’, IJHS vol.18 no.4 (2001) 53-87 Rob Lewis, ‘The genesis of professional football in Bolton, Blackburn and Darwen 1878-85’, IJHS vol.14 no.1 (1997) 21-54 John Hutchinson, ‘Sport, education and philanthropy in 19th century Edinburgh: the emergence of modern forms of football’, SIH vol.28 no.4 (2008) 547-565 A.J. Arnold, ‘The belated entry of professional soccer into the West Riding textile district of northern England: commercial imperatives and problems’, IJHS no.6 (1989) 320 See for example Mike Cronin, Sport and nationalism in Ireland: Gaelic games, soccer and Irish identity since 1884 (Four Courts Press, 1999) Andrew Davies, ‘Football and sectarianism in Glasgow during the 1920s and 1930s’, Irish Historical Studies vol.36 no.138 (2006) 200-219; Bill Murray, The Old Firm: sectarianism, sport and society in Scotland (John Donald, 2000) Jack Williams, ‘South Asians and cricket in Bolton’, The Sports Historian [TSH] no.14 (1994) 56-65 Tony Collins and Wray Vamplew, Mud, Sweat

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and Beers: a cultural history of sport and alcohol (Berg, 2002); Jack Williams, ‘Cricket and Christianity in Lancashire, 1900-1939’, TLH vol.25 no.2 (1995) 95-108 David Bowker, ‘Parks and baths: sport, recreation and municipal government in Ashton under Lyne between the wars’, in Richard Holt (ed), Sport and the working class in modern Britain (Manchester UP, 1991) 84-100; Catriona Parratt, ‘The making of the healthy and happy home: recreation, education and the production of working-class womanhood at the Rowntree Cocoa Works, York, c.18981914’, in Hill and Williams (eds) Sport and identity in the North of England, 53-84; Simon Phillips, 'Fellowship in recreation, fellowship in ideals: sport, leisure and culture at Boots Pure Drug Company, Nottingham c.18831945’, Midland History vol.29 no.1 (2004) 107123 Alistair J. Durie, ‘The development of the Scottish coastal resorts in the Central Lowlands c.1770-1880: from Gulf Stream to golf stream’, TLH vol.24 no.4 (1994) 204-216; Cliff O’Neill, ‘Windermere in the 1920s’, TLH vol.24 no.4 (1994) 217-224; Richard Holt, ‘Golf and the English suburb: class and gender in an English club c. 1890-c.1960’, TSH vol.18 no.1 (1998) 76-89 Alan Fletcher, ‘Game laws in the late nineteenth century: a case study from Clwyd’, TLH vol.26 no.3 (1996) 142-154; R.W. Hoyle (ed), Our hunting fathers: field sports in England after 1850 (Carnegie, 2007) Metcalfe, Leisure and Recreation; see also David Boucher, Steel, Skill and Survival: Rugby in Ebbw Vale and the Valleys 1870-1953 (Dinefwr Press, 2000). Neil Tranter, Sport, economy and society in Britain, 1750-1914 (Cambridge UP, 1998) 96 Jeffrey Hill, Sport, leisure and culture in twentieth century Britain (Palgrave, 2002) 144 ibid., 144 The sports library of the LA84 Foundation, based at Los Angeles, holds mostly American material but provides free full-text access to its digital documents including back copies of Sport in History, which mainly contains British material including a number of local studies. For its digital archive see http://www.la84foundation.org/ Examples include the Society of Archer Antiquaries, formed in 1956 to study the history of archery; the Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians, founded in 1973; the Association of Football Statisticians, founded in 1979; and the more recent Rugby History Society. Cox, British Sport … Local histories; Cox, British Sport: a bibliography to 2000 vol.3: bibliographical studies of British sportsmen, women and animals (Frank Cass, 2003) Peter Seddon, A football compendium: an expert guide to the books, film and music of Association Football (British Library, 1999); John Weir, Scottish football: a sourcebook (Steward Davison,

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1996); E.W. [Tim] Padwick, Bibliography of cricket (Library Association, 1977) [a second volume was issued by Stephen Eley and Peter Griffiths in 1991]; Eileen P. Loder, Bibliography of the history and organisation of horse racing and thoroughbred breeding in Britain and Ireland (J.A. Allen, 1978); John Jenkins, A rugby compendium: an authoritative guide to the literature of Rugby Union Football (British Library, 1998) Richard Cox, Grant Jarvie, Wray Vamplew (eds), Encyclopedia of British sport (ABC-CLIO Ltd, 2000); Richard William Cox, Dave Russell, Wray Vamplew (eds), Encylopaedia of British football (Routledge, 2002); Joyce Kay, Wray Vamplew, Richard Cox, Encyclopedia of British horse racing (Routledge, 2004); Tony Collins, John Martin and Wray Vamplew (eds), Encyclopedia of traditional British rural sports (Routledge, 2005) See for example, http://www.spartacus. schoolnet.co.uk/ENCfootball.htm , an organic online encyclopaedia project with everincreasing numbers of entries. Richard Holt, Sport and the British (Clarendon Press, 1989); Johnes, 'Great Britain', 444-460; see also Dennis Brailsford, British sport: a social history (Lutterworth Press, 1992) Tranter, Sport, Economy and Society Martin Johnes, A history of sport in Wales (University of Wales Press, 2005) Robert W. Malcolmson, Popular recreations and English society 1700-1850 (Cambridge UP, 1979); John Burnett, Riot, revelry and rout: sport in Lowland Scotland before 1860 (Tuckwell, 2000); Dennis Brailsford, Sport and society from Elizabeth to Anne (Routledge, 2010); Dennis Brailsford, A taste for diversions: Sport in Georgian England (Lutterworth Press, 1999); Emma Griffin, England’s revelry: a history of popular sports and recreations, 1660-1800 (Oxford UP, 2005) Adrian Harvey, The beginnings of a commercial sporting culture in Britain, 1793-1850 (Ashgate, 2004) Andy Croll, ‘Popular leisure and sport’, in Chris Williams (ed), A companion to nineteenth century Britain (Blackwell, 2004) 396-411; Mike Huggins, The Victorians and sport (Hambledon, 2004); Derek Birley, Sport and the making of Britain (Manchester UP, 1993); Derek Birley, Land of Sport and Glory: sport and British society 1887-1910 (Manchester UP, 1995) Mike Huggins and Jack Williams, Sport and the English 1918-1939 (Routledge, 2006); Stephen G. Jones, Workers at Play: a social and economic history of leisure (Routledge, 1986); Polley, Moving the Goalposts; Tony Mason and Richard Holt, Sport in Britain 1945-2000 (Blackwell, 2000); Adrian Smith and Dilwyn Porter (eds), Amateur and professional in post-war British sport (Frank Cass, 2000) Antony Mason, Association Football and English society 1863-1915 (Harvester, 1980); Dave Russell, Football and the English (Carnegie, 1997); Matthew Taylor, The Leaguers: the making of professional football in England (Liverpool UP,

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THE LOCAL HISTORIAN/MAY 2012 2005); Martin Johnes, Soccer and society: South Wales 1900-1939 (University of Wales Press, 2002); Neil Garnham, Association Football and society in pre-partition Ireland (Ulster Historical Association, 2004) Tony Collins, Rugby’s Great Split: class culture and the origins of Rugby League Football (Frank Cass, 1998); Tony Collins, Rugby League in twentieth century Britain (Routledge, 2007); Tony Collins, A social history of English Rugby Union (Routledge, 2009); David Smith and Gareth Williams, Fields of praise: official history of the Welsh Rugby Union, 1881-1981 (University of Wales Press, 1980) Jack Williams, Cricket and England; a cultural and social history of the interwar years (Routledge, 1999); Andrew Hignell, Cricket in Wales; an illustrated history (University of Wales Press, 2008); Derek Birley, A social history of English cricket (Aurum, 1999) Tom Hunt, Sport in Victorian Ireland: the case of Westmeath (Cork UP, 2007); for other useful examples see Gareth Williams, ‘Sport and Society in Glamorgan’, in his 1905 and all that: essays on sport and Welsh society (Gomer, 1991); Mike Huggins, ‘Sport and Identity in Cumbria 1800-1960’, in Cumberland and Westmorland Archaeological and Antiquarian Society Transactions 3rd ser vol.11 (2011) 81-96 Hill and Williams, Sport and identity Dave Russell (ed), ‘Sport in Manchester’, Manchester Region History Review vol.20 (2009) Mike Huggins, 'Leisure and Sport in Middlesbrough 1830-1914', in A.J. Pollard (ed), Middlesbrough: Town and community 1830-1914 (Frank Sutton, 1996); Richard Holt and Ray Physick, ‘Sport on Tyneside’, in Robert Colls and Bill Lancaster (eds), Newcastle: a modern history (Phillimore, 2001) ch.9; Neil Garnham, ‘Patronage, politics and the modern system of leisure in Northern England: the case of Alnwick’s Shrove Tuesday Football Match’, English Historical Review vol.117 (2002) 12281246; Harvey Taylor, ‘Sporting Heroes’, in Bill Lancaster and Robert Colls, Geordies: roots of regionalism (Northumberland UP, 2006) 115-132 e.g. Neil Tranter, ‘The social and occupational structure of organised sport in central Scotland 1820-1900’, IJHS, vol.4 no.3 (1987) 301-14 Adrian Smith, City of Coventry (IB Tauris, 2006); Jeff Hill, Nelson: politics, economy, community (Keele/Edinburgh UP, 1997) Joyce Kay, ‘The archive, the press and Victorian football: the case of the Glasgow Charity Cup’, SIH vol.29 no.4 (2009) 577-600 For discussion of media coverage of Victorian sport see Huggins, The Victorians and Sport,

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141-166; back copies of the Athletic News can be consulted at Manchester Central Library as well as at Colindale. www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/a2a/ A useful online example is the documents made available by Everton Football Club at www.evertoncollection.org.uk Pam Dixon and Neil Garnham, ‘Cricket club professionals in Victorian and Edwardian County Durham’, SIH vol.23 no.2 (2003) 94-108 Keith Gregson, One among many: the story of Sunderland Rugby Football Club in its historical context (MX Publishing, 2011) Richard Holt, Stanmore Golf Club, 1893-1993: a social history (Stanmore Golf Club, 1993) David Kennedy and Michael Collins, ‘Community politics in Liverpool and the governance of professional football in the late nineteenth century’, Historical Journal vol.49 no.3 (2006) 761-788 Wray Vamplew, Pay up and play the game: professional sport in Britain 1875-1914 (Cambridge UP, 1988) See Matt Taylor, ‘Football archives and the historian’, Business Archives vol.78 (1999) 1-12 Liverpool Record Office EKP/5380 (1935 Directors’ reports and accounts, Bolton Greyhound Racing Company Ltd) See for example Charles Korr, West Ham United: the making of a football club (University of Illinois Press, 1987) See Mike Huggins and J.K. Walton, The Teesside seaside between the wars: Redcar and its neighbours 1919-1939 (NEEHI, 2003) www.companieshouse.gov.uk The National Archives BT 31/15584/47298 Jarrow CAFGC; BT 31/15513/44868 Bedminster CFC Vanessa Toulmin 'Vivid and realistic': Edwardian sport on film’, SIH vol.26 no.1 (2006) 124-149 The British University Film and Video Council site has useful newsreel material at http://bufvc.ac.uk/newsonscreen; see also Mike Huggins, ‘And now, something for the ladies’: representations of women’s sport in the newsreels between the wars’, Women’s History Review vol.16 no.5 (2007) 681-700 for an example of their use. Oral History vol.25 no.1 (1997) Useful guidance is provided in Matt Taylor, ‘Researching the game’s past: interviewing footballers: football and oral history’, Soccer History no.11 (2005) 38-40; see also Rogan Taylor and Andrew Ward, Three sides of the Mersey: an oral history of Everton, Liverpool and Tranmere Rovers (Robson Books, 1993) written by two very experienced oral historians of sport.

MIKE HUGGINS is Emeritus Professor of Cultural History at the University of Cumbria. His research interests, expertise and experience lie in the history of British sport, leisure and popular culture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the opening up of a wider range of evidence for their study, including visual and material primary sources.

Built to last? The rise and fall of the church house J O A N N A M A T T I N G LY

On 25 March 1511 Richard Horssale, a free mason of Tetbury in Gloucestershire, agreed to build a church house for the parishioners of the nearby town of Sherston in Wiltshire.1 It was to be 60 feet long and 19 feet wide within the walls, the width being determined by the maximum length of available timber or trees, and two-storeyed with walls 16 feet in height. Horssale agreed to complete the church house by 18 October 1511 (the end of that year’s building season), at which point he would be paid a total of £10 to cover all materials, including scaffolding, and his and his team’s wages. The site chosen at Sherston was not by the church, as might be expected, but in a prominent position on the west side of the wide market street, easily visible from the churchyard (fig.1). Market places were often chosen for public buildings, including church houses, but unusually in this case the site had previously been occupied. An earlier structure, of unknown function, had been destroyed in a major fire in the town shortly before the contract was drawn up. Before building work began, Horssale’s men had to clear the site. Rough stone was found locally for the walling, the chimney breast and the base of the external stair. Limestone had to be quarried and transported from further afield. Carved on site, this better-quality stone was used for a plinth on the show or street side and for a pair of doorways, probably for downstairs. Limestone was also used for eleven window frames of one, two or four lights each—work no doubt undertaken by Horssale himself or closely supervised by him—and for the downstairs hearth, its fireplace surround and candle bracket, the steps for the external stair, and the top of the chimney. At the end of Horssale’s contract, in the late autumn of 1511, the completed walls would have been thatched against winter frosts. Then in 1512 a fresh team of carpenters and roofers were employed to make the roof, floors and screen, and possibly a pentice roof on the market side. Three screens were needed to divide the ground floor into a kitchen for brewing and baking, a meeting room in the middle, and a store at the other end, and the first floor into a large feasting room (open to the roof) with a further store over the kitchen. Finally, interior walls were painted by a painter and the costly brewing equipment, including the large bronze kettle or brewing cauldron, bought.2 Only on Whit Monday 16 May 1513 could the families that had commissioned the work, the Tomssons, Pers, Bryands, Clarkes, and Hewatts, sit down at trestle tables with their fellow parishioners to enjoy their first church ale. Sherston church house cost well over £20 to build and furnish at a time when a cow cost seven or eight shillings.3 Today it comprises two buildings, one listed Grade II. Both were refenestrated and remodelled in the nineteenth century, though one of Horssale’s four-light window frames survives in the listed frontage. This rare contract reveals the main characteristics of a church house, or combined parish feasting hall and brewhouse, and shows that a purpose-built structure was a 107

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major investment for a parish. Constructed by skilled masons, church houses were generally prestigious buildings owned and run by the churchwardens on behalf of the parish. Their architectural quality was often second only to the church or manor house, and they had a dual purpose of providing parochial entertainment and at the same time raising funds for the church with rents and hirings as well as ales. About a hundred definite or probable former church houses have been identified from the Images of England website with listings of grade II* or above (see appendix). The purpose of this paper is to investigate further the distribution, origins, uses and survival of this interesting and distinctive building type and to encourage local historians to get their shoes on and magnifying glasses out. Church houses are a remarkable resource for architectural historians, being both well-documented and time specific, though this aspect is beyond the scope of the present article, as is the question of variant plan forms, which might include some single-storey buildings. A great deal of further work is required on both these themes.

1. The church house at Sherston, Gloucestershire, built in 1511-1513: it is the building on the left with an arched doorway

The distribution and origins of church houses Church houses are widely distributed over the whole of southern England, from East Anglia to Devon and Cornwall, and are also found in South Wales.4 About two-thirds of the identified grade I and II* church houses are half-timbered, the rest being stone structures like Sherston, or of stone and other materials (such as cob in the case of Poundstock, Cornwall). Roofs can be of slate or of thatch. These survivals, together with an estimated 400 to 500 grade II buildings, are likely to represent less than onetenth of the total that once existed, most being known only from documentary

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sources. In the south of England, at least, most parishes would have had a church house or guild hall (sometimes spelled ‘gild hall’) before the Reformation and small towns often had both. Where there was only one building, shared by parishioners and guild members, the terms church house and guild hall were often used interchangeably, especially in Suffolk. Devon is still the church-house county par excellence, with over a quarter of parishes having a recognisable example. In Devon many were never converted to domestic uses, instead remaining in use as poorhouses or schools before reverting to communal use or becoming ‘Church House’ inns. As a result, there has been more research into this building type in Devon than elsewhere.5 Other areas with high survival rates, of perhaps a tenth or more, are Hertfordshire, Essex and Suffolk, Somerset, Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire.6 Compared with these areas, northern England and the North Midlands, including Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Staffordshire and Cheshire, have very few surviving buildings or documentary references. Church ales and guild houses certainly feature in Yorkshire and Lancashire, but many sources for this region are post-Reformation and ambiguously phrased.7 The greater prominence given to certain open-air folk customs, such as Plough Monday, in the north of England could be suggestive of north-south cultural differences. More research is clearly needed here. Table 1 Church house building by decade date < 1400 1400s 1420s 1430s 1440s 1450s 1460s 1470s 1480s 1490s 1500s 1510s 1520s 1530s 1540s 1550s Totals

A

B

C

D 2

1 1 4 1 5 8 14 10 [+ 2] 9 [+ 1] 2

2 1 3 1 2 4 5 3 3 3 1

2 1 2 2 [+ 1] 4 3 [+ 1] 2 4 6 [+ 2] 2 [+ 2] 1 [+ 1]

1 [+ 1] 3 4 [+ 1] 1 [+ 1] 2 1 [+ 1?] 2 [+ 1] 2 [+ 1]

57 [+4]

28

29 [+7]

23 [+5]

E

2 [1?]

1

A building plot/gift of land/ [house] C other documentary references E date on building

1 3

2

3

total 2 2 1 [+1] 5 6 6 8 [+2] 12 16 [+2] 16 [+1] 23 21 [+4] 16 [+4] 6 [+2] 140 [+16]

B will reference to new building D dendro-dating [ ] conversion of domestic building, not purpose-built

Studies of the earliest surviving churchwardens’ accounts, from the late fourteenth and very early fifteenth centuries, suggest that church ales did not then normally provide revenue for the church. Instead collections on Sundays and festivals, rents of houses and land, indulgences and funeral legacies paid for fabric and repairs. But ale was certainly brewed at this time for church feasts, weddings and funerals, and that

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version of church ales predates church houses. For example, at Great Horwood in Buckinghamshire a church ale is noted in 1405.8 Most church houses, by contrast, were first built or acquired in the century up to and including the 1540s. As table 1 demonstrates, the 1510s (when Sherston example was built) was the decade when church house building peaked. Church houses are often said to have originated in towns where guild halls were to be found. Early guild halls, from at least the tenth century, were high-status buildings put up by community elites and used as places to hold meetings and feasts. For example, the guldhous or guild house in the diminutive borough of Stoford in the parish of Barwick in Somerset stood before two great elms on the green in 13531354, while a newly-discovered early guild house at the former borough of Hallaton in Leicestershire lies opposite the church. Both locations are typical of later church house positions. Another guild hall is noted in 1392 at North Petherton in Somerset, while at Stratford upon Avon the guild house built in 1417 had a feasting hall built over shops and the brewhouse. Other examples of church houses or moot halls with shops below include Elstow in Bedfordshire and a church house of c.1530 at Sherborne in Dorset, while a similar one at St Columb Major in Cornwall was demolished in the nineteenth century. This type of two-storey plan became increasingly normal for church houses as the fifteenth century progressed.9 The earliest documentary reference yet found to a church house occurs in a deed of 1397 relating to Everdon in Northamptonshire. It is mentioned in passing, as an abutment to another property, and it is unclear if this was a place where church ales were brewed and feasts held, or was simply the vicarage. Peter Clark cites a Buckinghamshire case in 1405 where local alewives were forbidden to brew when the church ale was held, but no specific building is mentioned. Dendrochronological (or tree ring) dating shows that Edenbridge church house in Kent was first built with timbers felled between 1380 and 1410 and a few other possible church houses have fourteenth century timbers. The replacement church house at Dartington in Devon was built in 1518. Some may represent the reuse of an earlier building—according to Robert Waterhouse, the Shaugh Prior and Stokeinteignhead church houses in Devon may originally have been domestic open halls. Romansleigh and Stockleigh English in the same county are other possible examples, while Easthorpe guild house in Essex has open hall and two-storey components and looks more purpose-built. It is possible that some early church houses were open halls with detached kitchens. Such buildings, which were converted to church house use at a later date, are much harder to identify unless they abut the churchyard. They are more vernacular in style, have smoke blackened roofs, and fewer ‘quality’ features.10 Evidence gathered so far suggests that church houses appeared in different parts of the country at roughly the same time. Possible examples from the 1430s include a barn used for summer games at Wistow in Yorkshire and two cottages gifted to the churchwardens at Henbury in Gloucestershire ‘for a certain building to be made for the use of the church’.11 Other Gloucestershire examples include two that do not survive: in 1512 timber was given to build ‘a new church house’ at Leckhampton, while in 1528 the abbot of Malmesbury leased ‘a parcel of land lying to the south of the churchyard for the purpose of building a house called a Churchous’ at Littleton upon Severn.12 There is a surviving church house of the 1430s at West Horsley in Surrey. Like the Stratford upon Avon guild house this had a shop or market area below and probably a detached kitchen. Other documented examples of possible detached church house kitchens include Bovey Tracey in Devon in 1491 (the only

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2. The impressive timber-framed church house at King’s Norton (historically Worcestershire) now stands in a suburbanised area towards the southern edge of the Birmingham conurbation

part that survives) and a former separate kitchen house at Aldenham in Hertfordshire.13 About a third of English counties certainly had examples of church houses in the first half of the fifteenth century. However, no comprehensive search has yet been made of early churchwardens’ accounts and such a survey could well produce significant additional numbers. More than 110 documentary references to their building have been found so far, in a wide variety of sources ranging from manor court rolls to the title deeds of newly-built church houses or the plots of land on which they were built. These date mainly from the 1440s to the 1540s (see table 1). Erected within existing church yards—despite the risk of disturbing the ancestors—or built on manorial waste as near the church as was feasible, such plots were usually given by the parish priest or lord of the manor (and thus sometimes by a religious house). In return, the donor or donors received a ground rent of a few pence a year and prayers for their

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souls. Church houses were usually ‘owned’ by churchwardens or parish feoffees on behalf of the parishioners. New parish groups of young men, young women, and married women ran the church ales and also provided some of the entertainments.14 The church buildings themselves may have been the original venues for church ales, despite growing ecclesiastical disapproval. In 1483 John Cranewyse, the vicar of Stoke by Nayland, Suffolk, left a newly-built house and garden to his parishioners on condition that they were to hold ‘all their gilds and drinking held for the profit of the church there and not in the church’.15 Similarly in 1509 at Fressingfield, also in Suffolk, a fine new guild house was built ‘for the more reverence of God and in avoiding of eating and drinking and other abusions in the church’.16 Examples of churches still being used for ales in the late-fifteenth and early-sixteenth centuries are harder to find. The church ale held in St Lawrence church in Reading in 1506 is often cited as an example, but this venue was probably used because the communal guild hall was being rebuilt.17 The introduction of fixed pews in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries also made churches harder to use for feasting purposes. At Thame in Oxfordshire pews were provided in 1449 and the church house is first mentioned in 1451.18 Church houses were built at a time of heightened popular piety, when the Perpendicular style of gothic architecture was dominant. Hitherto, clergy had embellished chancels and gentry families built or appropriated transepts, chancel chapels or aisles as their burial places. The parish as a whole was responsible for the nave from at least the thirteenth century, but now took on the building of north and south aisles as well.19 Through their fund-raising efforts processional aisles were added to many more parish churches than previously, often doubling or trebling the size of the church. Interiors also underwent a major metamorphosis, with lay and clerical areas being screened from each another using forests of timber. Rood screens with lofts, named after the crucifixions they supported, and side screens now separated the holier areas of chancel and chancel chapels from the more secular nave and aisles. Money raised by the ales was usually ploughed back into the church fabric fund once the costs of building and equipping the church house had been paid off. For example, at Shere in Surrey in 1501-1502 the proceeds of the Pentecost Games went to the rood light, a new Mary (one of the supporting figures for the crucifixion or rood) and the rood beam. Likewise, ales made by the young men of Thorpe le Soken in Essex in their church house, now the Bell Inn, paid for the rood screen and loft as stated in an inscription there. At Bassingbourn in Cambridgeshire in 1497-1498 ten church ales raised £14 7s 3½d for a new treble bell.20 Church houses and guild halls show the densest concentrations in areas like East Anglia and the South West, where church enlargement continued well into the Reformation period.

The decline of church houses As table 1 shows, the construction of purpose-built church houses peaked around the time that the Sherston example was being erected. Yet church houses, like the churches they supported, continued to be put up even during the Reformation period. In some cases parishes were playing catch up, or replacing an insufficiently prestigious church house with a better one. Timber for the church house at Areley Kings in Warwickshire was felled as late as the winter of 1535-1536, ready for use the next year.21 Other late documented examples include the present Fleur de Lys Inn at Stoke sub Hamdon, which goes no further back than 1544, and the 1546 house at

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Drewsteignton in Devon.22 Most striking of all is the dendro-dating evidence for the grade I listed building known today as the ‘guild house’ at Poundstock in Cornwall. While some of its roof timbers were felled in 1543, the floor boards date to the early 1550s. This means that Poundstock church house was still under construction when church ales were abolished in 1548 and was completed in the reign of Queen Mary when the ales were, albeit temporarily, reinstated.23 Some church houses may have been pulled down in 1548, or in a few instances converted to vicarages to accommodate the large families of married clergy. Such possibilities include the Old Vicarages at Brenchley in Kent and Methwold in Norfolk. This may also have been the case at Antony in Cornwall in 1555, where the ‘bruyng of Wyttson store’ was done that year in the vicarage, though a new church house was built or acquired later. Some Middlesex parishes tried to save their church house in 1548 by claiming that they were the only place in the parish where the king’s business could be discussed.24 Church ales continued until the 1570s in many places and, with some setbacks, in the West Country to the 1630s, despite Puritan disapproval. The levying of church rates—a commutation of the old malt rates into monetary sums—took their place. This was the time when gentry families were beginning to distance themselves from their fellow parishioners, retreating from the conviviality of the open hall to their private parlours, and the rating system accelerated that process. A few half-timbered church houses in Essex were sold off and recycled as early as the 1570s. Most had a second life as barns, but at Lucas Farm in White Roding the church-house frame was added as a new wing to a 1570s farmhouse, causing great confusion for later architectural recorders.25 A second phase of recycling seems to have occurred between the 1630s and 1650s, around the time of the English Civil War. In 1644-1645 the church house at Nettlecombe in Somerset was used to lay out a dead Parliamentarian soldier, while the frame of the rural guild hall of Barking in Suffolk was used to build the first school at nearby Needham Market.26

The use of church houses Church houses were built primarily as brewhouses and feasting halls for church ales and parish meeting places. Fundraising was on a bring-and-buy principle, with raw materials such as wheat for cakes, and barley or malt for the ale, collected from house to house. Church houses at Yatton in Somerset and Long Crendon in Buckinghamshire dated to 1473 and 1483-7 respectively, had to be built with a single bay at one end open to the roof, presumably for malting the barley. This was clearly no longer necessary when Sherston church house was built. At Woodbury in Devon the church ale collection came to be known as the malt rate, By the early sixteenth century barley was usually collected in a more convenient ready-malted form.27 Householders who had given materials in kind then had to pay again to attend the feast with their families and servants. The church ale was usually held on Whit Monday or Tuesday. Other days in Whit Week could be spent attending neighbouring church ales. Such Whitsuntide ales usually raised at least £3 or £4 revenue, but the church house could be rented out to brewers at other times of the year. At Fressingfield in Suffolk additional drinkings ‘nescessary to the profyte of the seid chirche or parisshe’ were accommodated at other times in the year, and this was a widespread practice.28 The holding of the numerous guild feasts in many rural church houses helps to account for their alternative name of guild houses, but there were also ales to raise funds for the clerk’s salary or for the poor, wedding breakfasts

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(hence the name Marriage Feast Room for the church house at Matching in Essex), funeral wakes and patronal feast days to celebrate. Hocktide, the second Monday and Tuesday after Easter, when women ambushed those of the opposite sex for ransom (and vice versa) could end in a convivial feast at the church house.29 Feasts held in church houses were elaborate and noisy affairs. At Shere in Surrey in 1502 parishioners consumed two calves, two sheep, two lambs, and three quarters of mutton with their bread, while at Bramley in Hampshire in 1530 the Whitsun feast included veal, mutton, chicken, butter, cheese and bread.30 Even after the Reformation, large scale feasting was commonplace. In 1600 at the ‘kingale’ in Wooton, Hampshire, the spit was kept busy with eleven animal carcases to roast, and as late as the 1630s at Churchdown in Gloucestershire three dozen cheese cakes were consumed.31 Cider could be served instead of ale, and herrings, wine and milk are also noted.32 Feast entertainment was generally provided by drummers and bagpipers, while a fiddle player is recorded at Chewton Mendip in Somerset in the early 1590s and one is shown on a bench end of the 1530s at Altarnun in Cornwall.33 Examples of dancing included a risqué ‘cushion dance’ at Tortworth in Gloucestershire in 1606, which got the local vicar into trouble with his Puritan lord of the manor. Plays and other entertainments generally followed the feast. Players might come from a distance or, in the case of Robin Hood or the Summer King and Queen, be home-grown (and probably selected from the young men and maidens of the parish). Costumes and play props like Robin Hood’s bower, which was annually set up in the churchyard with fresh greenery, were usually stored in the upper store room of the church house as noted at Bray in Berkshire in the early-seventeenth century.34 Sports particularly associated with church ales including bull-baiting, bear-baiting, cock-fighting, tennis, football and bowling. At West Bradley in Somerset in 1639 a bear was lodged in the church house overnight and badly scared an elderly female inhabitant.35 Church houses were often deliberately sited near playing places where open air plays and sports were performed, as at Charlbury and Witney in Oxfordshire, or to camping fields where a regional type of football was played as at Shipdham in Norfolk.36 Church houses could also be rented out at other times of year to brewers: thus in 1628 Joan Fursey of Cruwys Morchard in Devon brewed ale for a football match there. Elsewhere clothiers rented the church house to finish their cloth, a task that required a good deal of space. Renting out church houses readily overlapped with entertainment. For example in 1522 gypsies hired the church house at Stratton in Cornwall for 20d, probably as a base for bareback-riding and fortune-telling. At Canterbury in 1560 there were also gypsy hirings and the church house was let out for periods to pedlars and merchants. At Somerton parish house in Somerset in the early-seventeenth century a child was put on show, presumably because of some monstrous deformity. This novel travelling show raised 18d for the child’s family.37

The subsequent fate of church houses Alternative names and uses saved many hundreds of church houses from demolition or recycling in the period 1548 to 1640, as church ales themselves ceased. Many former church houses were later known as parish or town houses, though it cannot be assumed that all that bear those names had that origin. Some church houses became court houses, as at Long Crendon in Buckinghamshire and Standon in Hertfordshire. But the vast majority were recycled as poor houses and schools, sometimes in uneasy combination until one or other use prevailed. The earliest

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reference to paupers being housed in church houses comes from two Middlesex parishes in 1549.38 A significant number of others became inns, and in Devon several still have the name Church House Inn. Eleven of the grade I and II* church houses are inns and two others were formerly so (see appendix). This may have been a natural progression, arising from the leasing out of such buildings to brewers when not in parish use. Many today are private houses, having been pubs, poor houses or schools in the past, and some have reverted to being village halls again or are still schools. In a few places, including Eynsham in Oxfordshire, church ales were apparently restored with maypoles at the Restoration of Charles II in the 1660s. The Oxfordshire Whitsun ales were, however, then linked to inns and village greens rather than to their former church houses. Some of these church ales continued to be held with maypole dancing well into the nineteenth century.39 This paper demonstrates the central role which church houses and guild halls, like that at Sherston in Wiltshire, once played in their local communities. Developing at a time when religion was becoming more parochial and inward looking, they form a bridge between late medieval catholic festivals and later folklore. Built to last as part of a new ‘investment culture’, there are hundreds of picturesque church houses and guild halls. Very likely there is one near you if you live in the southern half of England. More work is needed on northern England where church ales were certainly held, though a lack of early records or appropriate buildings is a problem. While their purpose and uses are well documented (and there is a wealth of material beyond what is included here) the question of the date of origin of church houses remains unresolved. That the pewing of churches, and official church disapproval, drove secular activities to purpose-built venues at the edge of the churchyard is not in question. It is also possible that urban guildhalls may initially have served as a model for the type of building required, but in many villages and towns guild and parish feasts were held in the same building. Where the first church house was built is unclear and is likely to remain so. Possibly the idea originated in an urban context somewhere in South-East England around 1400, but there are few churchwardens’ accounts of this early a date there or anywhere else. Further study of those churchwardens’ accounts which do survive, combined with more dendro-dating of existing buildings, in the context of local and regional studies, may throw shed more light on this intriguing aspect of community life in the past.

Acknowledgments I should like to acknowledge the help I have received over the years from Eric Berry, Virginia Bainbridge, Nick Cahill, Jo Cox, David Dymond, Cynthia Gaskell-Brown, Kate Giles, Elias Kupfermann, Grahame Soffe, Caroline Stanford, John Thorp, Jennifer Ward, Robert Waterhouse and others. More recently, in response to a piece in the autumn 2009 issue of Local History News, I received a tremendous response from local historians. Eric Miller, Anthea Evelyn and Carolyn Watkins shared their information on Gloucestershire church houses; examples from Kent were provided by James Weir and Gill Draper; Rod Wild, Phillip Arnold and Martin Higgins were very helpful on Surrey; and Bill Wood on Worcestershire. I would also like to thank the owners of church houses including Armine Robinson and Jacqueline Skidmore. David Dymond, Nicholas Orme and Paul Cockerham all read and made helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article.

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Appendix: some grade I and II* listed church houses, guild halls and guild houses Bedfordshire

Elstow*

Berkshire

Bray, Cookham, Sonning*

Buckinghamshire

[Aylesbury Ceely House*], Buckingham, [Fenny Stratford], Long Crendon*, West Wycombe

Cambridgeshire

Dullingham, Hildersham, Hinxton, Linton, Whittlesford

Cheshire

Bunbury?

Cornwall

Poundstock+, Poughill, Stratton, St Teath+

Devon

Bickington, Braunton, Broadhembury, [Chagford*], Chudleigh*, Combeinteignhead*, Drewsteignton+, Harberton*, Hartland, Holcombe Rogus*, Ilsington, Rattery*, Sampford Courtenay+, South Tawton+, Throwleigh, Torbryan*, Walkhampton, West Alvington, Widecombe in the Moor*

Dorset

Sherborne

Essex

Ashdon, Clavering, Felsted, Finchingfield, Great Bardfield, Matching, Steeple Bumpstead, South Benfleet, South Weald, [Thaxted], Thorpe le Soken*, White Roding (resited at Lucas Farm)

Gloucestershire

Painswick (part), Wotton-under-Edge

Herefordshire

Colwall (now single storey), Cradley+, Ledbury*, Pembridge

Hertfordshire

Ashwell Town House*, [Ashwell], Barley, Hertford, [Hitchin], Little Gaddesden (John of Gaddesden’s House), Northchurch (now downgraded to II), [Puckeridge in Standon], Standon

Huntingdonshire

Buckden

Kent

Brenchley, [Brenchley Town Farm], Edenbridge, [Faversham], [Fordwich], Goudhurst (very altered), [Milton Regis*], Penshurst

Norfolk

Blo Norton, Methwold*

Oxfordshire

Henley on Thames

Shropshire

Ludlow, [Much Wenlock]

Somerset

[Axbridge*], Cheddar, Chew Magna, Crowcombe*, Martock

Suffolk

[Aldeburgh], Cavendish (rebuilt), [Clare], Cockfield, [Debenham], East Bergholt, Fressingfield*, Gislingham, [Glemsford], Eye, Hadleigh, [Lavenham x2**], Laxfield*, Palgrave, Stoke by Nayland, Sudbury, Yaxley

Surrey

[Lingfield Pollard Cottage], [Lingfield Old Town House]

Sussex

Lindfield, Steyning

Warwickshire

Aston Cantlow, [Deritend], Knowle, [Stratford-on-Avon]

Wiltshire

Bradford on Avon [Chippenham]

Worcestershire

Areley Kings, Evesham, [Evesham Booth Hall], King’s Norton, Yardley

Yorkshire

York All Saints North Street?

Bold Italics: examples listed Grade I; + village hall; * other buildings with possible or partial public access (for example, pub, museum or shop); [ ] probably distinctive guildhall not used for church ales

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3. The guild house at Poundstock, Cornwall (photo: Keystone Historic Buildings Consultants)

NOTES AND REFERENCES 1

2

3

4

5

The contract is printed in L.F. Salzman, Building in England down to 1540 (Oxford UP, 1952) 561-563; Horssale may also have built the much-altered church house at Tetbury. See also Patrick Cowley, The Church Houses – Their Religious and Social Significance (SPCK, 1970) and Joanna Mattingly, ‘Church houses: an under-recognised building type’, Local History News no. 93 (Autumn 2009) 16-17. A 1492 inventory for Yatton church house in Somerset includes a kettle, crocks, pots, pans, vats, troughs, barrels and stands, a gridiron, spit, and ale measure: G.W. Copeland, ‘Devonshire Church-Houses, part i’, Transactions of the Devonshire Association [TDA] 92 (1960) 117. Winkleigh church house in Devon cost £28 14s 4d to build in 1534-1535 and in 1531 £40 was left at West Brentford in Isleworth parish in Middlesex for a church house: G.W. Copeland, ‘Devonshire Church-Houses, part iv’, TDA 95 (1963) 153 and Guildhall Library MS 9171/10, m.171. References to at least twenty church houses have been found in Wales but it is unclear how many survive. G.W. Copeland, ‘Devonshire Church-Houses’ in seven parts published in Transactions of the

6

7

Devonshire Association, 92-96 and 98-99 (19601964, 1966-1967); R. Bovett, Historical notes on Devon Schools (Devon County Council, 1989); R. Waterhouse, ‘The Church Houses of South Devon’, unpublished HND thesis, Bournemouth Polytechnic, 1991; Tricia Whiteaway, ‘The Rise and demise of Church Houses; with Particular Reference to Devon’, unpublished Univ. Exeter Certificate of Local and Regional history dissertation, June 1996. Jo Cox, Cynthia Gaskell Brown, John Thorp, Anita Travers and Robert Waterhouse are scholars currently working on individual Devon church houses. For Somerset see E.H.D. Williams, ‘Church Houses in Somerset’, Vernacular Architecture no.23 (1992) 15-23. I am grateful to David Dymond and Virginia Bainbridge for sharing their detailed researches on Suffolk and Cambridgeshire church houses. Information on Lancashire from Alan Crosby: a letter written by a local gentleman to Thomas Bulkeley, parson of Brindle near Preston, in c.1530 addresses him with the words ‘Master Parsonne I hertely recommend me unto you by the same toukenne that I Came unto your churche Ale’ (Lancashire Archives DDHK/9/1/28).

118 8

9

10

11

12 13

14

15 16

17

18

19 20

21 22

23

THE LOCAL HISTORIAN/MAY 2012 J.C. Cox, Churchwardens’ accounts from the fourteenth century to the close of the seventeenth century (Methuen, 1913) 15-19; P. Clark, The English alehouse: a social history 1200-1830 (Longman, 1983) 25 J. Batten, South Somerset Villages (1894), VCH Somerset vol.6 (1992) 310; other information from the English Heritage Images of England website. The information on Stratford upon Avon is from Kate Giles, who is studying medieval guild halls. Devon Record Office, 1038M/T13/48; Clark (1983) 25; RCHM, A Gazetteer of Medieval Houses in Kent, 57. Dendro-dates for church houses and other buildings are regularly published in Vernacular Architecture (VA); R. Waterhouse, 'Glebe Cottage, Shaugh Prior, West Devon’, Devon Buildings Group newsletter no.15 (Easter 1997) 18-23., see E. Bishop, ‘The Church House, Dartington’, Transactions of the Devonshire Association, cvii (1975).91-92. D. Dymond, ‘God’s disputed acre’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History no.51 (1999) 481; C. Dyer, Lords and peasants in a changing society (Cambridge UP, 1980) 362 I am grateful to Eric Miller and Carolyn Watkins for sending me this information. Unpublished report on West Horsley by Rod Wild (August 2001) and VA no.36 (2005) 79; VCH Herts ii (1908). For the running of church ales see The Survey of Cornwall by Richard Carew ed. J. Chynoweth et al (2004), f.68v. Dymond, ‘God’s disputed acre’, 480-481 J.J. Raven, ‘A Parish House for Church Ales and Other “Drynkynggs”’, East Anglian Notes and Queries new ser.6 (1895-1896) 49 C. Kerry, A History of the Municipal Church of St Lawrence’s Reading (1883); for church ales at St Lawrence see Joan Dils, The churchwardens’ accounts of St Lawrence, Reading 1498-1570 (Berkshire Record Society, forthcoming 2012) 19 J.C. Cox, Churchwardens’ accounts, 190; C. Pythian Adams, Local history and folklore: a new framework (Standing Conference for Local History, 1975) 20 J. Bettey, Church and Parish (Batsford, 1987) 61 R.J. Askew, Walks and Talks about Shere (c.1900s) 16-17; G. Morgan, The Romance of Essex Inns (1963).50; Cowley, The Church Houses, 60 VA (2004) 103; and information from Bill Wood VCH Somerset vol.3 (1974).247; B. Cherry and N. Pevsner, Buildings of England: Devon (1989).340 VA (2007) 107-108: in the interim the vicar of Poundstock, Simon Morton, was hanged for

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25

26 27

28 29

30 31

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33 34

35 36

37

38 39

taking part in the Prayer Book Rebellion of 1549. Cornwall Record Office, P7/5/1; C. Kitching, London & Middlesex Chantry Certificates (London Record Society, 1980), passim Ronald Hutton, The Rise and Fall of Merry England (1994) charts many of the setbacks; S.J. Brown, ‘Agricultural building at Hill Farm, Gestingthorpe’, Historic Buildings in Essex [HBI] no.4 (1988).8; R. Shackle, ‘A re-erected building at Teybrook Farm, Great Tey’, HBI no.10 (1998).23, 25; A. Padfield, ‘Lucas Farm, White Roding’, HBI no.3 (1986) 13-14; other information from John McCann and Images of England website Access to Archives website. H.T. Ellacombe, ‘Malt Rate Levied in the Parish of Woodbury’, Archaeological Journal no.40 (1888) 225-229 Raven, ‘A Parish House’, 49 For Hertfordshire hocktide ales see S. Doree, ‘Popular Religion in Hertfordshire before the Reformation’, Hertfordshire Past & Present no.35 (1993) 26 and ‘The Early Bishops Stortford churchwardens’ accounts’, HPP no.37 (1994) 10 Askew, Shere, 16-17; Ronald Hutton, Stations of the Cross (Oxford UP, 1997) 246 Cox, Churchwardens’ accounts, p. 281; A. Douglas (ed), Records of early English drama [REED]: Cumberland, Westmorland and Gloucestershire (1986).10-11 At Linton in Cambridgeshire a herring distribution took place in the reign of Mary I: see V. Bainbridge, Gilds in the Medieval Countryside (Boydell, 1996) 151; Meavy in Devon entertained Plymouth Corporation to wine and milk in 1589-1590 when a new water supply for Plymouth was being sought, see R.N Worth, History of Plymouth (1890) 439. REED Somerset, i, 158 REED Cumberland, Westmorland and Gloucestershire, 342-343; C. Kerry, The History and Antiquities of the Hundred of Bray in the County of Berkshire (Savill and Edwards, 1861) 29-30 REED Somerset, i, 386-7, ii, 961 Copeland, ‘Devonshire Church Houses’ 94 (1962) 430-431; VCH, Oxfordshire vol.10 (1972) 127ff and vol.14 (2004).111-130 (pageant ground); Access to Archives E. Peacock, ‘On the Churchwardens’ Accounts of the Parish of Stratton, in the county of Cornwall’, Archaeologia (1880).207; J. Brent, Canterbury in the Olden Times (1879).237; VCH Somerset vol.3 (1974) 149 Kitching, London & Middlesex Chantry Certificates, 68-69 VCH Oxfordshire vol.12 (1990) 109, 144, 148149

JO MATTINGLEY is currently a Museum Development Officer in Cornwall. She studied medieval history at the University of London and her interest in church houses began in Cookham and Bray when working for her thesis. A BALH committee member, she was recently made a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries.

Holiday plotlands and caravans in the Tendring district of Essex 1918-2010 SEAN O’DELL

In 1947 my father, Terry O’Dell, for the first time drove customers from London in his unofficial taxi to their holiday accommodation at Saint Osyth Beach in Essex. He was impressed with the potential of the area and, as he was recently demobilised and looking for work opportunities, made enquiries about land, finding that some marshland was for sale or rent at a reasonable price. He acquired ten acres at Sea Wick and began developing Seawick Holiday Lido, one of the larger caravan parks in the Tendring district. It was initially a camping ground, with surplus tents and bedding provided for the holidaymakers. My father was keen to avoid re-selling plots of land for chalets or huts, as this would lead to loss of control: rather, he felt, it was better to allow people either to camp or to provide their own holiday accommodation on a small plot for an annual rent. As caravans became more popular they gradually replaced tents, old buses and other similar structures. With similar developments on land nearby, Saint Osyth Beach eventually became a centre of the caravan business in Tendring with three large sites.

Introduction Many thousands of individuals and families took a caravan holiday in a resort area such as Tendring during the post-war decades, many going on to own a caravan holiday home on a park. Holidays-with-pay legislation, enacted before the war, now enabled working families to take advantage of holiday opportunities within reasonable distance of the capital. In Tendring a considerable number of caravan parks were established after 1947, augmenting the existing Butlins and Warners commercial holiday camps at Clacton and Dovercourt. The district was a focus of the domestic holiday industry, with a very populous catchment area. Those who came to take their holidays on the caravan parks and to progress to owning a holiday home demonstrated a certain independence, and a desire for ‘portable domesticity’, replicating the parlour of the town or suburb in the caravan as an affordable and accessible temporary home on wheels. But in fact it was the holiday plotlanders of the inter-war years who laid the foundations for the proliferation of the post-war caravan sites in the area and beyond. ‘Plotlands’ and ‘plotland development’ were a highly distinctive feature of several parts of England between the wars. The terms were originally used by local authorities to describe the process whereby small plots of land were divided off from a larger area of undeveloped land, such as former farmland, and then sold on. Some plotlands were areas of marginal land or waste that were simply occupied and fenced off. They generally held a structure or ‘building’ that was either prefabricated or makeshift, hand-built or adapted from another structure such as an old railway carriage, shed, or bus and was in many cases established without any planning consent or building regulation. Although services such as mains water, electricity, gas 119

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(other than bottled), sewerage and drainage were almost never available, at least initially, the plotlanders would nevertheless treat such places as homes. Oil lamps, bottled gas stoves or spirit burners, solid fuel heaters, ‘Elsan’ type chemical toilets and water carriers were all common features of a plotland dwelling.1 Hardy and Ward, in Arcadia for All (first published in 1984), acknowledge that the ‘makeshift landscape of the twentieth century was very much a product of its age with new social opportunities to weigh against new demands on the environment’. But in addition they offer an argument suggesting that the time-honoured agrarian philosophy, and the pastoral or romantic view of a healthier, purer way of life rooted in the countryside, may also be linked to plotland developments of the twentieth century. It is clear, they argue, that ‘an impulse for acquiring small plots of land out of town existed well before the twentieth century’. They suggest that the need or desire to own a plot was as much, if not more, to do with a sense of justice or right, as with a quest for economic betterment—‘a promise of freedom, independence and an opportunity to assert one’s individuality’.2 These assertions are indeed echoed by twentieth-century plotlanders themselves, and are worthy of further consideration.3 During the agricultural depression of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries the value of farmland fell sharply, before slumping just after the First World War. Large numbers of farmers simply walked away from their farms as they no longer provided a livelihood. After 1918, although clearly there was still plenty of desperate poverty, more people than ever before were in a position to buy land which was cheaply and readily available. Planning constraints were very limited, and there arose an unprecedented circumstance whereby cheap land could be sold to individuals and entrepreneurial developers who could build on it more or less as they chose. Some of these entrepreneurs formed land companies to buy up larger areas, in order to sell off small plots for holiday homes—examples include Frank Stedman at Jaywick Sands, Frederick Hester at Canvey Island and Charles Neville on the south coast. The company founded by the land agent Fredrick Ramuz was the earliest and most prolific instance: Ramuz purchased cheap agricultural land throughout Essex (but particularly on the coast) from the beginning of the slump in the 1870s well into the twentieth century. This was divided up into small or large plots, and sold on as ‘plots and parcels to suit all classes’.4 In the four years after the First World War, onequarter of the area of England was bought and sold, a rate of land disposal that had not been witnessed since the dissolution of the monasteries.5 This, combined with the lack of planning controls, meant that the conditions for plotland development and expansion were uniquely in place. The rise of the ‘true’ plotland can be traced to this period, when estate agents were awash with areas of farmland as the result of bankruptcies and vacant tenancies, and it was soon realised that there was a demand for small plots for town dwellers to build weekend ‘chalet’ style retreats or even second homes, particularly if these were in a rural location or by the sea. These plots were advertised heavily in catalogues, pubs, shops, newspapers and magazines, and in due course the process of acquiring a plot and constructing a retreat was well underway.6 Plotlands typically developed in rural and coastal locations and industrial hinterlands, either as isolated examples or more extensive clusters. But, not unexpectedly, perhaps, the south-east was the area most significantly affected. South and east Essex saw a particular boom, with isolated examples along the east coast of Suffolk and Norfolk and a notable and important development in the East Lindsey area of the Lincolnshire coast. Inland, the upper Thames Valley and the North Downs of Kent and Surrey had significant clusters. Along the south coast, Camber

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Sands, Winchelsea and Pevensey Bay saw extensive plotland developments, Peacehaven and Shoreham are significant, and there were good examples in the vicinity of Bognor, Selsey and the Wittering peninsula, at Cranmore on the Isle of Wight, and at St. Leonards in south-west Hampshire.7 The ‘plotlanders’ themselves were either in need of accommodation (temporary or permanent) or, as was often the case, seeking a retreat or holiday home. This second category of plotlands forms the main focus of this study. Some key questions are posed: where did plotland structures occur; what impact have they had physically and socially; how have they become marginalised; who were the plotlanders; what is the relationship with the rise of twentieth-century domesticity and consumerism; and what impact, if any, has the phenomenon had upon the area’s post-war holiday camp development? Although the greatest concentration of holiday plotlands in Tendring was at Jaywick Sands, there were other developments at Saint Osyth Beach, Point Clear, Lee-overSands, Wrabness, Walton, Clacton-on-Sea and Frinton. Lee-over-Sands was targeted for a further ‘Jaywick-type’ development, which did not materialise. The land upon which Tendring’s plotlands originated was largely poor quality agricultural ‘wick’ (marshland) with marginal in-fill around Saint Osyth and Point Clear, though Wrabness has a number of weekend or holiday beach chalets on the shingle beach of the Stour estuary. There are also areas where plots of land were acquired and bungalows built upon them without formal planning consent, prior to the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act.8 These bungalows were intended as permanent housing and are not comparable with the plotland developments described thus far. Most examples of this type of development occurred at 1. Location map showing Tendring district Saint Osyth, Clacton and and the places discussed in the text Walton-on-the-Naze (fig.1).

The Jaywick Sands Estate ‘Jew Wick’ was one of the six ancient wicks, or subdivisions of the marsh, at Saint Osyth near Clacton. Guy Smith, whose family farm the land in this area, recalls that ‘in the inter-war years land on St. Osyth marsh was very cheap … Grandfather bought quite a bit of the marsh in the 1930s for £13 an acre, but even then he

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doubted the wisdom of the purchase, thinking he had paid and borrowed too much. He once felt forced to buy the land as he was worried it might get into the hands of people he didn’t want as neighbours’.9 In January 1928 the surveyor and entrepreneur Frank ‘Foff ’ Stedman came to view the area as a potential purchase (in the least favourable conditions, to see if the land still looked promising for his plans), and by October had bought the 320 acres of Jaywick Farm from Mrs. O.A. Tweedie.10 A full front-page advertisement in the Clacton Times in 1929 promised a range of housing options at Jaywick, on an estate served with amenities and leisure facilities, and ‘Bathing houses’ were also offered for sale.11 By the following June permission had been given for six houses and bungalows at the southern end of the new road from Clacton, and the plan was intended to progress with the blessing of Clacton Urban District Council [CUDC].12 However, the initial vision was modified as a result of circumstances that Stedman did not foresee. The first obstacle was the reluctance of CUDC to grant further planning consent—the beginning of a long series of tussles with the local authority, which was concerned that plans submitted did not show any drainage system. Stedman offered to construct one, but the council argued that as the area was at or below sea level a conventional system would be unsuitable.13 Thus, the future character of Jaywick was established: the initial argument with CUDC and its ambivalent approach to Jaywick Sands Estate resulted in a different building programme and a change of emphasis at the new resort.

2. The newspaper advertisement of 19 November 1932, inviting the unemployed to lobby on behalf of the estate developers

However, only part of Jaywick lay within the jurisdiction of CUDC. The area to the west was in the parish of Saint Osyth and Tendring Rural District Council [TRDC] was the planning authority. This area, where Stedman’s ‘Mile Long Sporting Lake’ was originally situated, became the Brooklands and Grasslands estates.14 Permission was given by TRDC for around 800 plots to be developed as holiday accommodation and bathing huts.15 These were advertised and marketed as a priority, since CUDC was not prepared to allow further residential development in its part of the site. Planning permission for holiday accommodation was given on the condition that the structures would not be used for overnight accommodation.16 At this stage the detailed form and layout of the Jaywick Sands Estate began to take shape. Potential purchasers of a

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retreat by the sea were seemingly untroubled by the restrictions placed on their plots—as plans were submitted (and passed) for structures with several rooms, it seemed to Stedman that the intentions for permanent residential use were clear. He continued to push for the estate to be connected to the main sewer, but only water, gas and electricity connections had been secured by 1931. His frustration was vented in an ineffective full-page advertisement in the Clacton Times and East Essex Gazette of 19 November 1932.17 The unemployed of Clacton were challenged to lobby local councillors in order to gain work opportunities created by Stedman’s scheme. Some residents on the estate were politically active working-class East Londoners, who valued their newfound opportunities for freedom and a pastoral lifestyle. Among them was George Lansbury, Labour MP for Poplar and former leader of the Labour Party in the Commons. He was a key exponent of the Land and Labour League, and of Keir Hardie’s view that the state should provide ‘home colonies on the idle lands’, and was vociferous in his support for working-class aspirations for a stake in rural and coastal England.18 Although Jaywick was by design a holiday colony, it was accessible to the working families of the East End. While he makes little of his association with Jaywick in his memoirs, Lansbury’s views are clear: ‘I just long to see a start made on this job of reclaiming, recreating rural England’.19 His nephew, Ernest Lansbury, worked with the residents, who were by now ratepayers. As contributors to the local authority they knew they could achieve more if they organised themselves—if the council charged rates, it must recognise the residential status of the plots. With its politically experienced and well-connected members, the Jaywick Sands Freeholders Association [JSFA] was formed in August 1931, Ernest Lansbury becoming secretary.20 The council was divided and ambivalent, and Jaywick was given a positive impetus by the partnership that developed between Stedman and the JSFA. On 6 August 1932 the Clacton Times and East Essex Gazette reported that ‘August Bank Holiday was an important time for the residents of Jaywick, for not only were concerts, sports and a religious service held there, but an important meeting of the Freeholders was held and a £16,000 drainage scheme was discussed. It is interesting to note that it is intended to establish a church on the estate, and after the service on Sunday Mr. F.C. Stedman gave a site for a church and headed a subscription list with a cheque for £50’.21 Further reports reveal that St. Osyth parish councillors had joined the Jaywick ‘Hut Owners’ to protest at county proposals to transfer the western section of Jaywick Sands from St. Osyth to Clacton Urban District. Such protests were largely motivated by an anticipated rise in rates.22 The JSFA established itself as a forceful lobbying organisation, and Stedman’s commitment was further demonstrated in April 1934 at a meeting to discuss sea defences and water supply. He offered to ‘make a present to the association of a £1,000 a year income from the new section’.23 As he was now a freeholder himself, on the estate he created, he had even more reason to campaign with them.24 With a well-organised association campaigning for Jaywick, the remaining pre-war years were less troublesome than they might otherwise have been. The main concern was flooding: in January 1936 areas of the estate became inaccessible, and high tides caused problems during the following December. The self-help measures that residents took to ease the situation, including cutting through the sea defences to allow water to drain away, were challenged in court by the Essex Rivers Catchment Board, which had previously ignored letters of protest about flooding.25 Despite flooding, poor services and inadequate sanitation, and the resentment towards CUDC, pre-war Jaywick was a happy place with a real sense of holiday fun.

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Reflecting growing popularity and visitor numbers, the local press during the 1930s often reported carnivals, sports days, gala evenings and other entertainments, often sponsored by the Stedman family and the JSFA.26 By 1939 the Jaywick Sands Estate was firmly established within the coastal landscape of Tendring. An effective association of freeholders which campaigned and raised funds, and the determination of Stedman to spend his time and energy developing Jaywick, helped in this pre-war consolidation. Jaywick was a success simply because it was a fun, carefree place to be. Billy Butlin had seen the potential of Clacton as a location for a holiday camp, and had won the support of CUDC: although the same concerns raised over Jaywick also applied to Butlins, permission was granted and development went ahead unhindered. During the war, Jaywick was a restricted area and in 1943 was included in an official survey of the east coast, which informed the post-war view of such places expressed by the Ministry of Town and Country Planning. In a ministerial memorandum concerning Jaywick, P. Mansfield wrote: I found this extraordinary piece of holiday shack development surprising and rather interesting in a way, though it does leave one perhaps with a feeling of some nausea about it all. There are many hundreds of wooden shacks erected without proper regard for the right use of materials or proper layout but it is an inescapable fact that the colony does provide for many thousands of holiday-makers each year to enjoy a holiday by the sea, under living conditions of some independence There was objection to the haphazard and unregulated nature of the development but, unlike similar developments in other areas, a clear acknowledgement of the benefit to urban holidaymakers: The Jaywick Estate, though it is emphatically not a piece of development which should ever have been allowed to grow up in its present form, is there, and must be accepted, and it does as I say provide admirable holiday facilities for great numbers of people every year, drawn largely from London … But there must, of course, be proper control of all future development, both in the design of the huts and the layout of the land27 Jaywick demonstrated the demand for (and social benefit of) such holiday accommodation in Tendring, close to the capital but, in contrast to new holiday camps such as those planned by Billy Butlin (which under the new planning laws would be regulated) the lack of control among the existing plotlands caused problems. After the war there were continued problems with flooding, a gradual transition from holiday to (at least attempted) residential use, and a constant struggle with the local authority which culminated in a failed attempt by CUDC to compulsorily purchase the Brooklands and Grasslands areas.28 The freeholders continued to lobby effectively, but after a brief post-war resurgence in holidaymaking, the estate began a steady decline. New caravan sites were appearing nearby, offering affordable holiday accommodation to the families to whom Jaywick and the pre-war plotlands had hitherto catered. The problems of flooding culminated in the 1953 disaster, which caused devastation along the east coast. Lives were lost and the invading sea, driven by high winds, caused much structural damage. But unlike other plotland areas Jaywick was not totally rebuilt and ‘suburbanised’. The ratepayers lobbied for flood defences to which they would contribute financially (the same flood defences adjacent to the Butlins holiday camp were fully funded by the local authority) and doggedly held out for the

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3. A characteristic view of the Brooklands and Grasslands area of Jaywick Sands 2009 right keep the Brooklands and Grasslands areas as they were, but with facilities funded by the council, while urging that the ‘town-planned’ section of the estate should be fully adopted by CUDC.29 The council was ambivalent, but amid the wrangling over provision of services, some councillors were not unsympathetic to the Jaywick ratepayers. There were those who had a good relationship with the Stedman family, and who saw Jaywick in a more positive light.30 In August 1951 the CUDC Improvements and Entertainments Committee recorded that ‘in view of the fact that Jaywick Sands is now a recognised Seaside Holiday Resort with not less than 150,000 visitors annually, the Clacton Urban District Council be asked to consider the question of requisitioning land now available in Jaywick for future development as pleasure gardens, public shelters and similar amenities’.31 At that time Jaywick still attracted large numbers of holidaymakers to the district, and their contribution to the local economy was clear. But by the 1970s the Brooklands and Grasslands sections were very clearly deteriorating. An attempt by CUDC in 1971 to acquire, by compulsory purchase, the remaining sections that had not become ‘suburbanised’, on the grounds that they were ‘dilapidated and insanitary’, failed. A Department of the Environment inspection concluded that although the housing was substandard, the local authority had no right to force out the community. It went on to criticise CUDC for its failure to provide water and drainage, recommending that the area be upgraded.32 Since then, although some parts of Jaywick have followed the pattern of plotland models such as Canvey and Laindon (and the ‘bungalow town’ models of Peacehaven and Shoreham) and changed from resort to suburbia as holidaymakers have become residents or retirees, the Brooklands and Grasslands sections have stubbornly refused to conform. Largely residential, they uniquely maintain the physical appearance of their former holiday chalet past, albeit in a dilapidated state. The local authority, now Tendring District Council [TDC], has forbidden any further development that

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does not conform to strict guidelines, including flood protection measures and, via a ‘Section 106 Legal Agreement’, a contribution towards regeneration. TDC and the residents are now unlikely to alter that which remains.33 Why did this section of the Jaywick Sands Estate not simply succumb to the apparent inevitability of redevelopment or suburbanisation? First, the powerful and wellorganised ratepayers association was not intimidated by CUDC, and seemed to prevail in most of the key arguments, including the threat of compulsory purchase. The tenacity of the ratepayers association outweighed that of local councillors, resulting in stalemate and thus no physical change. Second, areas surrounding the estate retained their resort status and character—unlike, for example, Canvey Island, where this diminished rapidly and permanent suburban development superseded holiday landscapes.

Saint Osyth Beach In 1900 the area from Clacton westwards along the coastline to Point Clear, via Lee Wick, was poor quality marshland and arable grazing. Virtually unpopulated and lying below sea level, it was accessed by a series of tracks with gates to keep livestock in, and a network of dykes drained the heavy clay land behind. In about 1920 the Hutley family took over Park Farm, Saint Osyth and the marshland area at the beach, known as Cockett Wick. It is said that Harold Hutley was at the beach one day when ‘a chap on a motorcycle’ asked where he could get a cup of tea.34 A tea hut was soon erected there to provide refreshments, the area became a popular venue, and the landowners were quick to exploit a new commercial possibility: areas were set aside for camping and holiday use. Basil Hutley recalls that in 1926 his father approached Tendring Rural District Council for permission to formalise these activities and this was granted, the only conditions being that a dustbin and a toilet were provided, but as the popularity of the beach grew so the demand for more permanent structures for overnight accommodation increased. In 1923 there were very few buildings at the beach, but by the end of the decade Hutley was building ready-to-assemble huts at Park Farm to be sold to holidaymakers for erection beside the shore. These proved popular very popular and during the 1930s some 300 were erected before the outbreak of war.35 In 1935 Hutley submitted plans to build a shop and closet at the eastern end of the beach, landward of some 24 chalets, but this was refused on the grounds of potential flooding even though the proposed development was landward of the existing chalets. The use of combustible materials and the location of lavatories too close to the main hut were also given as factors for refusal.36 The application indicates the developing resort status of the beach area: applications for over 160 timber-framed buildings were submitted between 1928 and 1939 by private individuals.37 The plotlanders had arrived. Electricity was supplied to the area in 1930 and (after a borehole produced only brackish water) mains water arrived in 1935. Prior to this, water was sold at a penny a bucket from a bowser. Slightly inland, at the western end of the beach, further bungalows and a café were built. After the outbreak of war this was a restricted area and virtually all the holiday huts were removed, to provide a clear view along the beach.38 But when the bungalows and café were offered for sale in 1946 the sale catalogue noted that occupancy restrictions on the bungalows had already been lifted as a result of the post-war housing shortage.39 The 1947 Planning Act ensured that new permanent development could not be unregulated. The huts on the beach had

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mostly gone during the war and the powers given to TRDC under the new legislation prevented them being rebuilt: the catastrophic floods of 1953 completely destroyed any that were left. But caravans were another matter—they were not fixed and therefore did not apparently need planning permission. With the establishment of Seawick Holiday Lido in 1947-1948 by Terry O’Dell, as described at the beginning of this paper, Saint Osyth Beach was becoming a major part of Tendring’s growing caravan park industry, and caravans began to appear at the beach—eventually at least 240 of them, until the 1953 floods caused havoc. After that TRDC refused to allow any structures on the beach and the caravans were relocated to the landward side of the sea wall, and renamed Hutley’s Caravan Park. Basil Hutley remembers that the pre-war hut owners were reasonably affluent, middle-class people with access to transport, whereas the post-war caravan holidaymakers were working-class families, mainly from London. The rapid post-war development of the caravan parks was in sharp contrast to the decline of the plotland chalets at Saint Osyth Beach, offering a preferable and viable alternative, but during the late 1950s an estate of holiday chalets was developed at Saint Osyth Beach, close to the sea wall.40 Built in blocks of two and three in a well laid-out series of circular roads, they were serviced with mains water, drainage and electricity supply. Long leases were offered and occupancy was allowed from the beginning of March to the end of October. Known as the Bel-Air Chalet Estate, it is still fully occupied today, but in the local plan published in 2007 TDC includes this estate in its schedule of areas considered as plotland development: In various parts of the District, especially in coastal locations in the vicinity of Wrabness, Point Clear and St. Osyth, there are numerous plots of land that were laid out and sold for holiday homes during the inter-war years. Many of these plots remain undeveloped, but others contain a variety of development ranging from holiday caravans to permanently constructed dwellings41 There are plots adjacent to the chalet estate, but although it does have some characteristics of plotland development Bel-Air hardly conforms to the haphazard, poorly serviced and random nature of the inter-war plotlands. It is well designed, has full access to services, the chalets are almost identical (and so not randomly constructed) and there are shops and entertainment facilities. They are leasehold, as opposed to the freehold general in plotlands, and they were built with planning permission—all the hallmarks of post-1947 holiday home development. The Bel-Air Chalet Estate is the last development to be built and then designated by a local authority as plotland, probably in England, and TDC does not want to see its further expansion or development: Development at these plotland sites would, if permitted, represent sporadic piecemeal development outside defined settlements. Many are located in remote and isolated places with no convenient access to local services and facilities and often have very poor vehicular access. Any spread of permanent housing in such locations would be in direct conflict with Structure and Local Plan policies for the general distribution of housing and protection of the countryside, as well as the Government’s approach to sustainable development42 With regard to the inter-war plotland development at Saint Osyth beach, a number of factors stand out. First, many of the hut owners were from middle-class backgrounds, and Basil Hutley recalled the names of a number of well-known families prominent in the commercial world. Transport and recreation time were available for middle-

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4. Holiday caravans at Saint Osyth beach in the early 1950s class families but not for working-class families, for whom holidays-with-pay legislation had yet to take effect. The area had a comparatively high-class image, so that increasing numbers aspired to have holiday accommodation there, and despite the destruction of the huts during the war its popularity was unaffected. Workingclass families augmented the former middle-class holidaymakers after 1945, the prewar image of seaside peace close to home being a powerful draw to the post-war families in search of holiday escape. Second, holiday caravans were an attractive alternative to huts or plotland structures, but they were not popular with the local authority. One might assume that these highly portable, visually uniform units would be attractive to planners as a viable and aesthetically pleasing alternative to plotland development, but interviews suggest that this was not so. Indeed, the founders of two of the caravan sites at Saint Osyth Beach felt that they built their businesses in spite of the local authority and with virtually no support; they had to fight for every development, despite the contribution to the local economy in terms of employment and spending. A final factor is nevertheless very clear: the popularity of the holiday caravans among the public, rather than the planners, during the post-war period was considerable, evidenced by a period of almost continual steady growth at Saint Osyth Beach.43 The pre-war plotland huts were the origins of the post-war consolidation of the area as holiday resort. In the 1930s the plotlanders identified and exploited its assets with the help and encouragement of the landowners, its suitability and appeal became recognised, and after the war its popularity was rekindled and rapidly developed. The replacement of huts with caravans was an important factor in this process, for the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act severely restricted plotland development but did not at this stage hinder the establishment of caravan sites. This stretch of the Tendring coast had much in common both physically and economically with Canvey Island. Most was below sea level, and of little use agriculturally, and in both areas plotland development was established during the inter-war period. But whereas areas such as Canvey, close to

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London, saw post-war residential development that swamped the ‘resort’, Saint Osyth Beach saw its nascent inter-war resort status confirmed and enhanced.

Point Clear, Lee-over-Sands and Wrabness Point Clear is the peninsula where St Osyth Creek enters the Colne estuary. In 1923 this area was still agricultural, save for a Martello tower and a disused battery, Blockhouse Wick Farm, and a couple of houses on Point Clear Road, the main access from Saint Osyth. Within a decade, though, it was being targeted for holiday development: in 1933 plans were submitted to TRDC by John Winter for the Point Clear Bay Holiday Camp dated 1933,44 and some 49 other applications for timber-framed buildings, chalets, beach huts, shops and even petrol pumps were successfully submitted to the council between 1932 and 1938, many by a company called Beehive Engineering Ltd. and naming ‘Point Clear Bay Estates’ as the builders.45 The developments at Jaywick may have influenced entrepreneurs and speculators seeking to exploit the growing popularity of this stretch of coastline. After the war, the promotion of Point Clear as a resort continued, but with the curtailment of plotland development under the 1947 Act caravans began to dominate. A large site was established which now dominates the area. The remaining plotlands are more residential than holiday homes but are similar in many ways to the structures at Jaywick, ‘locked down’ as they are by the local authority with regard to further development. Development at Lee Wick could have linked Point Clear and Saint Osyth Beach to create a continuous strip of holiday development along the southern coast of the Tendring peninsula, but it did not materialise. In 1923 it was undeveloped semiagricultural marshland, and though the area was subsequently considered for holiday camp and plotland use, there was little take-up or physical development. Some evidence suggests that developers in the mid-1930s viewed Lee Wick as having potential for the sort of activity already proving successful at Jaywick, Saint Osyth Beach and Point Clear, and that the local authority was happy to allow holiday bungalow and caravan park development.46 Today little remains, for by 1939 Lee Wick was not sufficiently well-established as a resort to have continuing momentum after the war. As there had been no time for caravan parks to develop, the area was effectively finished as a resort and the land was sold in 1960 for return to agricultural use. The Smith family of Wigborough Wick Farm now farms there: Guy Smith recalls that in the 1930s there was a plan to create another Jaywick on the western side of the marsh, somewhere I have an old map with 50 acres of development looking like the Jaywick blueprint with lots of little plots. I don’t know much about this but Dad said it was the idea of some ‘no good, upper class type out of London’. The map with this proposal on is dated 1939 so one suspects we have Hitler and the Town and Country Planning Act to thank for saving us from another Jaywick. My guess is Wall Street is possibly the only bit that happened. We bought the land involved in 1960 from ‘Healthy Lee over Sands Estates’47 Inter-war Ordnance Survey maps show few changes in this rural part of the Stour estuary, but although the 1923 one shows the beach at Wrabness without any buildings, subsequent editions show a line of small, irregular structures just above the high water mark. Often incorrectly described as beach huts, these are in fact plotland huts. The eighty or so structures are holiday homes, mostly built after 1926, with full overnight accommodation and facilities. Secondary sources claim that the first hut there was built around 1926, after the landowner, the farmer William Garnham, gave permission. Garnham would, if approached by people whom he considered suitable,

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allow them to build a hut on the foreshore at an annual ground rent of ten shillings.48 Remarkably, the Wrabness beach colony has endured unchanged since its establishment (see front cover). A number of factors account for this. First, Wrabness is a very discrete location that has never had ‘resort’ status, and there are few local holiday amenities. Whereas Jaywick, Point Clear and Saint Osyth Beach are close to the major resort of Clacton-on-Sea and are natural destinations for holidaymakers, Wrabness is in quiet isolation away from the usual holiday destinations. The parish council currently holds the view that the majority of residents oppose further built tourist development or more tourist attractions in and around the parish such as more holiday huts or static caravans. Residents consider the parish is suited to quieter visitor activities that do not impact adversely on the rural environment such as bird watching, walking, rambling and sailing49 Further, the chalets at Wrabness Beach were not the brainchild of a commercial developer, but were built by their occupants on marginal foreshore before the 1947 Act, so there has never been pressure to sell and develop more plots. The strip of foreshore is narrow and short, and there was never any possibility of expansion. Residential development could not have been viable either, given the precarious location of the chalets—many of them being built on ‘stilts’ on shingle close to the high water line. Few people know of the Wrabness Beach plotlands apart from the occupants and the local authorities: they are not mentioned in any wider study of the plotlands phenomenon, and this has helped the colony maintain a level of exclusivity unprecedented within the district and beyond. Writing in The Times in 2004, John Price gave some idea of the cost of such properties: ‘My brother and his wife moved from London to Suffolk to be nearer their hut. It is at

5. Holiday homes at Bentley Country Park, near Saint Osyth 2009; although on a caravan site, these structures are more akin to the plotland chalets at Wrabness or the pre-war huts at Saint Osyth Beach

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Wrabness, with good sailing waters and beautiful views across the Stour estuary to Suffolk. There are 80 huts there and 40 people are on the waiting list. One that sold for £22,000 eight years ago was originally a funeral hearse that got extended. Prices now are put at £30,000 to £60,000, depending on size, but not much is ever available. They have no mains services, and council tax is about £400 for just seven months a year. No overnights in winter’.50 Hut owners claim that prices for the huts, when they do come up for sale, have risen considerably since 2004 to a figure in excess of £100,000 for the larger chalets. By comparison, a property in the Brooklands area of Jaywick could be bought for around £52,000 in December 2009.51 Nevertheless, despite the isolation of Wrabness, and the views of the parish council, at the eastern end of the beach chalets, slightly inland, there is a small but well-maintained caravan site. It seems that once an area had at least some element of plotland development, it would normally, even after the 1947 Act, attract development in which caravans either augmented or replaced the makeshift, self-built holiday homes. Wrabness, despite its isolation and exclusivity, was not immune from this phenomenon.

Holiday plotlands and caravans: an overview In Tendring, therefore, a link can be identified between inter-war plotland developments and post-war caravan sites. Some plotland areas became fully residential, but much was either replaced or extended by holiday caravans, notably at Saint Osyth Beach, Point Clear, Jaywick and Wrabness. Although some caravan sites did not originate in such a way, those that did were among the earliest and largest in the district. Of the 37 caravan sites identified in Tendring, eight are on or close to plotland locations and a further nineteen within five miles.52 Thus, 73 per cent of post-war caravan parks in Tendring were within five miles of plotland sites. Thirteen of these were at Clacton, a tourist resort in its own right and an obvious location for caravan site development. Thus, plotland developments before 1939 played a significant part in establishing the resort status of their immediate localities. At Saint Osyth Beach, increasing numbers of casual visitors in the 1920s prompted the development of the area, characterised by holiday huts and their middle-class family owners. This created an appealing resort area that would attract further visitors. As a consequence of the removal of huts during the war and the restrictions of the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act, caravans later became dominant. Point Clear saw a transition from prewar plotland development to a large post-war caravan site while at Jaywick, after further plotland expansion was curtailed, a major caravan site was established. Even Wrabness, discrete and exclusive, acquired a caravan site after the consolidation of its unique plotland development. The experience at Lee Wick shows that this process would not be guaranteed: only the areas with plotlands dating from the late 1920s and early 1930s attained permanence as resorts. The 1947 Act, though it terminated further plotland development of the kind that flourished in the inter-war years, did not diminish the status of the plotland sites as resorts, since caravans were not initially subject to the Act and therefore became the replacement accommodation. It also had no effect on the formation of what has, wrongly, been designated a plotland development at the Bel-Air Chalet estate at Saint Osyth Beach. By the late 1930s the two evolving forms of holiday camp were attaining the height of popularity. The ‘pioneer camps’, descendants of the late-nineteenth century sites founded by socialist, philanthropic and religious groups, were gaining popularity with working families. The new commercial camps such as Butlins and (after 1946) Pontins were also gaining popularity, the Butlins camp at Clacton being opened in 1938. Of the

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two, this became the dominant form in the post-war period, attracting a populace weary of ‘make do and mend’ austerity. But the forerunners of the post-war holiday caravan camps in Tendring were the inter-war plotland holiday homes, for individual and family holidays. Fully-serviced caravans capable of sleeping up to ten individuals, with gardens and other amenities, are now commonplace, but they are a far cry from the post-war two or four berth units that had no toilets or electricity and, more importantly, did not stand in a plot owned by the occupants. In Tendring the great majority of private holiday caravans still stand on a plot rented from the site operator, although it can be argued that the caravan owners treat such land as their ‘rightful plot’.53 Today’s static holiday caravan is closely linked to the concept of the pre-war plotlands. Their predecessors in the 1940s and 1950s were reasonably mobile, but by the mid-1980s caravans on holiday parks were becoming more chalet-like in appearance and structure. Owners of these units saw their investment as ‘home from home’, with a strong sense of permanence, enclosed by fences, with well-tended gardens, surfaced parking and small outbuildings adding to that character. Despite the 1947 planning legislation, the process has ‘retreating’ to earlier plotland ideals and appearances. It has been suggested that in Tendring a proportion of the plotlanders were from affluent, middle-class backgrounds. This is supported by testimony from the Hutley family, and by the evidence of planning applications (especially at Saint Osyth Beach, Point Clear and Wrabness) which that suggest that the huts were often supplied and erected by a third-party contractor, who was paid to deal with the planning procedures.54 This contrasts with the hand-built, improvised structures constructed in the immediate post-war period at Canvey and Laindon, often on very cheap plots of land, without any formal planning consent. The inter-war years were characterised by diversity not just in social and economic conditions, but also in attitudes to leisure and the perception of rural and coastal Britain. As motor transport became more widely available, the young middle-class ventured away from urban centres to pursue leisure activities, prompting adverse reaction from traditionalists. The growing disapproval of organisations such as the Council for the Protection of Rural England and individuals such as Professor C.E.M. Joad (who, writing in 1937, raged against ‘hordes of hikers cackling insanely in the woods’ and ‘people, wherever there is water, upon sea shores or upon river banks, lying in every attitude of undressed and inelegant squalor’)55 is reflected in the tone of the survey of the East Anglian coast. Yet a considerable proportion of the 1930s’ middle-class wanted to motor through Britain, augmenting growing numbers of working-class individuals, and to visit the seaside or, better still, own a holiday retreat there. These were the first plotlanders at Wrabness, Saint Osyth Beach and Point Clear. Jaywick, marketed directly to Londoners, had a mixture of upper working-class and middle-class holidaymakers as its first occupants. The process was accelerated in the 1930s by the launch of new campaigns aimed at marketing goods and services directly to working-class households, including the concept of home ownership via mortgage schemes. As Scott found, such was the success of this particular campaign that the 1930s witnessed the fastest rate of growth in working-class owner-occupation during the twentieth century. This further promoted the growth of marketing-led consumerism, particularly among the working class, including holiday plots for sale.56 With the improvements in rail travel, distance from the capital was a key factor. The plotlands at places such as Canvey, Laindon and Dunton were within easy reach of the capital and became the destination for those escaping the bombing in 1940-1944 and for working families after the war. Tendring was, until road improvements in the 1960s, less accessible, but as Clacton-

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on-Sea grew in popularity as a resort, including the arrival of Butlins just before the war, the impact was increasingly felt here too. What little remains of the Tendring plotlands presents a more mixed picture, which has little in common with other areas. The suburbanisation of former holiday plotlands such as Canvey, Laindon, Dunton, Shoreham and Peacehaven only occurred in Tendring at part of the Jaywick Sands Estate and even here the Brooklands and Grasslands sections remain, albeit in a run-down state. The plotland huts and bungalows at Saint Osyth Beach and Point Clear were largely replaced with expansive static caravan sites, and with the exception of those at Wrabness (largely as a result of its continuity of ownership and usage, and therefore exclusivity) the remaining postwar plotlanders in Tendring were more representative of the working class. Tendring’s resort towns—Clacton-on-Sea, Frinton, Walton-on-the-Naze and Dovercourt—did not directly experience plotland development, for although some informal holiday bungalow colonies did emerge these were quickly transformed into formal residential development. The beaches at these towns did witness the growth of beach-huts, evolving from bathing machines and becoming a considerable problem for local authorities and traders alike. As public morality with regard to bathing and the exposure of flesh relaxed, the bathing machine became obsolete and the beach hut took its place. Frinton, exclusive and genteel at all costs, was the last place to relinquish the bathing machine but even it had embraced the beach hut by 1914. Clacton witnessed the growth and spread of beach huts and ‘mackintosh bathers’, but did not welcome them. Street and beach traders, centred in Pier Gap, saw loss of income as beach hut owners and occupiers became increasingly independent and provided for their own needs in their hut. The local authority was also increasingly denied the income from the hire of costumes, towels, deck chairs and places to change.57 The beach hut as a significant aspect of the seaside environment (at odds with the commercial aspects of the seafront) has much in common with plotland holiday huts. There are important distinctions between the casual day-tripper or short-term visitor, and the returning, independent family or group who have gained a stake in the culture and environment of the seaside resort but, as Chase observes, ‘for regular hut users, the significance of beach huts lies in their incorporation into regular summer rituals of domesticity and strictly defined social interaction, thereby reinforcing notions of class and national identity’.58 This may apply in some respects to the interwar holiday plotlanders in areas such as Saint Osyth Beach and Wrabness. The marketing of holiday plots and the concept of holiday-home ownership first (in Tendring at least) appealed to the middle-classes, but with the growth in workingclass consumerism it was only a matter of time before an affordable, private holiday home by the sea became a significant part of post-war patterns of mass leisure in Britain. The 1947 legislation marked the end of the holiday plotlands, marginalising the few that remained, but the same need was filled by the new caravan sites. NOTES AND REFERENCES 1

2 3

Details such as these, although corroborated in secondary and primary sources, come from my own experience and memories of such structures near the holiday camp at Saint Osyth beach, close to which I grew up and where I worked for several years. D. Hardy and C. Ward, Arcadia for all: the legacy of a makeshift landscape (Mansell, 1984) 4-25 Deanna Walker (interviewed 16 Sep 2009)

affirms that the plotlanders of Laindon near Basildon felt that the appeal was essentially pastoral: a ‘step-up from camping’, an escape from the urban environment and the freedom to own land. She spent most weekends and summer holidays with her parents at their plotland chalet at Laindon Hills, which they owned for over thirty years (many aunts and uncles also owned plots): see D. Walker,

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4

5

6

7 8 9

10

11

12 13 14

15 16 17 18

19

20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

THE LOCAL HISTORIAN/MAY 2012 Basildon Plotlands: the Londoner’s rural retreat (Phillimore, 2001). Essex Record Office [ERO] D/DS 365/1/1, 471/10; D/DGs 166/45, B374, E142, T49-51, 61, 64, 69, 289, 290, 318, 333, 344, 347, 351; TS 354/1, 605/2-5; T/P 206/3; see also Hardy and Ward, Arcadia, 116-117. A contemporary Daily Times article, cited in H. Newby, Green and Pleasant Land? (Hutchinson, 1979). The phrase ‘True Plotland’ has been used here to identify these areas, differentiating them from larger areas of land that were purchased, divided up into plots, and sold for formal residential housing schemes. Information on plotland locations mainly from Hardy and Ward, Arcadia, 5 Tendring District Council, Tendring District Local Plan (2007) 185-187 I am grateful to Dr. Guy Smith, of Wigborough Wick Farm and the National Farmers Union, for much insight and detail on land use and development at the Saint Osyth Marshlands. M. Lyons, The Story of Jaywick Sands Estate (Phillimore, 2005) 7; H. Eiden (ed), Victoria County History of Essex vol.9 Texts in Progress (Interwar Resorts) [September 2009] 9-10 Clacton Times and East Essex Gazette [CTEEG] 18 May 1929, and The Stedman Archive in Clacton Town Library [CTL TSA] ERO: D/UCt M2/7/1 CTL TSA The lake was unfortunately incapable of holding water and all attempts to keep it full failed: CTEEG 27 July 1929 and Eiden, VCH, 10. Hardy and Ward, Arcadia, 142 ERO: D/UCt M2/16/6 CTL TSA Lyons, Jaywick; I. Packer, ‘Unemployment, taxation and housing: the urban land question in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Britain’, in M. Cragoe and P. Readman (eds.), The Land Question in Britain, 1750–1950 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010) 202-203 George Lansbury in 1934, cited in M. Weiner, English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit (Cambridge UP, 1981) Eiden, VCH, 11 CTEEG 6 Aug 1932. CTL TSA CTEEG 7 Apr 1934 Lyons, Jaywick, 37: ‘Foff’s Corner’ was erected close to the golf links, facing the sea. ibid., 46 CTL TSA The National Archives: HLG 92/81: general report by J.A. Steers ERO: C1544 Box 9, miscellaneous documents CTEEG 27 Oct 1950

30 31 32 33

34

35 36 37 38 39 40

41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48

49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56

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58

CTL FSA ERO: D/UCt M2/8/10 ERO: C1544 Box 9, miscellaneous documents The Brooklands and Grasslands sections were the subject of an Article 4 Direction, under the Town and Country Planning General Development Order, 1973. The 2007 Tendring District Local Plan (Policy CL15) affirms the strict developmental controls placed upon the area: Local Plan 185-187. I am grateful to Basil Hutley of Cockett Wick Farm and Hutleys Caravan Park for information on his and his father’s activities at Saint Osyth beach before and after the war (interviewed 23 December 2009). ibid. ERO: D/UCt Pb1/6341 ERO: D/RT Pb 1/20–43 Hutley interview ERO: D/F 33/30/1-68 Details of planning consent are almost nonexistent: ERO has no records for the Bel-Air chalets. I am grateful to John Stiff Estate Agents of Saint Osyth for information, and TDC Planning Department for data. TDC Local Plan, 4.167 ibid., 4.168 Hutley interview, and my father Terry O’Dell ERO: D/RT Pb1/3810 ERO: D/RT Pb1/3469-5723, 104 ERO: D/RT Pb1/5420, Plan No. 5420; D/RT Pb1/5797 Smith interview R. Pattle, ‘Brewanss’, or a history of Wrabness Foreshore, 1920 – 1977 (Holbrook, 1997) 13-14; K. Rickwood, Stour Secrets (David Cleveland, 2008) 65–69 Wrabness Parish Plan (2008) 7 Tourism John Price, ‘Shack Tactics’ The Times 9 Apr 2004 www.houseprices.co.uk/jaywick, accessed Jan/Feb 2010 National Association of Caravan Owners survey I am grateful to Steve Munro of NACO for confirmation of details such as these. For example ERO: D/RT Pb1/2217 C. Joad, quoted in R. Colls, Identity of England (Oxford UP, 2002) 302 P. Scott, ‘Marketing mass home ownership and the creation of the modern working-class consumer in inter-war Britain’, Business History vol.50 no.1 (Jan 2008) 4-25 L. Chase, ‘Public beaches and private beach huts: a study of inter-war Clacton and Frinton, Essex’, in J.K. Walton (ed.), Histories of tourism: representation, identity and conflict (Clevedon, 2005) ibid.

SEAN O’DELL gained his Masters’s Degree in Local and Regional History with distinction from the University of Cambridge, and is researching for his PhD at the University of Essex. He lectures at the Colchester School of Art, Colchester Institute and part-time at the Centre for Local History, University of Essex.

Country carriers revisited BARRIE TRINDER

Carriers’ carts were familiar sights in the market towns and rural communities of Victorian England and on the turnpike roads and country lanes that linked them. They followed accustomed routes behind horses plodding ponderously and supposedly without guidance. Carriers arrived at advertised urban destinations around noon, and returned home with passengers and parcels before their neighbours retired for the night. But although carrying may have seemed timeless, in reality it belonged to a distinct phase of English history, of which other features were turnpike roads, Wesleyan circuits and country banks. This study takes further the analysis of carrying published in the 1970s by the late Professor Alan Everitt, examining the emergence of the trade, the economic functions and social status of carriers, and the evidence that carrying throws upon the influence of towns.1 This paper analyses their importance, and the operation of their services, using as its casestudy the major market centre of Banbury, Oxfordshire. Country carrying and trade directories emerged contemporaneously and were interdependent. Directories can be inconsistent, and most were published at random frequencies, but they remain the best source for the study of carriers. Before 1840 most provide information only about towns but thereafter the publications of William White, Samuel Bagshaw and Isaac Slater, and later the Post Office Directories and those of Kelly & Co, not only list carriers visiting towns, but also include them in village entries (which may name their by-employments) and in countywide lists of trades.2 The extent of carrying activity in directory lists may be inflated by duplication. Villages may appear under two headings—thus, Earl Shilton and Shilton (Earl), or Long Sutton and Sutton (Long)—and some directories list all the possible ‘calls’ made by a carrier along his or her route and connections made on journeys to other towns on subsequent days. The calls were therefore points on journeys, not separate services. For example, Kelly’s directories in the 1890s detail more than a thousand weekly calls made by carriers from Oxford, but analysis of the list of 1895 shows the true picture was that 108 carriers made only 258 weekly journeys. John Weston of the Red Lion, Steeple Aston, left the Plough in Cornmarket Street every Saturday afternoon and nominally served places as distant as Chipping Warden and Great Rollright: 27 advertised ‘calls’ depended on his single journey. Albert Croxford, grocer and carrier of Chinnor, attended the Crown in Cornmarket Street on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and served 30 places either along his route from the Chilterns to Oxford or accessible through his journeys to Marlow on Mondays, Thame on Tuesdays and High Wycombe on Fridays. Kelly’s 1904 directory for Norfolk details more than 500 weekly services from Norwich, but only 62 carriers actually visited the city, making 146 weekly journeys. The figures quoted in this study have been calculated by identifying each individual and counting his or her actual departures, regardless of the numbers of calls purported to be made. 135

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The annual lists for Banbury, published by the Rusher family from 1796, identify the town’s carriers and help to illuminate the fortunes of the trade nationally.3 William Rusher (circa 1759-1849), was master of the Banbury Bluecoat School but resigned in 1792 to trade as a printer, bookseller, hatter and keeper of the town’s Stamp Office. In 1795 he published a short Banbury List, distributed free of charge. The following year he added information about carriers, and subsequently brought out the publication annually. His son John Golby Rusher (1784-1877), after an apprenticeship with an Oxford printer, printed the Banbury Lists and from 1832 appended a classified trade directory. Rusher’s handwritten emendations on the text of the 1841 edition, in a bound volume presented to his friend Henry Stone in 1875, are evidence of the accuracy of the information. J.G. Rusher’s daughter published the List and Directory from 1877 but in 1896 sold the title to the newspaper proprietor and historian William Potts (1868-1947) who produced it until 1906. Rusher’s Lists chart the rise, fluctuations and initial decline of country carrying. Data from the lists has been aligned in this study with material from county directories, census enumerators’ returns, and memoirs, and is set in context with evidence from other towns.4

Beginnings Since men first lived in towns traders have carried thence the produce of the countryside and returned with the manufactures of urban craftsmen and merchandise from afar, but ‘country carrying’ in nineteenth-century England had distinctive features. Carriers were village-based traders who made their livings by conveying goods and passengers to and from market towns, at least once a week, usually making the return journey in a single working day. They were usually called ‘country carriers’, but sometimes ‘market carriers’, ‘village carriers’ or, in Berkshire, ‘errand carriers’. In census returns the term ‘carrier’ usually refers to a country carrier. ‘Carters’ and ‘waggoners’, with whom they were grouped in aggregated occupational totals, were usually farm workers or the employees of millers or quarry owners. Long-distance wagon services between London and provincial towns were established before 1700 and have been analysed by Dorian Gerhold.5 Their numbers increased as roads were improved during the eighteenth century. From Banbury in 1796 there were five weekly services by three different routes to London, four wagons went to Birmingham, and a cart called weekly en route between Oxford and Coventry. Kendal was linked by wagons with Carlisle, York, Newcastle, Sheffield and Manchester. Wagons from Salisbury went to Bristol, Plymouth, Oxford, Southampton and Gosport. Provincial trade directories from the 1780s provide evidence of these regular patterns of road transport, but they also reveal traces of complementary movements, daily journeys into towns by village-based carriers using carts rather than wagons and usually returning on the same days. Sadler’s Hampshire directory of 1784, for example, advertises that Rook’s cart left Bishop’s Waltham for Havant every Tuesday morning. The earliest evidence about country carrying that is in any respect comprehensive comes from the Universal British Directory [UBD], ‘a fund of useful and important information equally interesting to the Nobleman, the Gentleman and Man of Business’, published in London in five volumes from 1791.6 The directory is a disordered accumulation of data, uncertain in its chronology and sometimes inaccurate. It refers, for example, to the cotton manufactory established by Sir James

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(recte Richard) Arkwright at Cranford (i.e. Cromford) near Matlock. Semi-digested nuggets of information include demographic statistics from the registers of Honiton and Liverpool. The compilers remarked of Doncaster, ‘we think it unnecessary to particularize the stage coaches or wagons as they are passing through almost every hour of the day’, which appears to negate the purpose of a directory. The first volumes are concerned with London and information about the provinces in later volumes dates from the mid-1790s. The citizens of Shrewsbury were said to be looking forward to the olive branch of peace and to the completion of navigations, suggesting publication after the outbreak of war in 1793, and before the opening of the Shrewsbury Canal in 1797. Rowland Burdon’s iron bridge at Sunderland had been ‘begun some years ago’ (in fact in December 1792) but remained incomplete, indicating a date before its formal opening in August 1796. For all its faults the UBD provides positive information about transport that illuminates an emerging pattern of country carrying. It reveals that carriers providing essentially local services already travelled to many towns, although in most listings they are not distinguished from regional operators. From Downton in Wiltshire two carriers took passengers and goods six miles to Salisbury on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, while James Brown’s cart travelled ten miles from Wem to Shrewsbury on Wednesdays and Saturdays. The list of ‘Carriers to and from Leicester every Saturday’ totals 40 departures mostly to nearby villages, such as Bosworth, Bruntingthorpe and Wigston, while stage wagons serving Loughborough, Melton Mowbray and Nottingham appear in a separate table. About 30 carriers travelling to Bury St Edmunds include some from nearby villages such as Hartest, Walsham-leWillows and Barnham, while Exeter was visited by carriers from Dawlish, Exmouth and Honiton. Some entries in the UBD suggest that country carrying emerged from practices predating the improvement of roads, by which village carriers travelled to towns, where they spent one or two nights before returning home, making overnight stops en route. Carriers from mid-Wales traditionally passed Wednesday and Friday nights at Welshpool en route to and from the Thursday markets in Shrewsbury. Joshua Gear of Barton-upon-Humber sent one or two carts every Tuesday to Louth, returning on Thursdays. Three carriers from Attleborough set out on the 14-mile journey to Norwich every Friday evening and returned 24 hours later. Thomas Crawford, ‘common carrier’ of Easingwold, travelled 12 miles every Tuesday to York, where he made connection with a London wagon and returned after the arrival of the return service from the capital on Thursdays. The UBD acknowledged that Banbury was the best market within 30 miles but listed no carriers. Rusher’s first list published in 1796 named sixteen, who made 34 weekly journeys, suggesting that carrying to Banbury was only beginning. His printing office was in the Market Place, where many carriers terminated their journeys, and he obviously understood the trade. The pattern of expansion revealed in his lists appears credible: by 1800, 39 carriers, 20 of whom specifically used carts, were making approximately 61 journeys per week; by 1805 65 carriers made almost a hundred journeys; 133 carriers made 227 journeys in 1821; and by mid-century more than 150 made in excess of 400 journeys. The imprecision of some information provided by Rusher and the UBD reinforces the impression that carrying networks were emerging in the 1790s. Rusher’s 1796 list states that carriers from Bloxham and Cropredy travelled to Banbury ‘almost every day’, while the cart from Eynsham journeyed to the town ‘most Thursdays’. In 1808 Humphris from Greatworth travelled on Thursdays and sometimes on Mondays. The

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Table 1 Carriers to Banbury (from information in Rusher’s Lists and Kelly’s Directories) year

1796 1800 1805 1815 1821 1831 1841 1851 1861 1871 1881 1891 1901 1906 1907 (Kelly) 1911 (Kelly) 1939 (Kelly) 1950 (Kelly)

individual carriers

journeys per week

women carriers

farmers/sons of farmers

16 39 65 94 133 173 187 189 187 167 168 166 162 145 123 121 21 16

34 61 97 157 227 353 379 427 387 396 400 410 385 365 356 305 54 33

7 7 6 5 5 7 5 5 10 -

13 8 10 8 24 11 -

ag. labs shopkeepers in household 15 5 17 10 35 11 23 15 18 8 15 10 14 15 -

publicans

1 3 15 19 8 13 11 -

UBD listed regular journeys to York from Kirbymoorside but revealed that ‘Richard Wrightson goes occasionally to Malton’. John Chapman from Whittlesey made four journeys a week to Ramsey but ‘not regularly’, and a cart left Much Wenlock for Shrewsbury ‘most days in summer’. Pigot’s directories in the 1820s and ‘30s provide a second national view of country carrying. By the 1820s significant numbers of carriers were travelling to the principal English towns, suggesting that the trade had grown at a rate commensurate with that revealed by Rusher’s closel y-observed Banbury lists. Substantial numbers of carriers served Chesterfield, Derby, Mansfield, Loughborough, Market Harborough, Melton Mowbray and Nottingham, and there was busy carrying activity in industrial Lancashire. In 1830 Reading was linked with 74 rural communities, Newbury with 37, Abingdon with 30 and Wantage with 15. Rusher reveals that by the 1820s carriers who served Banbury were also visiting such towns as Bicester, Chipping Norton and Woodstock.

Mature networks Country carriers operated ubiquitously across England. They are portrayed as unremarkable features of rural and market town society in Warwickshire by George Eliot, in Dorset by Hardy, in Norfolk by Dickens, in Wiltshire by W.H. Hudson, and in more detail by R.D. Blackmore in Cripps the Carrier (a novel set in Beckley, Oxfordshire).7 In Cornwall in 1856 nine village carriers made 17 journeys per week into St Austell, and 26 made 60 weekly visits to Truro. In Northumberland in 1858 56 carriers made 75 weekly journeys to Alnwick, while twenty made 41 journeys into Morpeth. There were almost 50 departures a week from Carlisle in the 1840s and 50s, some crossing the Scottish border to Annan and Lockerbie.

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The towns with the largest numbers of carriers and visits around 1850 were Nottingham, to which 238 carriers made 559 weekly journeys, and Leicester, served in 1855 by 258 carriers making 489 journeys per week.8 Carrying services to the largest industrial cities were components of more complex patterns of short-distance transport. Leeds in 1847 was visited by 132 carriers making 326 journeys a week, but coaches went from the city to such places as Ilkley, Wetherby, Heckmondwike and Dewsbury, while omnibuses served Bradford, Kirkstall, Morley and elsewhere. Birmingham in 1850 was visited by 114 carriers making 327 journeys per week, but omnibuses plying from four coach offices and ten public houses made about 80 daily departures to the Black Country and to Lichfield, Coleshill and Bromsgrove. Five canal packets per day went to Wolverhampton and Tipton, and two companies offered regional carrying services for small parcels. Manchester in 1853 was visited by 80 country carriers, making 281 weekly journeys, but most transport needs were met by other means. Coaches went to Bolton, Buxton, Macclesfield and Oldham, while omnibuses plied to the suburbs, with departures every 15 minutes to Cheetham Hill and every half hour to Old Trafford. Ten canal packet boats departed daily for Runcorn, Worsley and Warrington. Gore’s directory of Liverpool in 1853 included a list of ‘Country Carriers’ in which only 12 individuals made 49 weekly journeys. The city’s links with its hinterland were maintained by specialist hauliers, and by the Anderton Co and the Bridgewater Trustees, who operated by road, rail and water. Hull in 1851 was visited by 193 carriers making 312 journeys per week, but its local and regional transport services were diverse: 26 carriers crossed the Humber on ferries, but market boats made 20 journeys a week to the city and a warehouse at the Humber Tavern served as a reception point for the goods they handled. Coaches linked Hull with Hornsea, Cottingham, Beverley and other towns up to 15 miles distant, while steam packets and sailing vessels served towns and villages along the navigable tributaries of the Humber. Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1858 was visited by 98 carriers making 159 weekly journeys, but coaches made more than 50 departures a week to such places as Chester-le-Street, Scotswood and Shotley Bridge, while sailing vessels and steamers went to Berwick-upon-Tweed, Blaydon and North Shields. Bristol had an exceptionally large hinterland, an inheritance from its eighteenth-century role as metropolis of the west. Carriers based in the city offered services across South Wales, through the southern Cotswolds, as far east as Berkshire and throughout the southern counties from Portsmouth to Plymouth, and by the 1850s used rail as well as road and water transport. Nevertheless country carriers made more than 200 weekly journeys into the city. A punctilious carrier might acquire an exemplary reputation and gain most of the trade from a particular village, but it was difficult for a country-based business to expand further. Some town-based concerns fulfilled some of the functions of country carriers. John Bletchley’s warehouse in Thomas Street, Bristol, was the focus in the 1850s for services to Southampton, Exeter and London, but also to such places as Malmesbury, Minchinhampton and Wotton-under-Edge, that might have been served by country carriers. A carrier called Robinson by 1890 was offering services from Durham to villages in a circuit extending from Sunderland to Barnard Castle and Staindrop. Daily journeys from the framework knitting village of Ruddington were provided in 1891 by the Ruddington Carrying Company but the business served only one other village on its route into Nottingham. Most country carriers ended their outward journeys at public houses. A Huntingdonshire directory of 1854 remarked of St Ives that ‘The inns and public

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Table 2 The principal carrier towns c.1850, in order of number of incoming journeys per week town

directory

carriers

journeys/week

Nottingham

PO 1855

238

559

Leicester

PO 1855

258

489

Banbury

Rusher 1851

189

427

Birmingham

White 1850

114

327

Leeds

White 1847

132

326

Hull

White 1851

193

312

Manchester

Whellan 1853

80

281

Norwich

White 1854

135

263

Coventry

White 1850

100

258

Reading

Kelly 1848

100

233

Northampton

PO 1854

114

226

Bristol

Slater 1852-53

72

217

Exeter

White 1850

84

213

Bury St Edmunds

Wright 1844

98

204

Lincoln

White 1856

127

204

Maidstone

PO 1855

71

178

Worcester

PO 1850

95

170

Colchester

PO 1869

49

167

Bedford

PO 1854

79

161

Salisbury

PO 1850

94

160

Newcastle-upon-Tyne

PO 1858

98

159

York

White 1851

118

158

Newark

PO 1855

117

158

Newbury

PO 1854

79

146

Bath

Slater 1852-53

55

141

Derby

PO 1855

61

131

Cambridge

PO 1869

73

116

King’s Lynn

White 1854

54

116

Guildford

PO 1855

39

112

Boston

White 1856

52

108

Chelmsford

PO 1869

49

107

Gloucester

PO 1856

45

106

houses are very numerous, supplying entertainment and shelter to the dealers, farmers and others who resort to the town on the market day, Monday’. Most calling places were old-established taverns, although six of St Ives’s 28 carriers in 1851 went to the unnamed beerhouse of John Ablett. Few hostelry yards could accommodate large numbers of carts, and the inns named in directories were places where consignments for carriers could safely be left, while carts were parked nearby. White’s Directory of York for 1895 describes such pubs as carriers’ ‘booking offices’. Some directories listed carriers’ starting points at particular locations in streets. Beverley carriers in 1893 stopped by the shops of Miss Fenwick, haberdasher or Hobson & Son, grocers. Each Saturday afternoon in the early 1890s 24 carriers departed from Parliament Street in central Nottingham. In Banbury in 1851 some 23 carriers called every Thursday at the Plough, whose modest yard could not possibly have accommodated them. By 1890 there was a fountain in nearby Cornhill from which

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horses could drink.9 W.H. Hudson observed carts in Salisbury ‘drawn up in rows on rows – carriers from little villages on the Bourne, the Avon, the Wylye, the Nadder, the Ebble, and from all over the Plain’.10 Carts in High Street, Banbury impeded the escape of the mayor when he was attacked by a cow one market day in October 1863.11 Few carriers made calls at premises other than pubs. Eight of the 49 visiting Abingdon in 1890 used the town’s temperance hotel, as did some carriers in Truro, Hexham and Oswestry, and six Chester carriers in 1902 travelled to a cocoa house in Foregate Street. A few terminated their journeys at Post Offices or railway stations.

Banbury’s network Banbury, at the centre of a fertile agricultural region but with a population of less than 9,000 in 1851, was one of the principal carrying centres in England. The number of carriers visiting the town increased from 173 to 189 between 1831 and 1851, and the number of weekly journeys from 353 to 427. Visits declined slightly to 387 in 1871, but thereafter remained buoyant, and again exceeded 400 by 1891. After 1850 services to the largest cities diminished as other forms of transport proliferated, but in many areas carriers were as numerous in 1900 as they were 50 years previously. Management of the principal roads radiating from Banbury passed to turnpike trusts between 1744 and 1802.12 None of these roads was as busy as Watling Street passing through Stony Stratford and Towcester, nor was Banbury a significant focus for stagecoach routes. Improved turnpike roads were nevertheless important for regional and local traffic. Arthur Young remarked of Oxfordshire in 1813 that ‘when you are at one town, you have a turnpike road to every other town’.13 Their usefulness to local users was increased by the roads laid out following the numerous enclosure acts passed for north Oxfordshire and the southern parts of Warwickshire and Northamptonshire between 1758 and 1835.14 Carriers to towns like Banbury flourished because they were embedded in rural communities and enjoyed local knowledge that was inaccessible to town-based operators. They did not face the competition encountered by carriers visiting the great manufacturing cities. Banbury’s last stagecoach service ceased in 1853, omnibuses plied only between the railway station and local inns, and competition from market boats on waterways was modest: from Banbury there were only ever two or three departures a week along the canal to Oxford and Coventry. Railways were too inflexible to offer significant local competition although carrier services from places served directly by newly-opened lines tended to decline. In the 1850s services from Brackley to Banbury fell from eleven weekly to four; from Buckingham from six to two; and from nearby Cropredy from thirteen to six. Nevertheless railways usually stimulated trade, which was to the overall benefit of carriers. The carriers who travelled to Banbury can be divided into four categories. First, from large villages no more than four miles distant, and with populations in excess of a thousand, there were carriers most of whom journeyed exclusively to Banbury. Two or three from each village provided up to eighteen weekly services throughout the nineteenth century. Second, carriers from small market towns, including Brackley, Bicester, Chipping Norton, Daventry, Shipston-on-Stour and Southam (between nine and 20 miles away) usually provided two or three services a week each to Banbury and went on other days to Oxford, Northampton, Warwick or Coventry. John Mace of Chipping Norton took his van in 1854 to Banbury on Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays and to Oxford, Burford, Moreton-in-Marsh and Stow-on-the-Wold on other days. The third and largest group comprised carriers from villages between four and

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twelve miles distant, who usually went to Banbury two or three times a week and provided one or two weekly services to other towns. The final category comprised carriers from peripheral villages between twelve and twenty miles away who usually travelled to Banbury only for the Thursday market. Banbury was a less important destination for such carriers than Oxford, Northampton or Coventry, which they served on other days. There were many fluctuations in services from the peripheral villages, and some of the most distant places had connections with Banbury for only a few years.

Modus operandi Revenue came from several sources. Poultry, eggs, butter, cheese, fruit and vegetables were delivered to retailers, to wholesalers for despatch to distant destinations or, as portrayed in Johnny Town Mouse, to householders. Connections were made with national freight carriers by road, water or rail. In 1805 three Banbury carriers called at the canal wharf and another three at the warehouse of a London waggoner. Carriers also took commissions from country people to shopkeepers whose errand boys and girls delivered ordered goods to their calling points to be loaded for the return journey. When visiting Oxford, Blackmore’s Zachary Cripps had ‘a great host of commissions at very small figures to execute in the Market’. Sydney Tyrrell recalled that carriers delivered hand tools, boots, ready-made clothing, fabrics for dresses, cough mixtures and pills, and piles of local newspapers, while Dorothy Loveday remembered that in the 1890s the village carrier delivered fish from Banbury to her home at Wardington.15 In 1842 William Cotton Risley, vicar of Deddington, ordered chairs in Oxford for an archdiaconal visitation that were delivered by carrier, and two years later sent a bath chair by carrier to his friend John Barber, lawyer of Adderbury.16 The carrier might also collect stock for his or her other businesses, groceries or haberdashery for village shops, yeast and flour for bakeries, seeds for smallholdings, or spirits for pubs. Carriers conveyed messages between farmers and their bankers, aiding what Audrey Taylor described the ‘spread of the banking habit’ around Banbury after 1800.17 Tyrrell recalled that farmers trusted William Cherry of Boddington to cash cheques for money to be paid out as wages. George Godson of Brailes and William Hayward of Heyford were among Banbury carriers who had accounts at Gilletts Bank. Most directories specify that carriers accommodated passengers. In Wiltshire W.H. Hudson enjoyed rising early to ride to Salisbury, overtaking carriers’ carts, ‘each with its little cargo of packages and women with baskets and an old man or two’,18 and in The Woodlanders Thomas Hardy described ‘a carrier’s van drawn by single horse … half-full of passengers, mostly women’. In 1870 Joseph Ashby’s mother reserved seats for herself and her son on the carrier’s cart returning from Banbury to Tysoe but, with other village families, the pair walked the outward journey along field paths.19 Walter Clark remembered that around 1900 young people from Adderbury enjoyed the three-mile journey to Banbury in Plackett’s carrier’s cart.20 A carrier required a reputation for probity and the multiplicity of small transactions that he undertook necessitated functional numeracy. Gertrude Jekyll recorded in 1904 that carriers in Surrey carried notebooks, but that ‘older men who could neither read nor write could remember and would fill their vans with their many commissions without forgetting anything or making a mistake’.21 Tyrrell contrasted the perpetually confused George Hunt of Eydon with the efficient William Cherry of Boddington. Carrying concerns were family businesses. Most carriers relied upon their wives to take in consignments for transit to towns or to hold commissioned goods until they were collected by customers. In The Old Curiosity Shop (1841), Kit collects a box from a

COUNTRY CARRIERS REVISITED

143

carrier’s house where he receives it from the carrier’s wife. Seven women in the Banbury region in 1851 (13 in 1871, 10 in 1881) were recorded on the census as ‘carriers’ wives’, indicating that enumerators recognised that they contributed to the business, as did the wives of butchers and home-based shoemakers. In 1861 Elizabeth, wife of Robert Fowler, carrier of Bloxham, is listed as ‘Carrier (assists)’. Some young men, such as 12-year-old George, son of the Enstone carrier Charles Summerton, were defined as ‘carriers’ sons’ and worked with their fathers, just as ‘farmers’ sons’ worked on the land. In 1881 the occupations of the sons of the Newbottle carrier Richard Page, aged 19, 16 and 13 were given as ‘Assists Father’ and that of the 17-year-old son of John Cherry of Lower Boddington as ‘Carrier helps his father’. Cherry’s wife’s occupation was unrecorded but his 14-year-old daughter was ‘Carrier helps her mother’. Some sons and sons-in-law succeeded fathers and fathersin-law. George Blaby, working from Deddington in 1881 at the age of 25, appears to have taken over the business of his father-in-law Joseph Hemmings. A carrying business might pass smoothly from one generation to another, but inter-generational impatience or fraternal rivalry could generate competition. Some carriers were also shopkeepers or publicans, whose carrying businesses perhaps originated as trips to collect supplies from towns, expanding as they undertook errands for others and offered accommodation for passengers. Customers could leave goods for onward transit, or collect their orders, at pubs or village shops. At least fifteen Banbury carriers in 1861, and nineteen in 1871, kept public houses. Ten grocery or general purpose shops were the homes of carriers in 1851 and 1891, and fifteen in 1901. Individual carriers were also butchers, bakers, malsters, bootmakers and ropemakers, and several served as parish clerks. Some traded as ‘dealers’ or ‘higglers’, buying and selling eggs and butter or, by the 1890s, providing oil for lamps. Some were involved in other kinds of haulage. Eight of those who travelled to Banbury in 1871 traded as coal merchants and a Sibford carrier in 1873 also carted stone from a quarry. In 1901 seven Banbury carriers or their kin were called ‘hauliers’. Most carriers belonged to that class within the rural community which had rather more independence than wage-dependent farm labourers. At least thirteen of the 189 carriers who visited Banbury in 1851 occupied small farms, all but two of them of 12 acres or less. Nevertheless, sixteen who visited Banbury in 1851, 35 in 1861, and 23 in 1871, shared their homes with unmarried sons, bachelor brothers, widowed fathers or fathers-in-law, or lodgers who laboured on the land. The Hanwell carrier Joseph Hazlewood in 1881 had two sons who were agricultural labourers, while the occupation of the 18-year-old son of the other Hanwell carrier, was recorded as ‘Assists with carrying and at odd times an agricultural labourer’. The carrying trade could be precarious. Thomas Barber and William Haynes, carriers from King’s Sutton in 1871, were agricultural labourers ten years later. Yet most carriers avoided pauperdom. Women appear in almost every list of carriers. Rusher named seven in 1821 and 1831, five in 1851, and 1881, and ten in 1901. In The Woodlanders Thomas Hardy described in Mrs Dollery, a carrier to Casterbridge who ‘hopped up and down many times in the service of her passengers’ and wore leggings under her gown ‘for modesty’s sake’. Most women carriers were widows carrying on their husbands’ businesses but others were spinsters and some were married women whose husbands followed other trades. In 1881 Mary Mullis of Avon Dassett, the 34-year-old spinster daughter of a farm labourer, travelled to the Bear in Banbury twice a week. Elizabeth French, a Deddington widow, was working at the age of 79 with the assistance of her 43-year-old bachelor son. Patience Tustain of Shutford combined carrying with a bakery. Carriers to Banbury in 1901 included Miss Jane Enoch, descendant of carriers, from Barford St Michael, and the Misses Mary and Annie Cook, spinsters from Farthinghoe.

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Capital It was possible to enter the carrying trade at an early age from a labouring background. In the Banbury area Edward Waring, son of a Bodicote farm labourer, was working as a carrier in 1881 at the age of 18 while living in the parental household, as were George Tasker of Cropredy, the 18-year-old son of a groom, and William Berry, the 21-year-old son of the landlord of the New Inn at Claydon. The stimulus for starting a business, of the kind John Benson described as ‘penny capitalism’, might be a modest inheritance, a spell of well-paid work as a navvy or itinerant harvester, or a successful bet, resources that might equally be invested in a small shop, a beer house, a lodging house, or a steam threshing engine.22 A carrier required a property with accommodation for a horse and a vehicle, and space for the storage of goods in transit, criteria met by most public houses and village shops. Sydney Tyrrell thought that the home of George Hunt of Eydon (now demolished), with easy access to a stable and hay store, might have been designed for a carrier. In 1805, of 65 carriers serving Banbury, 52 specifically used carts and four travelled in wagons. The UBD’s assurance that carts used by carriers from Barton-on-Humber ‘have a covering so that goods or passengers may be conveyed very dry’, suggests that covered vehicles were innovatory in the 1790s. Tyrrell recalled that the Eydon cart had a light semi-circular roof, covered with tarpaulin to keep goods dry. When the weather was good a carrier could take out the hoops and travel uncovered. Poultry were carried before Christmas in punts slung beneath the cart or suspended from poles mounted on the top or sides. Cripps used oak wedges to secure his vehicle when he stopped on Headington Hill outside Oxford, while Thomas Hardy’s carrier employed a drag to prevent his cart from running away as she prepared to descend Yelbury Hill to the accompaniment of the Casterbridge bells. Most carts were made by wheelwrights, or by cartwrights in northern England. Between 1836 and 1839 Rusher changed the heading of the carriers’ section of his List from ‘Waggons, Carts &c’ to ‘Carriers’ Carts, Vans etc’. Vans were particularly favoured by carriers based in small towns. Some may have been made by coachbuilders, but a Wardington carrier’s vehicle in Banbury Museum has a softwood body which appears to be the work of a wheelwright. Late nineteenth-century photographs of Banbury market place show both two-wheeled carts and four-wheeled vans, some inscribed with the names and routes of their owners, such as ‘Levi West, Byfield, Carrier to Banbury, Daventry, Leamington’ or ‘Thomas H. Deeley, Carrier to Banbury from Deddington & Clifton’.23 Dorothy Loveday recalled that John Mainwood of Wardington had ‘an ordinary four-wheeled cart’ but also a four-wheeled ‘boxed-in’ vehicle that could be adapted to take gentry families to balls. Dickens thought Mr Barkis’s horse the laziest in the world, and Hardy described a carrier’s ‘old horse, whose hair was of the roughness and colour of heather, whose leg joints, shoulders and hoofs were distorted by harness and drudgery from colthood’. Carriers usually walked beside their horses, and fed them from nose bags when they stopped. An animal stolen from a Deddington carrier in 1841 was reckoned to be worth £12.24

Decline Carrying to Banbury declined after 1900. In that year 166 carriers made 397 journeys, but five years later 145 carriers were making 365 journeys and by 1914 numbers had shrunk drastically, to 118 carriers and 292 journeys. A comparable decline is noted elsewhere, sometimes at an earlier date, though the pattern was not consistent. Nottingham, which had 238 carriers in 1855, had only 155 in 1891, and the number of weekly departures fell from 559 to 465. At Leicester there were 171 carriers in 1891 compared with 258 in 1855, and the number of journeys fell from

COUNTRY CARRIERS REVISITED

145

489 to 394. Both cities had become more like Leeds or Manchester, with omnibuses and trams performing some of the functions of carriers. Numbers similarly declined at Coventry and Norwich. At Reading the number of carriers showed little variation between 1855 and 1899 but weekly journeys increased, from 199 to 280, and at Northampton the number of carriers rose from 114 in 1854 to 153 in 1890 before declining to 128 in 1910, while weekly journeys totalled respectively 226, 368 and 315. The number of carriers serving Oxford grew from 108 to 118 between 1891 and 1911 and the number of journeys they made increased from 258 to 268, which may be explained by the prosperity of a city whose population increased from 46,000 to 53,000, where many carriers served outer suburbs. There were also increases in the number of carrier journeys made to Bicester (from 37 to 51) and Witney (31 to 36). At Aylesbury the number of carriers remained stable at just over 60 between 1860 and 1899 while the number of journeys increased from 98 to 144, but by 1911 only 45 carriers made 112 journeys. At York, Guildford, Winchester, Abingdon, Stratfordupon-Avon and Buckingham there were no substantial changes in numbers between the 1850s and the 1890s, and there were increases in the shoemaking towns of Kettering and Wellingborough. William Potts, the Banbury historian, observed that carrying was in decline by 1914, citing the parcels post established in 1883 as one of the reasons. The proliferation of privately-owned motor cars and delivery vans after 1918 and the establishment of regular bus services from 1919 further reduced the demand for common carriers. Some former carriers operated buses and coaches or became involved in road haulage. Potts wrote in 1938 that most of the carriers who still visited Banbury now had motor vans, which enabled them to visit the town more than once daily, but that ‘a few relics of the past in the form of the horse-cart’ could still be seen.25 Directories recorded 21 carriers making 54 weekly journeys to Banbury in 1939, and in 1950 sixteen carriers making 33 weekly journeys. Even in the mid-1950s a small crimson bus left the town each Thursday at about 4 p.m. It was bound for Oxhill, and was owned by the Rouse family who began carrying from that Warwickshire village nearly a century previously.

Conclusions The exceptional amount of data in Rusher’s Banbury Lists illuminates many aspects of carrying generally, showing that the carrying trade was taking shape towards the end of the eighteenth century, grew rapidly after 1800 reaching a peak around 1850, and thereafter remained buoyant, with local fluctuations, until the end of the century, before falling into a decline that became precipitate after 1918. Carrying practices were remarkably uniform throughout England. Carriers were countrymen, most of them enterprising members of families whose other members remained farm labourers. Many had by-employments, and the trade was always open to women. The image of a country carrier plodding alongside his horse from village to town has at first sight little in common with scenes characteristic of the economic changes of the late eighteenth century, of flames, steam, constructional daring, mechanical ingenuity and multitudes of people working in large buildings. Yet carrier networks were part of the same quickening of economic activity in the 1790s. T.C. Barker wrote that ‘in the interpretation of the Industrial Revolution too much attention [is paid] to making things, especially to making things in factories, not enough to buying and selling or to providing services of all kinds, which are also wealth generators’.26 The development of long-distance transport systems between 1760 and 1860 is well-chronicled, and the aqueducts, tunnels, viaducts, terminal stations and locomotives of that period are rightly admired, but carriers provided the unspectacular capillaries of this distribution

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network, collecting and delivering many of the goods carried by road wagons, canal boats and trains. Blackmore remarked of Beckley that ‘this little village carried on some commerce with the outer world; and did it through a carrier’.27 There were thousands of Beckleys, and while their farm labourer inhabitants were far from affluent, there were sufficient consumers in rural society to sustain shopkeepers and other traders who were dependent on carriers. The length of cloth cut by a Banbury draper from a piece woven in Bradford and taken south by canal or railway was conveyed to a tailor at Eydon or Sibford by a country carrier. Carriers supplied village shops and conveyed tools and materials for builders, rural craftsmen and farmers. Many hundreds of rural families of the higher echelons of the labouring class took up carrying between 1790 and 1840. Similar decisions motivated families elsewhere: some miners invested in tools that enabled them to assume responsibilities as sub-contractors, thereby increasing coal output; families in Lancashire built workshops to accommodate spinning jennies or handlooms; and young men who learned their trades in Birmingham and Sheffield established workshops shaping metal in innovatory or accustomed ways. The Industrial Revolution depended not just on the actions of Richard Arkwright, Matthew Boulton and Josiah Wedgwood, but on positive decisions to start businesses by thousands of men and women, among them the country carriers The carrying trade was economically important and made possible social mobility. It was also a means by which individuals identified with the regions (in Braudel’s term, the pays) in which they lived.28 Tyrrell declared that for the people of Eydon, Banbury was ‘our town’.29 This sense of identity was distinct from county and parochial affiliations. The routes listed by the Rushers are the best means of delineating the nineteenth-century extent of the nebulous but acutely perceived pays of ‘Banburyshire’, undefined by political or administrative boundaries. It incorporated parts of six counties, five dioceses and 15 poor law unions, and lands that drained into the Thames, the Wash and the Severn. Richard Jefferies wrote of the ‘kingdoms’ centred on market towns that had no visible boundaries, were unrecognised on maps, and fitted no political or legal limits, but could be recognised by peculiarities in the landscape, even by the design of farm gates.30 Such pays were complex: ‘Banburyshire’ encompassed parts of the carrying hinterlands of smaller towns, including Brackley, Chipping Norton and Bicester that extended, in other directions, beyond its limits. Nevertheless towns like Cirencester, that Jefferies regarded as ‘a complete world in itself, a capital city’, or Salisbury, which Hudson called ‘the great market and emporium and place of all delights for all the great Plain’, exerted extraordinary centripetal powers. When the young Joseph Ashby was repairing the road from Southam to Banbury one Michaelmas in the early 1880s he observed many sorts and conditions of humanity, riding in carriers’ carts or walking in their best clothes to Banbury Fair. He was told by one that he had not missed a fair for 40 years and by another that he would know that he was old when he could no longer get to Banbury for the fair. In his teens Ashby was so excited by the energy surging around Banbury market that he compared the town with Nizhny Novgorod, which he had read about in a schoolbook.31 Carriers were a feature of English history for about 150 years, but since classical antiquity towns have exerted magnetic attractions. George Eliot’s Mr Tulliver, when contemplating sending his son to boarding school, remarked ‘Well, well, we won’t send him o’ reach of the carrier’s cart’.32 There was no better way of defining an English ‘pays’. NOTES AND REFERENCES 1

A. Everitt, ‘Town and Country in Victorian Leicestershire: the Role of the Village Carrier’, in A.Everitt (ed), Perspectives in English Urban

History (Macmillan, 1973); A. Everitt, ‘Country Carriers in the Nineteenth Century’, Journal of Transport History new ser vol.3 (1976). See also

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2

3

4

5

6

C. Evason and P. Marsh, ‘Shrewsbury’s Country Carriers’, in Barrie Trinder (ed), Victorian Shrewsbury: Studies in the History of a County Town (Shropshire Libraries, 1984) 5056; James Bowen, ‘The carriers of Lancaster 1824-1912’, The Local Historian vol.40 no.3 (August 2010) 178-190; Alan G. Crosby, ‘The carriers of Clitheroe’, Lancashire Local Historian no.20 (2007-2008) 90-109. A locallyfocused version of the present article, ‘Banbury: Metropolis of Carriers’ Carts’, appears in Cake & Cockhorse (journal of Banbury Historical Society) [C&C] vol. 18 (2011) and much of the data on which the study is based will be placed on the BHS website during 2012. Most directory evidence is taken from the Leicester University website: www.historicaldirectories.org Bound volumes that include most issues of Rusher’s Lists & Directories are held at the Centre for Banburyshire Studies (Banbury Library). Banbury Historical Society proposes to publish an index to the directories and a CD of the text during 2012. I am grateful to Jeremy Gibson for allowing me to use the bound volume of 1875 presented to his ancestor Henry Stone. For the history of Banbury see B. Trinder, Victorian Banbury (Phillimore, 1982: 2nd edn 2005); Victoria History of the County of Oxford vol.10 (Oxford UP, 1972). T.W. Boss, Reminiscences of old Banbury (first published 1903, reprinted in C&C vol.16, 2004); G. Herbert, Shoemaker’s Window: Recollections of Banbury in Oxfordshire before the Railway Age (3rd edn, ed C.S. Cheney and B. Trinder, Gulliver Press, 1979); F. Thompson, Lark Rise to Candleford (Oxford UP, 1957 edn); S.J. Tyrrell, A Countryman’s Tale (Constable, 1973); M.K. Ashby, Joseph Ashby of Tysoe 18591919: a study of English village life (Cambridge UP, 1961) D. Gerhold, Carriers & coachmasters: trade and travel before the turnpikes (Phillimore, 2005); see also J.S.W. Gibson, ‘The Immediate Route from the Metropolis to all parts...’, C&C vol.12 (1991) 10-24; P. Renold, ‘William Judd and Banbury Corporation’, C&C vol.12 (1992) 4144 N. Raven and T. Hooley, ‘Industrial and urban changes in the Midlands: a regional survey’, in J. Stobart and N. Raven (eds), Towns, regions and industries: urban and industrial change in the

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15 16

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23

24 25 26

27 28 29 30 31 32

Midlands c.1700-1840 (Manchester UP, 2005).23-41 R.D. Blackmore, Cripps the Carrier: a woodland tale (Sampson Low, 1876) see Table 1 M. Lester, Those Golden Days (Banbury: priv pub, 1992) 32, 59 W.H. Hudson, A shepherd’s life: impressions of the South Wiltshire Downs (Methuen, 1910) 26 Banbury Guardian 15 Oct 1863 A. Rosevear, Turnpike roads to Banbury (Banbury Historical Society, 2010) A. Young, A General View of the Agriculture of Oxfordshire (Sherwood, Neely and Jones, 1813) 324 K. Tiller and G. Darkes (eds), An historical atlas of Oxfordshire (Oxfordshire Record Society, 2010) 110-115 D. Loveday, ‘Wardington: Memories & Hearsay’, C&C vol.3 (1966) 46-60 G. Smedley-Stevenson (ed), Early Victorian Squarson: The Diaries of William Cotton Risley, I, 1835-1848 (Banbury Historical Society, 2007) 116, 155 A. Taylor, Gilletts: Bankers at Banbury and Oxford (Clarendon Press, 1964) 52 Hudson, Shepherd’s life, ch.1 M.K. Ashby, Joseph Ashby of Tysoe 1859-1919: a study of English village life (Cambridge UP, 1961) 26 W.H. Clark, ‘Adderbury 1895-1905’, C&C vol.2 (1965) 212-216 G. Jekyll, Old West Surrey (Longman, 1904) 455 J. Benson, The Penny Capitalists: a study of nineteenth-century working class entrepreneurs (Gill & Macmillan, 1983) M. Graham and L. Waters, Britain in old photographs: Banbury past & present (Sutton, 1999) 32, 30 Smedley-Stevenson, Early Victorian Squarson, 100 W. Potts, Banbury through One Hundred Years (Banbury Guardian, 1942) 60 T.C .Barker, ‘Business as usual? London and the Industrial Revolution’, History Today vol.39 (1989) 45-51 Blackmore, Cripps the Carrier, 1 F. Braudel, The Identity of France vol.1 (Fontana edn., 1989) 20, 37, 43 Tyrrell, A Countryman’s Tale, 130-131 R. Jefferies, Hodge and his Masters (Macgibbon & Kee, 1880) vol.1, 36; vol.2, 127 Ashby, Joseph Ashby of Tysoe, 27, 112 George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss

BARRIE TRINDER is a writer and lecturer on social and urban history who lives at Olney, Buckinghamshire. He is chairman and vice-president of the Banbury Historical Society. Most of his professional career was spent in Shropshire and he has written numerous works on that county’s history, as well as nationally- and internationally-focussed studies of industrial landscapes and industrial archaeology. A substantial new work, Britain’s Industrial Revolution: the making of a manufacturing people 1700-1870 will be published by Carnegie during 2012.

Review article: publications by record and special interest societies Much valuable work is undertaken by record societies and special interest societies—those which devote themselves to a specific historical theme. The publication of editions of historical records, or scholarly monographs on particular topics, continues to make available important resources which would otherwise be difficult of access (especially for independent scholars). Monographs may present overviews and analyses which allow local historians to place their own research in proper and wider contexts, and the local experience and local examples add very greatly to the depth and breadth of such works. In this composite article we present reviews, by different authors, of six such volumes which have been published during the past two years. Their subject matter is very eclectic, and the editorial approaches which have been adopted are similarly diverse (Alan Crosby). PEWS, BENCHES AND CHAIRS Church seating in English parish churches from the fourteenth century to the present ed. Trevor Cooper and Sarah Brown (The Ecclesiological Society 2011 500pp ISBN 978 0 946823 17 8) £35 or £26 post free to readers of The Local Historian The book emanated from discussions in the Council of the Ecclesiological Society and was conceived to provide an informed background to the debate on the relative merits of pews, seats and moveable benches which has been generated by the current fashion to remove pews to free space in church interiors, in order to accommodate flexible forms of worship and a variety of community uses. It resonates with the origins of the Society in the nineteenth century: the editors insist that there is no overt or hidden agenda in this volume but nevertheless the ‘preservers’, who opposed ‘evil, destructive restorations’, hardly share equal billing with the ‘improvers’. As policy the editors have made no attempt to impose uniformity on the well-qualified and experienced scholarly contributors. Consequently the 28 essays differ greatly in content, length, style, approach, quality and authenticity, ranging from all or part of previously published papers, via original research, embryonic investigations from The Ecclesiologist 18541856, extracts from guidance on seating in the Victorian period set out by the Incorporated Church Building Society, off-the-peg trade catalogues of companies catering for the massive growth in church building and reordering of interiors, to fifteen informative case studies exemplifying contemporary adjustments and solutions balancing practicality vis a vis heritage. The editors themselves provide a context and coherence to the proceedings, without which the eclectic mixture and geographically-specific locations of individual pieces could have consumed the collective. This is especially true in assessing the parameters for those sections concerned with ‘change’. It is no coincidence that the bulk of the book concentrates on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries since, as P.S. Barnwell succinctly summarises in a section on the ‘history of pews’, the relatively small amount of work on the medieval nave seating (and even less on chancel arrangements) and its disjointed nature, together with the indirect and fragmentary written sources, make it impossible to provide a specific overview. The imprecision, misidentification and disagreements over dating early pews are admirably addressed by Jerry Sampson in an archaeological approach to medieval benches and bench ends in Somerset. An essay on dendrochronology would have added a scientific methodology to supplement the first fruits of the visual and technical aspects of carpentry, carving and 148

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repairs expertly applied in Somerset, and might have provided a measure of common knowledge on the origins, evolution and dating of pews. The essay on ‘Pews in Norwegian Churches’ sits uncomfortably with the sub-title of the book, but the real disappointment is the overwhelming territorial bias towards the Midlands and Southern England. Understandably the emphasis is on fabric and fittings, but Christopher Marsh’s essay on social structures, order, honour and human behaviour in the context of seating unearths a rich seam to be mined in the future. Well illustrated with over 300 photographs, the publication fulfils its purpose in informing the debate and acts as a manual which offers valuable advice on assessing the reasons for change and the steps to be followed in keeping with the values enunciated. There are too many gaps for it to be definitive, but it is a timely reminder of the dilemma and passions aroused by pews. SPENCER THOMAS THE WORLD OF JOHN SECKER (1716-95), QUAKER MARINER ed. Andrew Hopper (Norfolk Record Society vol.75 2011 ix+194pp ISBN 978-0-9556357-4-8) £18 Andrew Hopper is an authority on the English Civil Wars but here has turned his attention to the following century and produced a sound scholarly edition of the travel narrative of John Secker for 1730-1755 (from an autograph manuscript in the Norfolk Record Office). During this quarter-century Secker made 76 voyages around much of the then-discovered world, in merchant and other ships of various nationalities. Apart from a brief and unsuccessful interlude as master in the early 1740s, he filled a range of subordinate positions, latterly as chief mate. He compiled his account after the event, ‘soon after 1765’, both from memory and from his journals of most voyages after 1732. Its broad chronological and navigational accuracy can often be verified by ships’ logs and Lloyd’s List. Variable amount of detail is provided for each voyage, with the fullest descriptions for Secker’s service on the Grand Tuscany and other Spanish ships in South America in 1750-1753, including a daily record of a tricky circumnavigation of Cape Horn during winter. Although Secker’s recollections were apparently never intended for formal publication, Hopper suggests that they were written for circulation among his Quaker relations and friends, at least partly in self-justification. Given this rationale and audience, it is likely that they will sometimes paint a sanitised and idealised picture, downplaying the sleazier and less pleasant aspects of maritime life. Hopper notes ‘several awkward silences’ in the text, including only sparing allusions to the seafaring drinking culture. Neither do women and sex feature much (despite two appearances of the ‘French disease’). Secker seems at pains not to offend the sensibilities of his Norfolk Quaker readership, to minimise his own negative traits, and to project himself as a virtuous, knowledgeable, self-assured, independent-minded, and often heroic character, who experiences several providential deliverances from death and other precarious situations. Beyond these references to Providence, the religious content is surprisingly minimal, largely confined to expressions of anti-Catholic sentiment. Secker was born into a Quaker family and became a prominent member of the Society of Friends in Norfolk following his retirement from seafaring, marriage to a devout Quaker in 1756, and taking up as a shopkeeper, but his Quakerism was in the background when on the high seas. Only at the very end of the story is there explicit mention of Quaker affairs and his pacifist objection to working on mercantile ships fitted with guns (notwithstanding he had served on two British warships in 1732). Secker confesses that his Quaker morals were ‘much defaced by travel and bad company and too much liberty’ as a mariner, while Hopper speculates that it was the reawakening of his Quaker convictions in the 1750s which contributed to turning his back on the sea. Unfortunately, the journal which Secker kept from 1755 until his death, and sundry other autobiographical writings noted in his will, which may have illuminated his Quakerism, have not survived. So, the value of this edition will largely be to maritime, social and economic rather than ecclesiastical historians.

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Hopper’s transcription seems accurate, even if some of his editorial conventions (such as opening and closing asterisks to denote insertions) look odd. The text is annotated in terms of people, places, and technical terms. The International Maritime Dictionary is the source of most naval definitions, and it might have been more useful had these been gathered up into a glossary. Appendix 1 offers a valuable tabular summary of the individual vessels, voyages and cargoes, but it is a pity that they are not married up with relevant folios in the manuscript and/or page numbers in the published edition. The 22-page introduction helpfully outlines the Norfolk Quaker and maritime contexts, albeit Hopper’s attempts to engage with Linda Colley’s theory of Britishness are not wholly convincing. The volume is rounded off by six plates, one map, nine figures (facsimiles of folios including sketches by Secker), Secker’s will, a family tree, bibliography, and index. The high production standards we have come to expect from the Norfolk Record Society are fully maintained. CLIVE D. FIELD TITHE APPORTIONMENTS OF WORCESTERSHIRE 1837-1851 ed. Peter L. Walker (Worcestershire Historical Society new series 23 2011 64pp ISSN 0141-4577) £25 inc.p&p from Robin Whittaker, 14 Scobell Close, Pershore WR10 1QJ The Tithes Commutation Act of 1836, explained in Eric J. Evans’s introduction to this volume on Worcestershire, was the culmination of a long search for a solution to the ancient problem of tithe collection. Commissioners were appointed and sent out to assess landholdings and to agree tithe rent-charges. Maps were drawn with associated lists of apportionments giving details such as land-holders, tenants, and apportionments of the rent-charge. Under the ‘Worcestershire Tithe Map Project’, all surviving Worcestershire tithe maps have been standardised and digitised, using the county boundary as it was in 1836. The evolution and development of this project has been described by Maggie Noke of Worcestershire Historic Environment and Archaeology Service in her introduction. This huge task was eventually complemented by digitised versions of the associated awards, the subject of the Worcestershire Historical Society’s latest volume. It consists of a book accompanied by a CDROM containing the digitised transcription of 182 tithe awards. Each has been allocated its own file labelled according to parish name. In his introduction, the editor explains that the structure of each file contains four worksheets (introduction, tithe apportionment, full award and summary). The introduction is a distillation of the relevant points from the preamble of the original document. Using a layout similar to the original, the tithe apportionment is arranged in columns (landowner, tenant, field—each expanded to number, name, usage and acreage—and finally rent-charge). The ‘full award’ provides the same information but in field number order, with names of landowners and tenants on every line. In this format, it provides an efficient link with the Geographic Information System. The summary gives totals of landholdings and rent-charge for each landowner or tenant. The volume of data that has been processed and presented is extremely impressive and the search facility provides a useful tool for many types of study. As a random example, the parish of Hallow was chosen, and the word ‘kiln’ was used to search the ‘Name’ column in the tithe apportionment. This revealed both brick kilns and hop kilns. Searching for ‘osiers’ in the ‘usage’ column revealed thirteen entries, with associated field names such as ‘withey bed’, ‘osier bed’ or ‘sally bed’, the last a corruption of ‘sallow’. Eric Evans gives a comprehensive account of the background to the 1836 Act, together with subsequent developments during the rest of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth. This section is packed with detail on this complex and specialised subject, and it is therefore disappointing that there is no index, particularly for this section of the book. The overall result is a rich source of material for local historians and a great asset to Worcestershire researchers in particular. JANE WALKER

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ACCOUNTS AND RENTALS OF THE MANOR OF MOTE IN IDEN 1442-1553, 1673 ed. Mark Gardiner and Christopher Whittick (Sussex Record Society vol.92 2011 314pp ISBN 978 0 86445 074 9) £20 This is an impressive, scholarly and accessible volume, for which researchers will be indebted. The manorial accounts (1464-1484), rental (1478), court rolls (1442-1551) and survey (1673) of the manor of Mote in Iden follow the conventional structure of such records but, fortuitously, information on income from rents and sales and expenditure on the estate is supplemented by entries of the sort customarily found in household and buildings returns. All the financial transactions at the Mote have been incorporated and the precise detail, depth and breadth of information at a time when such evidence is relatively rare elevates this modest late-fifteenth century estate straddling the borders of Kent and Sussex, in the parishes of Iden, Peasmarsh, Northiam, Beckley, and Ewhurst, to national significance. The survival of a cohort of records marking the restoration of direct management of the demesne, in contrast to the rest of the country where in-house control had largely been superseded by leasing out, imbues this volume with additional significance. It opens a window into the life and activities of a provincial gentry family, the functioning of their manor house, and the operation of local society at a time of political upheaval. The Yorkist lord of the manor, Sir John Scott, played a conspicuous role as a trusted ally of Edward IV, for which he was rewarded with prestigious offices and commissions included Controller of the Royal Household and Marshal of the English enclave of Calais, as well as the properties of attainted Lancastrians. On the manor cattle were raised and fattened, cultivation was expanded by ‘ridding’ the woodland and hedging and ditching the newly created fields, and ancillary agricultural activities were promoted to make the household self-sufficient, though supplies had to be purchased to augment the estate produce. The estate profited from preparing and selling firewood in the form of faggots and billets, and reeds for thatching on a vast scale, routinely bypassing the market and engaging in a hidden trade. Production was integrated vertically— cutting down trees, carrying goods, constructing a wharf, and shipping goods to Calais. The most expensive and ambitious project was the building of the Mote in brick, which was produced on site, and stone brought from Cranbrook and Eastbourne. The scale and scope of the works stimulated the local and regional economy. The core of the volume is devoted to a translation of the records. An extensive and incisive introduction sets the tone and context and includes a description, analysis and critique of the records themselves. The appendices include examples of stock deeds, exposing aspects of the feudal relationship between landlord and tenant. Today the site of the Mote is a deserted rectangular platform set in a haunting landscape of water and reeds. The castle was dismantled in the 1660s and robbed as a quarry for Ewhurst Place and local farms, although the manor continued as a going concern into the twentieth century. The investment into the medieval manor was considerable. It earned its keep and its importance resonated far beyond this corner of the Weald. This excellent volume ensures its immortality. SPENCER THOMAS THE TOPOGRAPHY OF ELY ed. Anne Holton-Krayenbuhl (Cambridgeshire Records Society vol.20 2011 xiv+248pp ISBN: 978-0-904323-22-1) £18 to non-members Anne Holton-Krayenbuhl has provided an excellent transcription of a series of records of varying dates from medieval Ely. There are enquiries from 1222 and 1250 into the sources of revenue of the see of Ely, a survey of 1417 which records the prior and convent’s rights over land and tenants on the Isle (the result of an arbitration between bishop and monastery), and priory rentals from the years 1522-3 and 1524-5. The editing is handled sensitively and according to the needs of the particular documents concerned. The methodology is thoroughly explained to the reader. Matters of date and provenance are discussed and the relationship between the various extant copies explained where appropriate. The Latin text is

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given on the left-hand page and a translation on the right, following normal practice, except in the case of the 1417 rental where a facsimile replaces the Latin transcription. A particularly attractive feature of the volume, it allows the reader to appreciate the form of the text in a way that a description in words can never convey. The editor’s main interest in the material lies in the topography of Ely and here she has done a fine job in tracing change and development. There are four maps: Ely and its environs; ‘Ely with modern street names and some sites and features mentioned in the text’ [based on OS 1:2500 maps of 1887 and 1888]; Ely in 1417, with medieval street names and the conjectured course of streams; and Ely in 1417 showing holdings of the prior’s fee, and the surveyor’s route. This arrangement is less than ideal for the reader of the introduction, who has often to search for which map illustrates the feature under immediate discussion. Nevertheless, the gain is more than adequate to the pain, and the reader comes away enlightened. Otherwise the introduction contents itself with a brief discussion of tenurial organisation on the bishop’s manors and on the income of the prior. Those interested in social structure, in particular, will want to explore the material more deeply and in various historiographical contexts. All in all, however, this is a very welcome addition to the published sources available to the local historian. PETER COSS BUILDING ACCOUNTS OF ALL SOULS COLLEGE OXFORD 1438-1443 ed. Simon Walker with supplementary material by Julian Munby (Oxford Historical Society new series vol.42 Boydell & Brewer Ltd 2010 xxxii+396pp ISBN 978 0 904107 23 4) £35 The college of All Souls of the Faithful Departed was established by Henry Chichele, archbishop of Canterbury, with King Henry VI as its co-founder. The college not only retains many of its original buildings, including the front quadrangle with entrance tower and chapel, but also holds a detailed series of accounts relating to their construction between 1438 and 1443, allowing the architectural evidence to be compared with documentary sources. Although these building accounts have been utilised in several studies of the building industry in the later Middle Ages, the full text of the accounts has remained unpublished until now. The accounts consist of weekly payments to masons, carpenters and other workmen, and annual summaries of payments for raw materials such as stone, lime, timber, their carriage and other expenses. Work began in February 1438 with the digging of the foundations, and by 1442 the hall and chapel were ready for use. Construction costs totalled around £4400. The editor suggests that these were relatively limited because the founder was able to source the great majority of labour and materials from within a radius of 20 miles of Oxford, and carriage costs remained a modest proportion (less than 15 per cent) of the overall cost. Oxford was conveniently situated for local supplies of building materials, particularly stone—in contrast to Cambridge, which was starting to turn to brick as an alternative by this date, initially at Queens’ College in 14481449. All Souls was supplied with ragstone from Headington and better-quality freestone from Taynton near Burford, although some stone ‘to make images’ may have come from Princes Risborough in Buckinghamshire. Some timber came as gifts, including the twenty oaks from the abbot of Abingdon’s wood at Cumnor, but most was bought from local woodlands, while Baltic softwood was brought from London up the Thames to Henley. Iron came mostly from London and lead from a ‘leadman of the Peak’. Like most large-scale building projects in this period, the work was managed directly—in this case by the archbishop’s servants, initially John Druell, dean of South Malling in Sussex, and then Roger Keyes, who subsequently became the warden of the college. They were aided by a clerk of works, one of whom, John Medehill, later held a similar position at Eton College, and Robert Danvers, the college’s attorney and legal adviser. The accounts reveal that the workforce rose gradually from a starting point of about 25 men to a peak of 105 men during April 1442. Some probably had by-occupations in agriculture, as additional payments were needed at harvest time in July 1440. In summer 1441 masons were sought in Norfolk and

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Suffolk, two came from Fotheringay in Northamptonshire, and sixteen from London. Although they were paid a premium rate of 3s 8d, the London masons only stayed for a couple of weeks. The volume includes four appendices. There is a summary of the history of the site of the college and properties acquired by Henry Chichele or during the early years of the college’s existence. An alphabetical list of the masons and carvers mentioned in the accounts provides references to the studies of craftsmen by Eric Gee and John Harvey. Two further appendices contain details of the college buildings and an inventory of college furnishings compiled in 1585. In some recent issues of The Local Historian (vol.40 no.3, vol.41 no.1 and vol.41 no.4) there has been discussion on the merits of publishing Latin texts in Latin and/or English translations, and whether Roman numerals should be converted into Arabic figures. This edition, with only a Latin text and Roman numerals, will not please everyone, but the accounts are not grammatically complex, and the reader is aided significantly by the detailed introduction, appendices and index. There is also a bibliography of the works of Simon Walker, who had nearly completed this edition before his untimely death in 2004. JOHN S. LEE Peter Coss is professor of medieval history at Cardiff University. His interests include the gentry, urban history, literature and society and gender. He has published five monographs and several editions of texts. He is a member of the editorial board of the journal Past and Present. Clive D. Field is Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Modern History, University of Birmingham and Co-director, British Religion in Numbers, Institute for Social Change, University of Manchester (http://www.brin.ac.uk). He is a former Director of Scholarship and Collections at the British Library. John S. Lee works in local government and is also a research associate at the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of York. He has examined building projects, materials and craftsmen in late medieval Cambridge in Cambridge and its economic region, 1450-1560 (University of Hertfordshire Press, 2005). Spencer Thomas has a lengthy pedigree in parish, deanery and diocesan affairs and for many years has researched pre- and post-Reformation seating in churches. In The Local Historian vol.39 no.4 (November 2009) he published an article on ‘Pews: their settings, symbolism and significance’ which he is currently expanding into a book. Jane Walker started as a computer programmer then became a mathematics teacher, before retiring in 2000 and obtaining a Diploma in Higher Education (Local History) from Cambridge University in 2006. She is a member of the Hertfordshire Record Society committee and has worked extensively on the Datchworth tithe apportionment of 1838.

Review: New directions in local history since Hoskins M I C H A E L W I N S TA N L E Y

NEW DIRECTIONS IN LOCAL HISTORY SINCE HOSKINS ed. Christopher Dyer, Andrew Hopper, Evelyn Lord and Nigel Tringham (University of Hertfordshire Press 2011 978-1-90739612-0 xix+276pp) £16.99 The origins of this collection of papers lie in a conference held in Leicester in 2009 to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of W.G. Hoskins’s Local History in England, but the editors are anxious to stress that, however much Hoskins is admired, this is not a celebration of his work per se and neither does it primarily explore themes which are usually associated with Hoskins’s work. Rather, it is an attempt to represent ‘how local history is being researched and written today’, ‘current trends in the subject’, and the various dilemmas which stimulate debate about the nature of the subject, its present health and the directions it will take in the next half century. This is an ambitious agenda which presents a challenge for any reviewer who tries to do anything other than summarise the chapters. Although not a celebration of Hoskins it is nevertheless the assumption that his writings ‘played a major part in establishing local history as a distinct sub-discipline’ (p.7). Debates about precisely what that is, or should be, have featured prominently in recent issues of this journal, so does this collection provide any clues as to what this ‘sub-discipline’ is, or could or should be? The first three chapters address these issues head-on. David Dymond explores whether ‘local history’, with a foot in both academia and the community, has a split personality and explores ways in which the two could be, and have been, brought together. For him Local History in England was ‘not so inspirational’ as some of Hoskins’ other works but an ‘effective manual’ which gave ‘direction and credibility to a strongly emerging form of practical and democratic history’ (p.27), suggesting that what distinguishes local history is its appeal to those outside academia who have an interest in specific places. In every other respect, however, his list of the characteristics of good local history would apply to every other branch of historical study. As Chris Lewis’s study of local history between the wars demonstrates, new themes and approaches were already emerging, particularly in economic history, and these were part of Hoskins’s own formative influences. Lewis highlights the promotion of local history in academic institutions such as Reading, Exeter, Liverpool, Manchester and Nottingham, where pioneering academic practitioners like J.D. Chambers used collaborative work with local groups to build bridges between academia and the community. Manchester, in particular, inspired gifted amateur local historians some of whom produced meticulously researched studies of the cotton district which remain classics today—notable among them were the Rossendale schoolmaster G.H. Tupling and, although not mentioned here, A.P. Wadsworth, editor of the Manchester Guardian, a paper with a proud tradition of local history research. Lewis also points to the ground-breaking work of historical geographers like Darby. Local history, he concludes, was diverse, ‘expanding and securely established’ between the wars (p.42). What was lacking, he suggests, was ‘explicit theorising about the scope of local history’ (p.51) and the concept and institutionalisation of it as a separate discipline before the Leicester School emerged.

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Malcolm Chase traces the development of labour and, more broadly, working-class history, which was largely ignored by Hoskins. This was nurtured within the field of adult education, particularly the Workers’ Educational Association and, like much early economic history, had its deepest roots in northern towns and institutions. Arguably its greatest achievement was E.P. Thompson’s classic 1963 study, which skilfully merged the local and national to produce a powerful analysis of social relationships in the early nineteenth century. Not all labour history aspired to such heights: the genre also had its equivalent to the local antiquarian tradition in what Chase labels laudatory ‘revolutionary antiquarianism’. But at its best it opened up new directions, independent of Hoskins. The majority of the collection offers very different fare, in the form of local case studies. Although some of these could be construed as owing something to Hoskins, many do not directly do so except in adopting a rigorous questioning approach to local sources. ‘Local’ here encompasses institutions, regions, parishes, dioceses, towns and cities and islands. Themes and approaches are equally diverse: regional and parish identity, ethnicity, gender, class, vernacular and religious architecture, religion, the history and future of local history, manuscript and digital resources. The most cohesive sub-section contains four studies of ‘religious culture and belief ’. Claire Cross uses wills to explore the reactions of Salisbury residents to the Henrician Reformation but, oddly, does not refer to any between 1536 and 1553 itself. Emma Watson revisits the early activities of the High Commission in York but only in the period before concerns over Catholicism escalated in the 1570s. Edward Royle illustrates the changing architectural style of Nonconformist places of worship in the mid-nineteenth century transition from Classical to Gothic, while Mark Smith skilfully sheds light on the ‘fractured’ nature of the Church of England in mid-twentieth century North Oxford and the ‘negotiable’ aspect of parish identity. David Hey also concentrates on architecture in the more diffuse sub-section on ‘Making a Living’, exploring some of the men responsible for the building of the last distinctive vernacular houses in Dronfield before the ubiquitous ‘Georgian’ swept all before it. Edgar Miller’s review of eighteenth-century Skye confirms revisionist views that the problems of the Highlands pre-dated the notorious Clearances. Sheila Sweetinburgh seeks to explore ruralurban connections in fifteenth-century Hythe through the activities of the Honywode family, prominent butchers in the town. Jane Howell uses trade directories and census to add weight to the view that married women’s work and participation in family businesses was more common than the crude stereotype of ‘separate spheres’ would suggest to the unwary. Identity also features in chapters by Stephen Caunce and Malcolm Dick which are bracketed with Chase’s study under ‘diversity’. The former is a review of the post-war parliamentary election results in the North of England followed by a seemingly separate but thought-provoking consideration of the weaknesses of ‘regional identity’ and the ‘decline of localism’. The latter chronicles, but does not really explain or discuss, some published references to ethnic minorities in Birmingham and echoes the call for professional and non-professional historians to work together. The final chapters in the collection are neither local studies nor reviews of its developments. Ruth Paley provides an archivist’s introduction to the records of the criminal court of the King’s Bench which are held in The National Archives, a collection which deal primarily with Middlesex and Westminster; this really deserves to be published on TNA’s website as a source guide. Tellingly, this potentially rich collection remains largely uncatalogued, which contrasts with Paul Ell’s enthusiastic extolling of the Grid technology which will enable researchers to query across digital online collections, although his references to JSTOR being freely available at no cost to local historians is indicative of a failure to appreciate the difficulty many practitioners in the community face in accessing subscription services which are widely available through academic institutions. Is, then, ‘local history … a distinct sub-discipline’ within academic history? Has it anything distinctive to offer other than pursuit of rigorous ‘local case studies’ at sub-national level? Does it determine or simply mirror new approaches, sources, methods, questions within the broad church that is ‘history’? The logic of the contributions by Lewis and Chase in particular, and

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the various ways in which all the contributions reflect broader historiographical thematic and source based developments over the last 50 years, suggest that it does both. But if, as Lewis suggests, local approaches were an integral part of university historical research between the wars, one wonders whether the institutionalisation and labelling of it as a distinct ‘subdiscipline’ is beneficial or counterproductive. The distinction between the academic rigour associated with the history of the family or demographic history and the popular pursuit of genealogy or ‘my family history’ is widely acknowledged. But there are academics, as this reviewer can testify, who continue to view ‘local history’ as parochial antiquarianism while they embrace locality, region, localism, regionalism, community and microhistory as valid academic concepts. Let’s hope that his collection convinces at least some of them that ‘local history’ recognises, embraces and utilises these concepts and that it is capable, dare one hope, of enhancing the discipline’s wider social ‘impact’. MICHAEL WINSTANLEY was Senior Lecturer in History at Lancaster University until 2010. In retirement, in addition to pursuing his own local research interests, he is devising an online postgraduate certificate in regional and local history for the Centre for North West Regional Studies.

ON-LINE REVIEWS ON THE BALH WEBSITE: March 2012 - May 2012 In addition to the many reviews which appear in every issue of The Local Historian, other books and publications are reviewed on-line on the BALH website. Please go to http://www.balh.co.uk/on-line-reviews.php to access these. The list below gives the titles and other details of the publications for which on-line reviews have been added in the last three months. YORK PLACES OF LEARNING through time by Paul Chrystal and Simon Crossley (Amberley Publishing 2011) reviewed by Roger Bellingham THE LOST COUNTRY HOUSES OF SUFFOLK by W.M. Roberts (Boydell Press 2010) reviewed by Rodney Coppinger A CENTURY OF DREDGING IN THE BRISTOL CHANNEL vol.1 The English coast by Peter Gosson (Amberley Publishing 2011) reviewed by Joan Tucker LITTLETON FARM IN THE PARISH OF KIMPTON by Jane Flambert (published by the author 2011) reviewed by Shirley Wittering

Reviews round-up E V E LY N L O R D

All books sent for listing in The Local Historian are either distributed to appropriate reviewers (the ensuing reviews appearing either in the journal or in our on-line reviews section) or, because space is limited, appear in periodic review round-ups. Everything gets a review of one sort or another. I am always impressed by both the quality and the quantity of books received. These show that a great deal of research into local history is going on, and that there are many authors and editors dedicated enough to get this work into print. This present review roundup is divided into six sections: cities and towns; villages; people; education, charity and leisure; industry and transport; and buildings, with a couple of general titles at the beginning. There is a publishing problem that affects all but one of these books (Vanishing London), and which authors and editors should consider in the future when designing their publications. This is the lack of wide margins and tight-bindings which mean the books will not lay flat. This makes them difficult to read, and although it might save costs it does not enhance the product. Perhaps this is related to the growth of e-books which rival the traditional publication. However, technology changes and becomes obsolete, but a printed book will last forever. Many readers would prefer pay a little more and have something that is a pleasure to handle. Anyone who has used medieval documents will have seen the attached seals. In the case of some land transactions many seals are attached in ranks to the foot of the document. Seals and Sealing Practices explains and illustrates how seals were made, and the different types to be found on documents, from the royal seal to the personal seals of merchants and tradesmen. An academic heavyweight is Understanding the Politics of Heritage, essential for anyone working in the heritage industry, and a set book for students on the Open University heritage course. It is a collection of papers, which begin by trying to define ‘heritage’ and then explore heritage as a government tool, world heritage, heritage and nationalism, and heritage, class and colonialism. It includes case studies on the Taj Mahal and on Glasgow. This is an interesting and thought-provoking book, not only for those involved in the heritage industry. As local historians we should consider how much local history becomes ‘heritage’ and what this implies.

Cities and towns We begin with three books on London. Vanishing London by Paul Joseph records a lost city, looking at buildings that have changed or disappeared, people and occupations that have gone, and the stories that these represent. Based on photographs from the Mirropix archive, it is an evocative book. Also evocative, though in a quite different way, is A Better Life by Olive Besagni, which concentrates on just one community in London, the Italian community of Clerkenwell. ‘Little Italy’, as it became known, developed in the mid-nineteenth century, with its own church, medical service and school, and functioned as a community until it faded in the 1950s and ‘60s. The importance of family to the Italian community is emphasised as the core of the book is based on family histories. Hidden City: The Secret Alleys, Courts and Yards of London’s Square Mile is an alphabetical gazetteer of the lesser known areas of the City of London. This would make an admirable guidebook for anyone interested in the City’s architecture, but unfortunately it is A4 size, has 228 pages and weighs a kilogram. How about a pocket edition? The gazetteer-style approach is exemplified by The Origins of Oxford Street Names, which tells exactly what is title suggests. There is an alphabetical gazetteer of streets, with additional information on more recent naming practices. Further Aspects of Belford is a varied collection of essays on this small Northumbrian market town, covering its importance as a post town, its stance on anti-slavery, and a diary written in 1804 by Eleanor Weatherley, a local farmer’s daughter. Other themes include Belford Hall, education, local railways and 157

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quarries, and the town in the two World Wars. This is an interesting collection, much of it based on primary sources, although in some cases the record office is mentioned but sources are not referenced. Books based on old and new photographs (or just old ones) continue to be produced in large numbers. Tameside Through Time, Thirsk and Sowerby From Old Photographs, Walsall Through Time, Doncaster’s District Pubs, Enfield Then and Now and In and Around York District Through Time all have the ‘past and present’ format so that the reader familiar with these areas today can compare how these have changed. The Doncaster volume covers areas in South Yorkshire from Adwick-le-Street to Woodlands and each photograph of a public house is accompanied by text on its construction and demise. Thirsk and Sowerby shows how much the landscape of high streets has changed, as small family run shops have given way to multinationals. In 1900 Thirsk market day was thronged with horses, gradually superseded by cars and lorries. The book includes photographs of military parades, local family events, and street parties. In and Around York District Through Time takes the reader on a trip starting at York, where the photographs from the Evelyn Collection 1891-1935 are contrasted with the same sites today. It then illustrates the four points of the compass around the city. Many books have been written about Liverpool and several of these, drawn from prints, photographs and paintings, have been reviewed in this journal. The latest addition is Liverpool City Centre Then and Now, which includes a brief history of the city. Overall, this format makes books of photographs much more interesting, and provides a good model to follow.

Villages This section starts with The Prestonpans Tapestry 1745. Prestonpans, a few miles south-east of Edinburgh, was the site of a battle in which Bonnie Prince Charlie was victorious over General ‘Johnny’ Cope. The tapestry, which is 104 metres long and was sewn by volunteers in Scotland, England, France, Australia and the USA, tells the story of the prince’s invasion from the time he left Rome up to the battle itself. This is a sumptuous book which illustrates each panel of the tapestry in full colour, and on the opposite page describes the historical context and gives information about those who stitched each particular section. Dunham Massey in Cheshire was the seat of the earls of Warrington and Stamford, and their great house is now a National Trust property. But this book of essays broadens out research to cover the township as a whole, as well as describing the owners of the hall. It starts with a chapter on the prehistory of the area and concludes with the 1991 Development Plan. Copiously illustrated with maps, photographs and diagrams the book records the history of the township in minute detail. There is a connection between Dunham Massey and Ratby in Leicestershire, the latter being the subject of volume 4 of The History of Ratby, which includes essays on the village in the twentieth century, poverty from 1530 to 1834, and an account of the life of a local centenarian. The connection with Dunham Massey comes because the earl of Stamford was a landowner in Ratby. Streets, courts and a public house were named after him, and he provided allotments for the poor following enclosure in 1830. There is material here for comparisons between the two settlements. Shawbury: the people and how they lived 1538-1725 is an in-depth examination of a Shropshire village in the early modern period. It estimates the population at four points in time (1525, 1563, 1672 and 1676) and uses the parish register to adjust these figures. Probate material is employed to reveal the relative wealth of the population, while the agriculture of the area, the social structure of the village, and the poor are described using a variety of primary sources. These combine to create a picture of life in the village in peace and in war. Saline Parish is the second revised edition of the Saline Parish Historical Trail first published in 2004. Saline is in Fife, north-east of Dunfermline. The book is arranged as a series of trails which include prehistoric and industrial sites such as the five collieries in the vicinity. The book is beautifully illustrated, and the notes show that a wide range of primary source material has been used effectively. Similarly good use of original material is shown by The ‘Big Houses’ of Victorian Caterham and their occupiers, a gazetteer of those houses in this Surrey commuter village

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which had resident servants and were constructed between the years of 1861 and 1901. But the book would have been much improved by a breakdown and analysis of the occupations of the householders. All the books on villages mentioned in this section are worthwhile publications, of obvious interest to villagers past and present, but can I make, once again, a plea for some comparative material to be added to village histories. Is each village unique, or does it have similarities with neighbouring settlements, or more distant settlements? What is its relationship to the nearest town? O.W. Wolters writes that ‘comparative studies are the ultimate justification of regional studies’ and by implication local studies as well. Erik Thoen adds that ‘the comparative method extends the investigation, and guards against too simplistic models’, but he admits that there is no recognised comparative methodology. Here is a challenge to local historians: define a comparative methodology and put it to use, extending single settlement studies beyond their boundaries [E. Thoen and L. van Molle (eds), Rural History in the North Sea Area (Brepols, Turnhout 2006) 11-13].

People Books on local people fall into two categories: reminiscence, biographies and memoirs, and aids for family historians. Billeted in Stroud 1939-40 and Speke To Me are reminiscences. The first is by Eric Armstrong, born in 1923 in Handsworth, Birmingham and evacuated to Stroud in Gloucestershire in 1939 at the age of 16. He kept a diary of his experiences in Stroud, interspersed with notes on events of national importance. The diary gives an intimate and revealing account of a teenager’s impressions during the war, as he coped with emerging adulthood, ‘swotting’, and girls. Speke to Me is the memoirs of David Pound, born in 1945 in a terraced house in Liverpool, who moved to Speke on the outskirts of the city. It takes the reader through the author’s early years, leaving school and joining the Merchant Navy as a cadet engineer. This book will be of interest to people who are familiar with Speke, but Billeted in Stroud is a useful addition to the wider body of the reminiscences of evacuees. The Arundells of Wardour is a family biography, tracing their fortunes until the incarceration of John, Lord Arundell in Colditz Castle as a POW. This was a gentry family, whose fortunes rose when Thomas Arundell, a younger son, became a member of Cardinal Wolsey’s household and profited from the Dissolution of the monasteries. By the late sixteenth century the family were recusants, fined and persecuted, but they survived and by the eighteenth had rebuilt Wardour Castle in south Wiltshire, and employed Capability Brown to landscape its park. From a different level of society came the Reverend Charles Marson, a socialist priest and folk-song collector, whose life is described in The Keys of Heaven. A collaborator of Cecil Sharp the folk-song collector, and a friend of Edith Nesbit the children’s author, Marson was not above courting the aristocracy and was briefly engaged to Lady Agatha Russell, daughter of the Liberal Prime Minister, Lord John Russell. This was followed by another engagement to Chloe Bayne, a student at Newnham College, Cambridge. They married in Australia, but returned to England. This is a densely packed book, and could perhaps have been more selective with its information and facts, although Marson’s life does seem to have been densely packed with incident. It will be of interest to anyone concerned with the early years of Christian Socialism or with folk song. Margaret Beaufort. Mother of the Tudor Dynasty is billed as ‘the true story of the Red Queen’, though its serious intent is not helped by the cover, which shows a short-haired wench in a lowcut scarlet gown—anybody familiar with the alleged portraits of Margaret Beaufort knows that she always covered her hair and wore high necked gowns. The ‘true story’ is a factual account of her life, with some mildly upsetting conjectures, but the historical facts do not give the reader any impression of her or what it was like to be her. Sometimes there can be too much imaginative speculation in historical biographies but, with the judicious use of sources and intelligent comments, characters can be fleshed out. Thus, Margaret’s portraits even as a young woman show her wearing the kennel head dress with her hair completely covered, and a high-necked gown similar to a nun’s habit. This can be compared with the portrait of her

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contemporary Elizabeth Woodville, who wears a gauze head dress, hair showing and a low-cut gown with opulent jewels. Why did Margaret dress in the way she did? There is much more to be explored about her life, but for readers who like a good story, clearly told, this book is an excellent example. The lesser-known rural part of Surrey is represented by a new edition of George Bourne’s Memoirs of a Surrey Labourer: a record of the last years of Frederick Bettesworth of Farnham. George Bourne was actually George Sturt, a wheelwright who wrote a number of books about Surrey in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Frederick Bettesworth ended his life as Sturt’s gardener, so their relationship was one of master and servant, and the book comprises extracts from Sturt’s diary where these refer to Bettesworth. Most are reported conversations, and so are an early form of oral history. These are not memoirs in the strictest sense, as they are presented to the reader by a third party, but the book emphasises the intense independence of the Surrey labourer, working until he died and with failing sight, rather than going on poor relief—a trait I recognise from my own family. Quite different is Surrey Executions, a year by year list of those who were hanged in the county during the nineteenth century. The chronological format of the book, and the lack of an index mean that individuals cannot be easily traced, which renders it useless for family historians or local historians tracing specific events or place; this is a missed opportunity and a marketing error. It caters for those in search of the sensational and gory, and is on the whole distasteful. Family history continues to flourish, and as new researchers are joining the ranks every day, books which give information on the sources available, and how to use them, are still essential. Tracing Your Canal Ancestors describes the construction of canals and the entrepreneurs involved, but how to research ancestors who actually lived and worked on the canals themselves does not appear until late in the book, which might disappoint some readers. Tracing Your Rural Ancestors is based mainly on nineteenth-century rural life, setting the rural craftsmen, farm labourers, farmers and landlords in context and discussing ‘some records and sources’ and where to find them. This is a book for beginners. In contrast, Tracing Your Family History in Wales: how to read the inscriptions on Welsh gravestones is for the more advanced family historian, and a handy reference book for those non-Welsh speaking family historians who have ancestors from Wales. A local example of reference works is a group of three more publications from the very productive Barningham Local History Group in North Yorkshire: Barningham Baptisms 1581-1800 is information transcribed from the baptism register of St Michael and All Angels church, Barningham Brides covers the same period using the marriage register, and Counted is an A-Z list of entries from the census for Brignell and Rokeby 1841-1911. All will be invaluable to anyone who is tracing ancestors in this area of County Durham. Women’s Lives: research women’s social history 1800-1939 encourages family historians to go further and think about the life experience of their ancestors. Women at work are described, with the lives of middle-class, aristocratic and criminal women, and sources that can be accessed about these. The Inner Life of Empires is the story of the Johnstone family, four Scottish sisters and their seven brothers who scattered round the globe and helped to found the British Empire. It tells how they made their money, their links with slavery, and their place in the Scottish Enlightenment. The structure is such that the discussion of contemporary economic theories and the enlightenment does not appear until relatively late, and the book is partly a family history, partly a contribution to eighteenth-century economic history. Public Lives: the family of Joseph Woodhead of Huddersfield discusses, among others, a newspaper proprietor, a medical pioneer, a medical officer of health, a businessman and a sportsman: some mention of the mothers, daughters, wives and sisters of these men would add considerably to the story! Wartime experience is a major theme for family history and biography. Tracing Your Tank Ancestors includes a history of tanks and the Royal Tank Corps, listing the sources of information on those men who served in tanks during the two world wars. The 11th Durham Light Infantry In Their Own Name is about the men who served and died in that regiment and, unusually for a regimental history, also follows the fortunes of their families and discusses how survivors coped with civilian life. The book is well referenced and includes a full bibliography, and is an exemplary example of how a regimental history can also be good social

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history. Dear Ray is a collection of letters written to a Royal Artillery gunner during the Second World War, from his girlfriend and his mother. The letters are interspersed with comments on wartime life. A key question is whether collections like this are of interest to anybody other than the families involved? There is a growing number of compilations of letters from and to soldiers serving in the Second World War which could be compared and analysed, because the better of them certainly shed important light on the general wartime experience. Whether books on ghosts really deserve to be reviewed is a moot point, though the boundaries between this and folklore are blurred, and many such publications include at least a token amount of local history. Paranormal Surrey: true ghost stories falls at the title. Ghost stories can only be ‘true’ if there is inconvertible proof that the ghost exists. This book does not produce any proof and is a tissue of third party reported sightings and alleged paranormal events, without any references. Furthermore, although some accounts of ‘sightings’ are part of Surrey folklore, and should have been discussed, anyone like this reviewer who was born and brought up in the county knows many more stories of ghosts and spirits in Surrey, in my case told by elderly relatives some of whom had never been outside the county—not that anyone actually saw these ‘ghosts’: they were a useful way of keeping children away from deep ponds and other hazards. Marketing and publishing can be expensive, and the publisher of this book, Amberley, has produced some notable books in the past, so why bother with material like this when there is much more better-researched and better-written local history waiting to be published? Across the Severn Bridge we enter the realm of haunted Wales. The Hangman, The Hound and other Hauntings is a gazetteer of Welsh ghosts, divided into different sites of haunting from public houses to castles, abbeys and roadside ghosts. The ghosts include ‘The shouting ghosts’ of Castellamore Restaurant in Swansea, which haunts the restaurants toilets, a phantom dog in Mynydd in Flintshire, and a singing monk at Valle Crucis … an entertaining read, but not for the faint hearted.

Education, charity and leisure The title of A Brief Account of the Oxford University Golf Club is self-explanatory. It covers the period to 1875 and we find that Southfield, one of the club’s courses, was named for a medieval farm which had documentary evidence from at least 1512. Friends to Literature: Bristol Library Society 1772-1894 discusses the foundation of the society, when 25 men gathered together to collect books and lend them to each other. It remained a subscription club until the mid-nineteenth century, when the idea of public libraries as part of the self-help movement emerged, and in 1894 the society became part of the city’s free library. This is wellwritten account adds to our understanding of the development of the public library service. Walton-on-Thames is now part of a greater London commuter sprawl, but has an ancient history, and charitable bequests made for its inhabitants stretch back 800 years. ‘I Give And Bequeath’ 800 years of Charity in Walton-on-Thames is an attractive book, charting the history of Walton charities, from the Apps Charity, named for a local manor, which originally distributed alms and a barrel of ale on All Saints Day for the soul of the donor, to Henry Smith’s Charity, also known as ‘Smith’s Gift’, which is still distributed in many villages and is now part of a national charity. The various charities in Walton combined in 1935 and the United Charities administers almshouses, a residential home for the elderly, and has provided land for allotments. Leeke’s Legacy is a history of King Edward VI School in Nuneaton, now a sixth form college. It was founded in the fifteenth century by John Leeke, father and son, with Richard Astell and others. John Leeke junior also founded a chantry in 1508 which may have included a school, but following the Dissolution of the monasteries and the eventual abolition of chantries in the late 1540s it was decided to use the Leeke charity money to found a free grammar school, with a syllabus based on Latin. Modern subjects were introduced to the curriculum in the eighteenth century. This is a well-researched history of the school, its development and necessary reforms until the last 11-plus in take arrived in 1972.

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Industry and transport Work is discussed in Doncaster’s Collieries, with each pit covered and illustrated in detail: there are some heartrending photographs of relatives waiting for news following mining disasters. The Royal Ordnance Factory at Hayes made guns and tanks during the Second World War. This modest but interesting publication covers the foundation of the factory and its construction, with a list of the armaments made. The men and women working there are not neglected, but of especial interest to local historians is that in 1950 the site became an intermediate repository for the Public Record Office, with 210 miles of shelves housing documents from the Ministries of Fisheries and Food, Defence, Education and Transport. It also accommodated the Imperial War Museum’s collection of photographs and films. In 1996 it became the Ministry of Defence archive, and in 2003 passed to Prologis/TNT to be converted into a warehouse. The Romping Lion is the story of the Dakeyne Disc Engine which was built by the Dakeyne family to run their flax mill in Lathkill Dale, Derbyshire. The engine was a new design which unfortunately was not without its problems. Replete with photographs and technical drawings, this book is not only for local historians interested in the industrialisation of the landscape, but also for industrial archaeologists and engineers. The Rosedale Heritage Trail and Lost Railway Journeys both deal with railway lines now closed. The Rosedale Heritage trail crosses the beautiful landscapes of the North York Moors, taking in a number of deserted industrial sites linked by the remains of the magnificently-engineered Victorian railway line that carried iron ore down to Middlesbrough. A great deal of information is packed into this attractive brochure. Lost Railway Journeys has a similar aim, to encourage the exploration of deserted railway lines. Written by an enthusiast, it is arranged on a regional basis and is beautifully illustrated. Under the Wires At Tally Ho: Trams and Trolleybuses in North London 1905-1962 is a book for transport enthusiasts. It covers tram and trolleybus routes from Barnet in the north to Hammersmith in the south west—early-twentieth century pictures of queues waiting to get on trams show the popularity of this form of transport. The book ends with the future, represented by the now vanished Route Masters.

Buildings Trevor Yorke’s valuable series of handbooks about architecture and housing continues to develop. Arts and Crafts House Styles and Furniture and Timber Framed Buildings Explained are illustrated with diagrams detailing each feature, and there are good glossaries in both books, with a list of places to visit. Art Deco House Styles is specialised, but using this book it is possible to identify art deco influences on what appear to be the most ordinary houses. Tracing the History of Houses gives a brief history of housing and its development, the materials and construction methods used over time, and how to date features such as doors and windows. This is an ideal book for someone starting out on the history of a house and can be recommended—perhaps to be followed up with the more specific titles as research progresses? The Toll-Houses of Cambridgeshire introduces the history of turnpike roads, and shows why toll-houses were necessary, followed by a gazetteer of toll-houses in Cambridgeshire and the ancient county of Huntingdonshire. It shows that many of these buildings are now unrecognisable as such—for example the Witcham Toll on the Ely-Chatteris road, or the Lynn Road Toll-House in Wisbech. This is one of a series of books, which will eventually cover the whole country. The Dovecotes and Pigeon Lofts of Wiltshire is part of the Wiltshire Buildings Record. It is more than a gazetteer of the buildings, being a rich scholarly work which gives the context and the history of the buildings.

Books reviewed in this article (in order of appearance) Seals and Sealing Practices Elizabeth A. New (British Records Association 2010 ISBN 978 0 900222 18 3) details from www.britishrecordsassocation.org.uk Understanding the Politics of Heritage ed. Rodney Harrison (Manchester UP 2010 336pp ISBN 978 0 7190 8152 1) £24.99

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Vanishing London Paul Joseph (Haynes 2011 256pp ISBN 978 0 85733 038 3) £25 A Better Life ed. Olive Besagni (Camden History Society 2011 162pp ISBN 978 0 904491 83 8) £7.50 Hidden City: the secret alleys, courts and yards of London’s Square Mile David Long (History Press 2011 230pp ISBN 978 0 7524 5774 1) £19.99 The Origins of Oxford Street Names Ann Symonds and Nigel Morgan (Robert Boyd Publications 2010 224pp ISBN 978 1 899536 99 3) £11.95 details from [email protected] Further Aspects of Belford ed. Jane Bowen (Belford Publishing 2011 249pp ISBN 978 0 9569909 1 4) £14 inc. p&p from V. Glass, 64 West Street, Belford NE70 7QF: cheques payable to Belford and District LHS Tameside Through Time Joyce Raven and Mark Sheppard (Amberley 2011 96pp ISBN 978 637 84868 637 3) £14.99 Thirsk and Sowerby in Old Photographs Cooper Harding (Amberley 2011 127pp ISBN 978 1 4456 0670 5) £12.99 Walsall Through Time Michael Glasson (Amberley 2011 96pp ISBN 978 1 848868 748 6) £14.99 Doncaster District Pubs Peter Tuffrey (Amberley 2011 128pp ISBN 978 14456 0119 9) £12.99 Enfield Through Time Stephen Sellick (Amberley 2011 96pp ISBN 978 1 84868 639 7) £14.99 Liverpool City Centre Through Time Ian Collard (Amberley 2011 96pp ISBN 978 1 4456 0412 1) £14.99 In and Around York District Through Time Paul Chrystal and Simon Crossley (Amberley 2011 96pp ISBN 978 1 4456 0215 8) £14.99 The Prestonpans Tapestry Andrew Crummy and others (Burke’s Peerage and Gentry 2010 262pp ISBN 978 0 085011 122 4) £20 Dunham Massey, Cheshire: a history ed. Don Bayliss and David Miller (Country Books 2010 226pp ISBN 978 1 906789 22 0) £14.99 from Country Books, Courtyard Cottage, Little Longstone, Bakewell DE45 1NN The History of Ratby vol.4 ed. Doug Harwood (Ratby LHS 2011 no ISBN) £13 inc. postage from Dr D. Harwood, 8, Groby Road, Ratby LE6 0LJ Shawbury: the people and how they lived 1538-1725 Ralph Collingwood (author 2011 144pp ISBN 978 1 906663 59 9) £10 from Ralph Collingwoood, 18 Princes End, Dawley Bank, Telford TF4 2JL Saline Parish: of cabbages and kings John Crane (Crane Books 2011 2nd rev ed 126pp ISBN 0 9546920 1 8) details from [email protected] The ‘Big Houses’ of Victorian Caterham Gwyneth Fookes (Bourne Society 2011 202pp ISBN 978 0 900992 70) details from Mrs G. Fookes, 8 Putwood Lane, Caterham CD3 6DA Billeted in Stroud 1939-1940: an evacuee’s experience Eric Armstrong (Amberley 2011 158pp ISBN 978 1 4456 0293 6) £14.99 Speke to Me David Paul (Amberley 2011 159pp ISBN 978 1 4456 0201 3) £14.99 The Arundells of Wardour Barry Williamson (Hob Nob Press 2011 242pp ISBN 978 1 906978 12 9) £12.95 The Keys of Heaven David Sutcliffe (Cockasnook Books 2010 323pp ISBN 978 0 9557460 7 9) £11.99 details from www.charlesmarson.co.uk Margaret Beaufort Elizabeth Norton (Amberley 2011 255pp ISBN 978 1 4456 0578 4) £9.99 Memoirs of a Surrey Labourer George Bourne (Amberley 2011 192pp ISBN 978 1 84868 095 1) £12.99 Surrey Executions Martin Baggeley (Amberley 2011 127pp ISBN 978 1 84868 299 3) £12.99 Tracing Your Canal Ancestors Sue Wilkes (Pen & Sword 2011 202pp ISBN 978 1 84884 238 0) £14.99 Tracing Your Rural Ancestors: a guide for family historians Jonathan Brown (Pen & Sword 2011 162pp ISBN 978 1 84884 227 4) £12.99 Tracing your family history in Wales: reading Welsh gravestones Gwen Aubery (Llygadd Gwlach 2010 163pp ISBN 978 1 84524 168 1) £7.50 from www.carreg-gwalch.com Barningham Baptisms vol.1 1581-1800 (Barningham Local History Group 2011 94pp no ISBN) £10+£1 p&p; Barningham Brides (2011 41pp no ISBN) £10+£1 p&p; Counted vol.3 Brignell and Rokeby (2011 44pp no ISBN) £10+£1 p&p all from www.barningham_village.co.uk Women’s Lives: research women’s social history 1800-1939 Jennifer Newby (Pen & Sword 2011 184pp ISBN 978 1 84484 3884) £12.99 The Inner Life of Empires Emma Rothschild (Princeton UP 2011 484pp ISBN 978 0 691 14895 3) £24.95 Public Lives: the family of Joseph Woodward of Huddersfield Pamela Cooksey (Huddersfield History Society new ed 2011 73pp) Tracing Your Tank Ancestors Janice Tait and David Fletcher (Pen & Sword 2011 186pp ISBN 978 1 84884 264 9) £12.99 The Durham Light Infantry in Their Own Names Martin Bashforth (Amberley 2011 288pp ISBN 978 1 4456 0265 3) £14.99 Dear Ray ed. Sara Goodwin (Loaghton Books 2011 191pp ISBN 978 1 9080 60 1) £13.95 from Loaghton Books, 17 Onslow Avenue, South Cheam, Sutton SM2 7ED Paranormal Surrey Marq English (Amberley 2011 125pp ISBN 978 1 84868 896 4) £12.99

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The Hangman, The Hound and Other Hauntings Thomas Coram Calders (Llygadd Gwalch 2010 160pp ISBN 978 1 84524 170 4) £7.50 A brief account of Oxford University Golf Club Robert S. Sephton (Radley History Club 2009 42pp ISBN 978 0 9542761 7 1) £3+£1 p&p details from Robert@[email protected] The Friends of Literature: Bristol Library Society 1772-1894 Kathleen Hapgood (Avon History and Archaeology 2011 no ISBN) £3.50 from [email protected] ‘I Give and Bequeath’: 800 years of charity in Walton-on-Thames David Nash (Walton-on-Thames Charity 2010 63pp no ISBN) £10+£1 p&p, from Chief Executive, Walton-on-Thames Charity, 74 Hornbeam Road, Walton-on-Thames KT12 5NU Leeke’s Legacy: a history of King Edward VI School, Nuneaton David Paterson (Matador 2011 373pp ISBN 978 1846767 461) £12.95 Doncaster’s Collieries Peter Tuffrey (Amberley 2011 128pp ISBN 978 1 44560 12 6 7) £14.99 The Royal Ordnance Factory at Hayes Nick Holder (Museum of London 2011 48pp ISBN 978 1 901992 88 5) £7 The Romping Lion: the story of the Dakeyne Disc Engine Phil Wigfall (Country Books 2011 98pp ISBN 978 1 906789 50 3) £9.99 Rosedale Railway Heritage Trail (2011) from www.roasedalerailway.org.uk Lost Railway Journeys Paul Atterbury (David and Charles 2011 176pp ISBN 978 14463 0095 4) £15.99 Under the wires at Tally Ho: trams and trolley buses of North London 1905-1962 David Bergner (History Press 2010 127pp ISBN 978 07524 5875 5) £12.99 Arts & Crafts House Styles Trevor Yorke (Countryside 2011 79pp ISBN 978 1 84674 230 9) £6.95 Timber Framed Buildings Explained Trevor Yorke (Countryside 2011 80pp ISBN 978 1 84674 220 0) £6.99 Art Deco House Styles Trevor Yorke (Countryside 2011 79pp ISBN 978 1 84674 2477) £6.95 Tracing the History of Houses Trevor Yorke (Countryside 2011 128pp ISBN 978 1 84674 265 1) £9.95 The Toll-Houses of Cambridgeshire Patrick Taylor (Polystar Press 2011 80pp ISBN 978 1907154 06 5) £7.95 The Dovecots and Pigeon Lofts of Wiltshire John and Pamela McCann (Hob Nob Press/Wiltshire Buildings Record 2011 235pp ISBN 978 0 96418 84 8) £14

Reviewers in this issue Paul Anderton, a member of the North Staffordshire Historians’ Guild, was formerly senior lecturer in history at North Staffordshire Polytechnic and associate lecturer at Keele University. He is the author of books on Leek, Staffordshire, and Whitchurch in Shropshire, and is currently working on Volunteer Infantry Corps 180314 in South Cheshire and North Staffordshire, and Boards of Guardians’ correspondence in the Potteries. Alan Crosby is editor of The Local Historian. He is an honorary research fellow at the universities of Liverpool and Lancaster and has published extensively on landscape history and social history. John S. Lee works in local government and is also a research associate at the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of York. His interests include the medieval economy and society, and his publications include Cambridge and its economic region, 1450-1560 (University of Hertfordshire Press, 2005) and ‘Landowners and landscapes: the Knights Templar and their successors at Temple Hirst, Yorkshire’, The Local Historian vol.41:4 (2011).

Nicholas Orme was professor of history at Exeter University. He has written widely on the religious, cultural, and social history of England in the medieval and early modern periods. Roger Ottewill retired in 2008 after 35 years in higher education. He is currently studying for a PhD in Modern Church History at the University of Birmingham. His particular interests include local ecclesiastical history and local political and administrative history. Andrew Sargent has recently undertaken a PhD at Keele University in collaboration with Lichfield Cathedral, exploring the history and archaeology of the early medieval diocese of Lichfield, and in particular the origins and development of the cults of its saints. Winifred Stokes is a former university lecturer, and is now chair of the Durham County Local History Society. She is currently researching the history of earlynineteenth century joint stock companies in North East England.

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Victoria County History of Somerset: vol.10 CASTLE CARY AND THE BRUE-CARY WATERSHED ed. Mary Siraut (Boydell & Brewer/Institute for Historical Research 2010 xviii+236pp) £95 This latest VCH volume brings the total coverage to about one-third of the historic county of Somerset, a county which exemplifies the challenges posed by the use of hundreds as the geographical framework for publication—in the west they are large and comparatively coherent but in the north, east and south many are smaller and heavily fragmented, with detached portions and very awkward shapes. This, not for the first time, prompts the question as to whether the medieval hundred is necessarily the ideal unit for historical research and analysis and, especially, writing. But the time-honoured format of the VCH Red Books provides its own answer: hundreds are how it is done, and that is that. For this volume a degree of pragmatism prevailed: it covers only the northern half of Catsash hundred (hence the title, with its unusual reference to the watershed of the rivers Brue and Cary) though the parish of East Lydford, plonk in the middle of the north-west, is omitted because by historical accident it falls in the hundred of Somerton—this is a Polo mint of an administrative unit. As thus constituted, the volume deals with just ten parishes of which one, Castle Cary, is comparatively urban and includes that delightful small town. Another, Keinton Mandeville, was distinctive because from the eighteenth century onwards it was an industrial community, heavily dependent upon stone-quarrying. The others were, and are, primarily rural with agriculture as the main occupation until recent decades. But the attractive rural landscape is perhaps deceptive, for the economic and social history is more complex than at first sight appears and Castle Cary itself does not conform to the ‘small Wessex market town’ model—its medieval market was a failure, early modern attempts to revive it were largely unsuccessful, and only in the past 250 years has a more convincing urban character emerged. The book is beautifully produced, as we expect of the VCH, and meticulously researched. The list of published primary and secondary sources is impressive, with a comprehensive list of the collections at the Somerset Record Office, TNA and elsewhere which provided the raw material. As always, the approach is a parish-by-parish format, each being dealt with under a sequence of thematic headings: communications, settlement and population, landownership, economic history (subdivided into agriculture, trade and industry, retailing and services), social history, local government, and religious history—the balance between these,, and their respective lengths, being determined by the particular circumstances of the parish in question. A particularly valuable aspect of this volume is the close and detailed attention given to industry—the numerous and often surprisingly significant processing industries reliant on the agricultural sector are fully discussed, as are the social structures and social mechanisms of each community. The VCH has long since abandoned its proverbial obsession with manorial descent and the Church, but it is still comes as a pleasure to observe the breadth and inclusivity of its scope today. The thoughtful introduction points to the profound changes of the twentieth century, from air raids (even in this tranquil area) to the inexorable restructuring of society and economy. Architecture and buildings are well-covered, and the text is supported by a selection of good photographs (mostly recent but including some historic images), and a series of beautiful, clear and well-drawn parish maps, derived from primary sources such as tithe maps and estate maps. This is an exemplary volume, which demonstrates the continuing worth of the Red Books. In her excellent volume on Exmoor which was produced under the ‘England’s Past for Everyone’ project (and which I reviewed in TLH a couple of years ago) Mary Siraut presented historical research in an accessible and appealing ‘popular’ style. This VCH volume in the more 165

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traditional format is equally impressive but of course very different. It is local history of high quality, an invaluable source not only for those looking at any community in the area, but also for anybody researching more widely one of the many themes around which it is constructed. ALAN CROSBY THE KEELMEN OF TYNESIDE Labour organisation and conflict in the North East coal industry 1600-1830 Joseph M. Fewster Regions and Regionalism in History no.13 (Boydell/ AHRB Centre for North East England History: NEEHI 2011 222pp ISBN 978-1-84383-623-2) £60 This scholarly monograph represents almost a lifetime’s research for, as the author admits, his interest in the keelmen dates back to his undergraduate days. Although the subtitle might imply that the study only relates to labour relations, this is in fact likely to remain, for many years to come, the definitive account of the role of the keelmen in the complex operation of getting coal from pit to ship. Even Tyneside readers may be surprised by how little they actually know of the lives of these archetypal figures of eighteenth-century Novocastrian folklore. To those for whom the only point of reference is the song ‘The Keel Row’, even the introduction provides insight into a long-vanished form of skilled manual labour which was essential to the coal trade for over two centuries. The specific nature of the Newcastle coal trade was determined by its dominance by the Company of Hostmen, whose members at the end of the sixteenth century acquired the ‘Grand Lease’ of the two main contemporary sources of supply.and in 1600 by royal charter the exclusive right to vend Tyneside coal. They also controlled the city itself, through a virtual monopoly of municipal offices. But they were dependant for the smooth operation of the trade on the keelmen, skilled and powerful workmen who could negotiate the treacherous meanderings of the river and its even more dangerous mouth to get the coal from upriver staiths to the collier brigs waiting offshore. The ‘keel’ itself was a sort of shallow barge, which normally carried 8 Newcastle chaldrons (21 tons 4 cwts) and was worked by a skipper, two men and a boy. Eighteenth-century Newcastle was an overcrowded walled mediaeval town with steep alleys or ‘chares’ leading down to the quayside. The keelmen who were congregated in ‘necessitous and rude’ conditions in Sandgate just outside the walls evolved their own culture and were held by local magistrates, with some justification, to be a volatile element in Newcastle society not to be lightly alienated. The keelmen for their part were well aware of their crucial role in the economy of the city and not prepared to tolerate what they perceived as intolerable infractions of their conditions of employment. Fewster examines in fascinating detail ten of the disturbances and confrontations during the period covered by the study and asks how far they conform to the notions of moral economy advanced by E.P. Thompson and challenged by more recent social historians. His conclusion is that each disturbance or strike was the result of such a multiplicity of factors and circumstances that no theoretical generalisation is possible. An issue on which the keelmen and their employers were totally agreed concerned impressment. The Admiralty normally granted protection to keelmen but at the height of the French invasion scare in 1803 officers of the impress service, with quotas to deliver, took the law into their own hands—and in several cases the Admiralty turned a blind eye. It took the combined efforts of local MPs, city fathers and aristocratic coalowners with powerful political connections to persuade the Admiralty to renew protection and to allow substitution. The keelmen were still the ‘very sinews of the coal trade’ as the Tyne Mercury put it. The decline of the keelmen began with the development of steam technology. Famously, the ‘Wylam Dilly’, an early locomotive, was used to haul a string of laden keels downriver during the 1822 strike. Steam-powered paddleboat tugs were introduced to bring colliers into the Tyne for loading from spouts and then haul them out into the open sea. By the 1830s railway builders were bringing their lines to staiths far enough downriver to load the boats directly. The final blow was the very belated establishment of the Tyne Improvement Commission in 1852, which at last began to clear the river of the ‘numerous sandbanks, shoals and narrows’

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that only skilled keelmen in a flatbottomed barge could negotiate. The keelmen were on their way to becoming the subject of sentimental folksong. This is a fascinating study whose price probably consigns it to library shelves but which is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of the coal trade, working and living conditions in the period and the nefarious dealings of city bosses. WIN STOKES THE RISE OF A VICTORIAN IRONOPOLIS Middlesbrough and regional industrialisation Minoru Yasumoto Regions and Regionalism in History no.15 (Boydell/AHRB Centre for North East England History: NEEHI 2011 230pp ISBN 978-1-84383-633-9) £60 Middlesbrough was an early-nineteenth century new town, begun in 1831 on a’greenfield’ site by Joseph Pease, the entrepreneurial son of the prime sponsor of the Stockton and Darlington Railway, as a deepwater coaling port on the south bank of the Tees. It was by no means evident at its inception that by the second half of the century its name would have become synonymous with first the iron and then the steel industries. Its origins, meteoric rise and subsequent decline have attracted the attention of a number of urban historians, geographers and sociologists from Asa Briggs (who included it in his seminal Victorian Cities published in 1963) to a celebratory volume produced by the University of Teesside to mark the formation of the new borough of Middlesbrough in 1996, and numerous more recent articles on various aspects of life in the town. The focus of the present volume is Middlesbrough’s rapid rise and its position its zenith as the centre of a Teesside industrial cluster—although the conclusion also points to some of the factors contributing to its subsequent decline. Professor Yasumoto, whose previous work was on Leeds during the Industrial Revolution, confesses that before undertaking this study he knew very little about Middlesbrough: if that was indeed the case this represents an even more remarkable achievement, but it also explains why the region of the title is narrowly defined and why there is a certain lack of wider contextualisation within the broader region of South Durham and North Yorkshire. That said, this is a most meticulously researched study drawing on an enormous range of primary sources: there are 125 sets of figures and tables covering subjects as diverse as company balance sheets, pig iron export figures, migration patterns and morbidity rates in the local hospital. The transition from coaling port to ‘ironopolis’ was impelled by the demands of the rapidly expanding railway network in the 1830s and ‘40s. Middlesbrough was ideally situated for the import of iron ore by sea and the transport of coke by rail from the collieries of South West Durham. But the real take-off came after 1850, when improvements in smelting technology in the preceding decades enabled enterprising ironmasters to exploit the Cleveland orefield on Middlesbrough’s own doorstep. Population figures soared as immigrant workers from all over the country and beyond converged on the town. In its investigation of the ramifications of this demographic revolution the study is strongest and most innovative, using the latest techniques of record linkage to establish migration patterns and offering detailed statistical analyses. The penultimate chapter on welfares provision offers a fascinating glimpse of the functioning of a community hospital before the NHS, as well as evidence of a culture of self help among the work force and conciliation rather than confrontation in labour relations. The copious references and tables will provide sources for many a future thesis even though, as with the previous book reviewed, the price makes it a library reference work rather than one for the researcher’s own bookshelf—which is a shame. WIN STOKES MORNING STARS OF THE REFORMATION: early religious reformers in the Bristol region Joseph Bettey (ALHA Books no.8) £3.50 By any reckoning the Reformation dominates the ecclesiastical landscape of the sixteenth century. Consequently, it is relatively easy to overlook some of its precursors. At the same time, there is increasing recognition of the need for studies of the impact of major national events at

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the local level, in the interests of providing more finely tuned and evenly balanced narratives. Eamon Duffy’s magisterial The Voices of Morebath: Reformation and Rebellion in an English Village is one such example. On both of these counts, the latest work by Joseph Bettey is particularly welcome. The ‘Morning Stars’ of the title are John Wycliffe and the Lollards and William Tyndale, and Bettey’s aim is to consider the extent of their influence in the Bristol region. As he puts it, ‘the long tradition of heretical opinion in the area was to provide a favourable background for reform, long before the dramatic changes which were to be triggered by Henry VIII’s marital problems and his overwhelming desire for a male heir’. In producing his lively and engaging account, Bettey makes effective use of his well-honed skills as a local and religious historian, in addition to his deep knowledge of Bristol and the surrounding area. He makes the point that with its involvement in ‘international and inland trade, Bristol was well-placed to shelter critics of the Church and to disseminate their views’. What tended to unite these late medieval critics, of whom Wycliffe and Tyndale were the prime examples, was a disdain both for the opulence of the Church and for its non-biblical practices and beliefs, such as purgatory and transubstantiation. They wanted a return to a simpler and what they perceived as a pristine form of Christianity, in which the individual believer had direct access to God without the need for a priestly caste of intermediaries. For this to be possible it was essential for everyone to hear and read the Scriptures in their own language. Not surprisingly, the Church did not take kindly to these challenges to its authority, all of them being deemed heretical. In providing local examples of pre-Reformation reformers, Bettey makes considerable use of the accounts of heresy trials in the ecclesiastical courts and of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. Of course, these were dangerous times for anyone challenging the authority of the Church, the ultimate penalty being death by burning. Religious belief was a matter of life or death, and some were prepared to pay the supreme sacrifice, such as William Taylor and an unnamed but faithful woman burned in Chipping Sodbury. For those who recanted a lesser penalty included public penance in one or more churches, often while carrying a faggot of wood as a sign of the punishment which could be imposed for any return to heresy. The examples offer many insights into the mindsets of those who were increasingly dissatisfied with aspects of contemporary religious life, though it is probable that they were always a small minority of the population. Bettey’s book is the eighth in a series of compact, well illustrated and moderately priced books on the local history of the area, published by Avon Local History & Archaeology. The Society is to be commended for this initiative, which might serve as an exemplar for other local history societies which have not yet ventured into the field of publication but are thinking of doing so. ROGER OTTEWILL Yorkshire’s Forgotten Fenlands Ian D. Rotherham (Pen and Sword 2010 x+181pp ISBN 1845631-31-5) £10.99 Lacking an identifiable unity, the northern fens of Yorkshire and north Lincolnshire have received relatively little attention until recently, and this book makes an important contribution towards raising the profile of a landscape which once covered about 1900 square miles. It builds on a growing archaeological interest in wetlands and an increasing environmental concern for their conservation generally, as well as specific schemes to manage and reinstate surviving pockets of the Yorkshire fens at Thorne and Hatfield Moors, Potteric Carr and Wheldrake Ings. Rotherham draws on a range of published historical documents, including the writings of travellers, topographers, diarists, and agricultural improvers, together with environmental, archaeological and historical studies. He splits his survey of the fenlands into geographical areas: the fens of south Yorkshire and north Lincolnshire, the wetlands of Holderness and the Hull Valley, York and the Vale of York, and the Vale and Lake of Pickering. The loss of these fens, and those of East Anglia, is considered by him to be ‘the greatest single ecological catastrophe that has ever occurred in England’. Various attempts at drainage are catalogued, from the work of the medieval monasteries (notably Selby Abbey) to the major

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schemes by Cornelius Vermuyden for Hatfield Chase in the seventeenth century, and John Smeaton for Potteric Carr in the eighteenth. The efforts to preserve remaining parts of the fenland are also examined, including the passionate campaign by William Bunting for the protection of Thorne Moor. As Rotherham says, ‘this is a story very often of destruction and irretrievable loss, of human conflict with nature, and of the long-term consequences of the collective impacts of thousands of individual actions to control and cajole the waters’. The fens provided a variety of natural resources, including reeds and sedge for thatching and fuel, willows for basket-making, fishing, fowling and pasture. Some areas formed occasional hunting chases, like Thorne Mere where the royal party used 100 boats to pursue 500 deer in 1609. In other localities, the cutting of peat turf for fuel formed a major industry. Yet despite these rich natural resources, the fenland provided a difficult environment, susceptible to flooding and disease. Malaria receives only a passing mention in this survey, but M.J. Dobson’s Contours of death and disease in early modern England (Cambridge UP, 1997) identified high mortality rates from malaria and other water-borne diseases in the marshlands and fens of south-east England. Indeed, more references generally could have been made to landscape studies of other areas of marsh and fen such as the Somerset Levels and the Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire fenlands, and the chapters in Joan Thirsk’s Rural England: an illustrated history of the landscape (Oxford UP, 2000) which provide detailed summaries of this research. Nonetheless, this is a readable account, well-illustrated with maps, photographs and paintings, which provides a valuable introduction to the distinctive landscape, culture, and wildlife of this region. JOHN S. LEE THE BIRTH OF A BOROUGH An archaeological study of Anglo-Saxon Stafford Martin Carver (Boydell 2010 191pp ISBN 9780851156231) £60 Martin Carver’s study of medieval Stafford documents the results of a ten-year campaign initiated in 1975, when the intensive redevelopment of the town enabled a series of archaeological interventions including four open area excavations and a host of smaller evaluation trenches. Despite its opportunistic context, the work was driven by a specific desire to understand the early medieval origins of a town which, according to the tenth-century Mercian Register, was founded as a burh by Æthelflæd of the Mercians in 913 as part of a campaign to conquer the Danelaw. Accordingly, Carver’s study is also dominated by this issue, broached in an introductory chapter and discussed at length in the concluding chapter. Between these, the book discusses the results of the project. Chapter 3 describes the four open area excavations in detail, and includes new analyses of two other Stafford excavations and a palaeoenvironmental study. Chapter 4 concerns the Anglo-Saxon burh, which appears to have declined in the later-eleventh century and comprises the earliest extensive archaeological deposits across the town. Chapter 5 continues with the renaissance of the late-twelfth century, charting a second decline during the fourteenth. This cycle of boom and bust is an important part of Carver’s larger thesis, prompting him to ask fundamental questions about the concept of urbanism and Stafford’s place within it. He presents careful characterisations of the town during these periods: Æthelflæd’s burh was a military project, featuring distinct areas devoted to industrial-scale grain processing, butchery and pottery production, conceived as complementary parts of a command economy; the later medieval town, while displaying continuity in some areas, was more urban (in our sense of the word), with many smaller scale industries and acting as a local market. Carver’s analysis benefits considerably from a reconsideration of the earlier excavation reports (which are available online, hosted by the Archaeology Data Service) in the light of more nuanced pottery seriations developed since the project ended in 1985. The book is clearly-written, and the accompanying plans are generally useful, although some suffer from reproduction at smaller scales than the originals. Criticism is most readily levelled at Carver’s discussion of the burh (Chapter 6): his single-minded pursuit of the image of Rome in

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every aspect of the burh’s design inspires dismissive syntheses of much recent work and a rather heavy-handed critique of other hypotheses, which see burhs developing from pre-existing royal or ecclesiastical centres. While his emphasis on the burhs as a phenomenon in their own right is welcome, his focus on the ideological patterns in the minds of the Danelaw conquerors excludes much of the social context of burh-building. Although he makes a convincing case for the foundation of the burh at Stafford on a near-virgin site, others were certainly not founded de novo, and this should prompt a more inclusive discussion of motivation than Carver is prepared to offer. Moreover, his interpretation of Stafford as a Roman-style fort at the centre of the town’s water-girt peninsula site, with a vicus lying to the east, is forced, and defies the sort of strategic rationale which he elsewhere emphasises. Nevertheless, the study provides a valuable summary of an important campaign of excavation, and if the discussion fails to convince on some points, it should inspire debates—no doubt eagerly anticipated by the author—in which Stafford will play an important part. ANDREW SARGENT COMMUNE, COUNTRY AND COMMONWEALTH The people of Cirencester 1117-1643 David Rollison (Boydell: vol.10 Studies in early modern cultural, political and social history 2011 296pp ISBN 978-1-84383-6711) £60 Good local history books always challenge the view of those academics who claim that the subject is of too low an order of scholastic activity to be admitted to the university curriculum. In his new book on Cirencester, David Rollison openly and forcefully refutes this patronising notion: ‘The history of “absurdly small” English towns … is not and cannot be simply “local history”. It is an opportunity to study the responses of all ranks of society, living, permanently or temporarily, in often highly distinctive communities, to widely dispersed themes of social, economic, religious, and in both narrow and broader senses, constitutional history’. However, the local historian must read this book with all the care of a man holding a hand grenade. It’s a paper volume but also a weapon in an academic argument, an explosive contribution to a long-fought-over battlefield. This is what is good about the process of history. Views of the past are potentially contentious, and should always be recognised as such. Rollison’s chronological narrative of the unique evolutionary circumstances of Cirencester is much more than a mere rehearsal of life stories in successive generations of resident families and institutions, of dramatic events, of alterations to buildings, of population statistics and of occupational analyses. Cirencester is claimed to be an exemplar of, and a critical component in, a wider explanation of British history. An abrupt ending in February 1643 gives the game away. Why was there a descent into the chaos of civil wars in the 1640s? The destruction and devastation attendant on military means of solving political problems was all too evident when some 1300 captives from a battle in the streets of Cirencester were bound in pairs, marched to Oxford, and held prisoner there, paraded before a triumphant king and made to beg for mercy. Kneeling in the slush of a street, these benighted men made it all too obvious where power lay and whose humanity was trashed to demonstrate royal hegemony. It is not the temporary victory of Charles I, however, which interests Rollison, but the way that successive stages in Cirencester’s development from 1117 onwards illuminate a recurring element of continuity in English history—the power of community loyalty and a sense of belonging to, and having responsibility for, the common good, at least in the five centuries prior to the civil wars, and within defined locations. These, to Rollison, are first of all towns and then the ‘countreys’ enveloping them. He rejects pays as a term because of its misleading overtones. Cirencester was an urban settlement from the later twelfth century at least and, though without a proven borough charter, it acquired two MPs in 1571. It was a one-parish town set in a rural landscape of ‘Seven Hundreds’, located strategically relative to wool producing and cloth manufacturing districts in the Cotswolds and main routeways to Bristol, the Forest of Dean and Severn valley, and above all to London and to European markets for England’s principal textile exports. It functioned as a commercial hub, symbolised by the huge market space at its centre and evidenced by successive generations of artisan craftsmen, merchants and traders whose activities Rollison relates in dense detail. Crucially, the manor and parish, and

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necessarily the urban settlement, became possessions of the adjacent Augustinian priory of St. Mary and from the early twelfth century onwards tension grew, setting the interests of an urban, commercial community constantly engaged in an economic battle to survive and hopefully to expand, against those of an ecclesiastical landlord. For Rollison, Cirencester was a ‘commune’, a self-consciously distinct social and economic unit from the start. Its constant collective aims were to obtain recognition for an independent existence and enhance the common good. Abbots, until their removal in the 1539, were the equally resistant obstacle, only to be replaced by secular manorial lords hardly less unyielding. Underlying and conditioning this centuries-old struggle was another continuity, that of class formation. The precise composition and the language used to describe various sections of society differed over time, but ‘gross class differences were systemic and continuous’. Rollison has worked hard on his sources such as fifteenth century wills, the 1522 military survey, parish registers, and a muster roll of 1608 to analyse the four sorts of men, or four status levels or, though he uses the language of class sparingly, the four classes always identifiable in the town and in the hundreds around. His thesis depicts a succession of stages in the same struggle. On two occasions, for example, parish concerns bound together the townsfolk of the commune, or ‘commonwealth’, against external forces. In the fifteenth century the symbol of the power of their vigorous, unifying, Catholic religious faith was the erection of the tower at St John’s, the parish church, still visibly the dominating feature of Cirencester’s townscape. This was a popular, or ‘of the people’, Catholicism, giving the lie to the Protestant myth of a corrupt and degenerating Catholic church. In the 1580s parish affairs again brought the communality into a single mind. Arguments were made for the reconstitution of a Guild Merchant and an end to manorial regulation, but these were countered by Philip Jones, ‘preacher of the town of Cirencester’, who promoted a Protestant faith appealing to the lowest orders on the grounds that Jesus was a carpenter, a ‘manuary craftsman’. Parallel to this were the activities and ambitions of Philip Marner and John Coxwell, two of numerous individuals leaving deathbed bequests to promote the commonweal of the parish through generating employment for the lowest sections of society: ‘They wanted to create nothing less than a prosperous, pious and harmonious commonwealth such as the world had never seen. … these elders of capitalism were inspired to get close to understanding how the world came to be the ways it is today. Religion played a central role in the birth of capitalism, which was, in its infancy, driven by a profoundly millenarian force’. R.H Tawney, of Religion and the Rise of Capitalism fame, is only one of several authors whose appearance in the text testifies to the more powerful influences shaping Rollison’s world view. A short appreciation of this book does not do justice to the richness of detail (on the importance of immigration, for instance); the depth of scholarship exemplified by family reconstructions; the power of the argument, and the wealth of evidence closely studied. Nor is there space to develop a critique or comment on limitations. It should be required reading for all prospective historians of early modern English towns, especially those once in monastic manors and without borough corporations, yet lucky enough to have similarly large relevant source collections. The book’s historiographical context, however, requires serious examination. PAUL ANDERTON THE CHURCH DEDICATIONS AND SAINTS’ CULTS OF MEDIEVAL ESSEX Janet Cooper (Scotforth Books 2011 xii+188pp ISBN 978-1-904244-67-7) £14.99 from AbcBooks; £15.99 post-free by cheque payable to the author, 16 Merrivale Crescent, Ross-on-Wye HR9 5JU The history of church dedications is a subject as much in need of rescuing as exploring. Frances Arnold Forster’s Studies in Church Dedications of 1899 still lurks in the field, misleading the unwary into assuming that it is a reliable account of their origins and history as opposed to being largely based on what they were in her own day, following much confusion and many changes during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The task of tracking them in historical records is difficult and elusive, requiring the thorough reading of (for example) all the available charters, episcopal and papal registers, churchwardens’ accounts, wills, and

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modern directories, and the task has been achieved so far for only half a dozen English counties. It is therefore welcome to have Janet Cooper’s inventory of the evidence for Essex, covering the 420 medieval parishes of the county within its ancient borders. She provides the earliest reference to each church dedication with its source, indications of later changes, and data about subsidiary saint cults such as those of altars, images, and guilds within the churches, and fairs and parochial chapels outside. The reader is provided with an analytical introduction, maps, and indexes of saints and parishes (but not minor places). Essex has only one set of medieval wardens’ accounts, so much of the late-medieval material comes from wills, of which the author has used those in the London archives and many, but not all, in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury registers at Kew. One or two disappointments must be mentioned. There is only a very brief historiography of the subject on page 3, which omits my book The Saints of Cornwall (2000) which was the first study to list every medieval saint cult in an English county. In my earlier account of church dedications in Cornwall and Devon, published in 1996, I tried to bring to the subject the rigour of the English Place-Name Society volumes, so that I gave not only the first occurrence but those that supported it, and listed all the evidence of dedications in published directories from the time of Browne Willis who (along with Edward Lhuyd) was the pioneer student of the subject. Dr Cooper does not give all the occurrences for the Middle Ages unless they conflict, or the dates and sources of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century evidence about medieval dedications, although that evidence is important for explaining the anomalies one finds in older books and some church usages today. She states that changes in dedications took place between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, whereas they changed in the eighteenth, when the antiquaries produced new conjectures. The analytical introduction tends to keep to the listing of facts rather than summarising and elucidating them in the context of general Church history and other county studies. But perhaps I am expecting too much in what is still a new field, in terms of rigorous academic standards, where it may seem hazardous to stray too far from one’s evidence. As the author shows, we struggle even to understand why churches had their dedications and when they gained them, given that the evidence so often appears long after the buildings were founded. NICHOLAS ORME

Book on Ratby, Leicestershire: additional information In the ‘New Publications’ section of the February 2012 issue of The Local Historian we included the following book, but incorrectly stated that there was no ISBN. Please therefore note the following correct information: THE HISTORY OF RATBY 4 ed. Doug Harwood (Ratby Local History Group 2011 ISBN 978 0 9547994 3 4) £13 inc. p&p from Dr Doug Harwood, 8 Groby Road, Ratby, Leicester LE6 0LJ

RECENT

PUBLICATIONS IN LOCAL HISTORY

Only books and pamphlets sent to the Reviews Editor are included in this list, which gives all publications received between 1 November 2011 and 1 February 2012. Most books are also reviewed in this or a future issue, or on the BALH website. Publishers should ensure that prices of publications are notified. When addresses are quoted prices usually include postage and packing. Other books should be obtainable through normal book-selling channels and retail prices are quoted. The Reviews Editor is Dr Evelyn Lord, Book Reviews, PO Box 649, Cambridge CB1 0JW. Please note that all opinions and comments expressed in reviews are those of the reviewer—they do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the British Association for Local History.

LOCAL AND REGIONAL STUDIES East ANCIENT TREES IN THE LANDSCAPE Norfolk’s arboreal heritage Gerry Barnes and Tom Williamson (Windgather 2011 ISBN 978 1 905119 39 4) £25 THE BOHN OF FRESSINGFIELD CARTULARY ed Bridget Wells-Furby (Boydell/Suffolk Record Society 2011 ISBN 978 1 84383 690 2) £30 GOOD NEIGHBOURS Itteringham, Norfolk in the 18th Century William and Maggie Vaughan-Lewis (Itteringham History 2010 ISBN 978 0956 17951 7) details from Bure Cottage, Itteringham Common, Norwich NR11 7AP THE TOLL-HOUSES OF CAMBRIDGESHIRE Patrick Taylor (Polystar Press 2011 ISBN 978 1 907154 06 5) £7.95 London and the South East A HISTORY OF CHARING The parish from the earliest times to 1900 Charing and District Local History Society (Charing and District LHS 2011 ISBN 978 0 9570299 0 3) £12 HUMPHRY REPTON’S RED BOOK for Panshanger and Tewin Water ed Twigs Way (Hertfordshire Record Society 2011 ISBN 978 0 9565111 0 2) £30+£3.50 p&p from Mrs G. Grimwood, Hertfordshire Record Society, 50 Sollershott Hall, Sollershott East, Letchworth SG6 3PW LONDINIUM A new map and guide to Roman London (Museum of London 2011 ISBN 978 1 907588) £6.25 THE ROYAL ORDNANCE FACTORY AT HAYES Nick Holder (Museum of London 2011 ISBN978 1901992 88 5) £7 MRS WHITBY’S LOCKET Barry Jolly (Milford-onSea Historical Record Society 2012 no ISBN) £8.50+£1.25 p&p from [email protected] A SHORT HISTORY OF HERNE HILL John Brunton (Herne Hill Society 2011 ISBN 978 1 87352 083 3) available from Herne Hill Society, PO Box 27845, London SE24 9XA

THE SHEPHERDS AND SHEPHERD NEAME BREWERY Faversham Kent 1732-1875 John Owen (John Owen 2011 ISBN 978 0 9559997 3 4) details from www.shepherd-neame.co.uk THEODORA’S JOURNALS Inside history from Victorian times to the eve of World War Two ed Amy Coburn and Ruth Nason (Harpenden and District LHS 2012 no ISBN) £15+£3 p&p from R. Nason from HDLHS, 3 Hall Close, Empingham, Rutland LE15 8PE WADHURST BACK IN TIME 1901-1936 (Wadhurst History Society 2011 ISBN 978 0 9561768 6 8) £15+£3 p&p from Wadhurst HS, Greenman Farm, Wadhurst TN5 6LE; WADHURST THROUGH TIME Shops, Businesses and Services 1901-1936 Gwyn Skae (Wadhurst HS 2011 no ISBN); WADHURST CENSUS RETURNS 1841-1936 details from above address WHITTON BROOK formerly Birket’s Brook A small river journey through Whitton history Ed Harris (Borough of Twickenham LHS 2011 ISBN 978 0 903341 87 5) £4.50 from Mike Cherry, 75 Radnor Road, Twickenham TW1 4NB Midlands LITTLE MALVERN LETTERS 1. 1482-1747 ed Aileen M. Hodgeson and Michael Hodgetts (Catholic Record Society 2011 ISBN 978 0 902832 26 8) £45 details from Hon. Secretary, CRS, 114 Mount Street, London, WIX 6AH OXFORDSHIRE CONTRIBUTIONS to the Free and Voluntary Present to King Charles II transcribed Gwyn de Jong ed Jeremy Gibson (Oxfordshire FHS 2012 ISBN 978 1 906280 34 5) £5+£1 p&p from Jeremy Gibson, Church Hanborough, Witney OX29 8AB OXFORDSHIRE FRIENDLY SOCIETIES 17501918 ed Shaun Morley (Oxfordshire Record Society vol.68 2011 ISBN 978 0 9025 0973 3) £25 from ORS, c/o The Secretary, Tithe Corner, 67 Hill Crescent, Finstock, Chipping Norton OX7 3BT WHITCHURCH DIVIDED Conforming and nonconforming in a Shropshire parish 1526-1720 Paul Anderton (Whitchurch History and Archaeology Group 2011 ISBN 978 0 9564059 1 3) £9.95

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North

Scotland

DONCASTER’S COLLIERIES Peter Tuffrey (Amberley 2011 ISBN 978 1 4456 0126 7) £14.99

PHOTOGRAPHERS OF THE WESTERN ISLES Martin Padget (John Donald/Birlinn 2011 ISBN 978 0 85976 704 0) £30

FURTHER ASPECTS OF BELFORD ed Jane Bowen (Belford Bowen Publishing 2011 ISBN 978 0 9569099 1 4) £12+£2 p&p from Ms V. Glass, 64 West Street, Belford NE70 7QF IN AND AROUND YORK DISTRICT THROUGH TIME Paul Chrystal and Simon Crossley (Amberley 2011 ISBN 978 1 4456 0215 8) £14.99 MARDALE Echoes and Reflections of a lost Lakeland community Shap Local History Society (Shap LHS ISBN 978 0 906839 06 5) £14.95 from [email protected] or Mrs E. Amos, Kirkbank House, Shap, Penrith CA10 3LD PUBLIC LIVES A notable family of Huddersfield Pamela Cooksey (Huddersfield LHS 2011 reprint no ISBN) available from [email protected]

SALINE PARISH Of cabbages and kings John Crane (Crane Books 2nd ed. 2011 ISBN 978 0 9546920 1 8) available from [email protected] Wales CARDIFF AND THE MARQUESSES OF BUTE John Davies (2011 reprint ISBN 978 0 7083 2463 9); WALES AND THE CRUSADES c1095-1291 Kathryn Hurlock (2011 ISBN 978 0 7083 2427 1); THE WOMEN AND MEN OF 1926 The general strike and the miners’ lockout in South Wales Sue Bruley (2011 ISBN 978 0 7083 2450 9) all published by University of Wales Press: details from www.uwp.co.uk General, biography and family history

QUEEN STREET CHAPEL AND MISSION Edward Royle (Huddersfield LHS rev. ed. 2011 ISBN 0 9509134 2 1) £4 from [email protected]

TRACING THE HISTORY OF HOUSES Trevor Yorke (Countryside 2011, ISBN 978 1 84674 265 1) £9.95

SCANDALS! Rogues, rascals and infamy in Hull and East Yorkshire Angus Young (Highgate Publications (Beverley) 2011 ISBN 978 1902 64557 5) £10.50 from Highgate Publications, 24 Wylies Road, Beverley HU17 7AP

ART DECO HOUSE STYLES Trevor Yorke (Countryside 2011 ISBN 978 1 84674 247 7) £6.95

THIRSK AND SOWERBY FROM OLD PHOTOGRAPHS Cooper Harding (Amberley 2011 ISBN 978 1 4456 0670 5) £12.99 WAKEFIELD COURT ROLLS 1433/6 ed and calendared C.M. Fraser (Yorkshire Archaeological Society 2011 ISBN 978 1 903564 61 5) £12+£2 p&p from YAS, 23 Clarendon Road, Leeds LS2 9NZ WHITBY PHOTOGRAPHERS Their lives and their photographs from the 1840s Ruth Wilcock (Towlard Publications 2011 ISBN 978 0 9511711 1 0) £15.95 from www.towlard.com

THE BRITISH POLICE FORCES AND CHIEF OFFICERS 1829-2012 Martin Stallion and David S. Wall (Police History Society 2nd edition 2011 ISBN 978 0 95125 386 1) £15 from PHS, c/o the Librarian, Bramshill House, Hook RG27 0JW CUSTOM, IMPROVEMENT AND THE LANDSCAPE IN EARLY MODERN BRITAIN ed Richard W. Hoyle (Ashgate 2011 ISBN 978 1 4094 0052 3) £65 FAMILY MATTERS A history of genealogy Michael Sharpe (Pen & Sword 2011 ISBN 978 1 8488 455 96) £19.99 A LITTLE GIRL’S WAR Wendy Appleton (Amberley 2012 ISBN 978 1 4456 0639 2) £9.99

South West and West THE BRISTOL MICROSCOPISTS and the cholera epidemic of 1849 Michael Whitfield (Avon Local History and Archaeology ALHA Books no.9 2011 no ISBN) £3.50 from www.avonlocalhistoryandarch.co.uk CLEVEDON Medieval manor to Victorian resort ed Rob Campbell (Matador 2009 ISBN 978 1848761 759) £14.99 from F.J. Willy, 45 Halswell Road, Clevedon BS21 6LE

LIVING THE POOR LIFE A guide to the Poor Law Union correspondence 1834 to 1871 held at The National Archives Paul Carter and Natalie Whistance (British Association for Local History 2011 no ISBN) £4.99 THE RED QUEEN Margaret Beaufort Elizabeth Norton (Amberley 2011 ISBN 978 1 4458 0676 4) £9.99

THE STORY OF EXETER Hazel Harvey (Phillimore 2011 ISBN 978 1 86077 678 6) £20

RELIGION, GENDER AND INDUSTRY Exploring Church and Methodism in a local setting ed Geordan Hammond and Peter S. Forsaith (Pickwick Publications 2011, ISBN 978 1 60899 642 1) details from www.wipfandstock.com

WESTBURY-ON-TRYM Monastery, minster and college Nicholas Orme and John Cannon (Bristol Record Society vol.62 2010 ISBN 978 0 901538 31 4) details from Bristol Record Society, c/o Regional History Centre, University of Western England, St Matthias Campus, Oldbury Court Road, Fishponds, Bristol BS16 2JP

SOCIAL HISTORYU, LOCAL HISTORY AND HISTORIOGRAPHY Collected essays R.C. Richardson (Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2011 ISBN 978 1 4438 3340 0)

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JOURNALS AND NEWSLETTERS RECEIVED

pleasure steamers on the Upper Dee; memorials in St Michael’s Church

The more substantial articles in these journals are noted below, but we do not give a full contents list. Most journals are listed alphabetically by geographical location, not title of publication; general journals are at the end of the list.

Cleveland and Teesside Local History Society Newsletter (no.99 January 2012) details from [email protected] Middlesbrough: a hometown retrospective Cleveland History: bulletin of Cleveland and Teesside LHS (no.100 2011/2012) £12 details from www.ctlhs.org.uk Lords and peasants in medieval Cleveland; assault in mid-1850s Middlesbrough; some reminiscences of transport in Cleveland; the Conyers and the Lambtons 1350-1650; Phoenix Park Murders Dublin 1882: the Middlesbrough connection; Fred Kidd & Son, Engineers Ltd of Stockton on Tees

Cake and Cockhorse: journal of Banbury Historical Society (vol.18 no.17 Autumn/Winter 2011) £2.50 details from www.banburyhistory.org Banbury: metropolis of carriers’ carts; Newbottle glebe terrier 1682 Archive: newsletter of Barningham Local History Group (no. 22 December 2011) Why Two Bridges? Murder, revenge and a mystery man (no.23 January/February 2012) Primitive meetings up on the moor; trials and tribulations of a truancy officer; every bit of the pig was eaten; shoemakers and the Macdonalds details from www.barninghamvillage.co.uk

Colmworth & Neighbours History: journal of the Colmworth and Neighbours HS (no.1 £4.50+£1.60 p&p from [email protected] Bramble Cottage, Chapel Lane, Colmworth MK44 2JY Coppingford to Colmworth; land, labour and parish wellbeing in rural Bedfordshire; the Burgoyne family; Andrew Trapp of Moscow, Bedford, Bushmead and Thurleigh; a Keysoe family story; the belching boiler of Colmworth

Basingstoke Archaeological & Historical Society Newsletter (no.198 February 2012) details from [email protected] Up Nateley Brickworks

Droitwich History & Archaeology Society Newsletter (no.55 November 2011) 75p from [email protected] Brine Doctor; Droitwich canals reopen for use; the parish of Hindlip

Bedford Architectural, Archaeological & Local History Society Newsletter (no.88 October 2011) details from www.baalhs,org.uk The Motor Meet of 1899, How Bedford celebrated the Peace of 1814, Bedford Park

The Dunningite (Winter 2011/12) Dunning Parish Historical Society £1.50 from The Old Schoolhouse, Newton of Pitcairns, Dunning PH2 0SL History of our annual Scots Night; growing up in Dunning; Kippen House; the master of Rollo

History in Bedfordshire (vol.5 no.10 Winter 20112012) Bedfordshire Local History Association: details from www.bedfordshire-lha.org.uk World War II and the LBC at Stewartby, Augustus Henry Orlebar and the Schneider Trophy

Centre of East Anglian Studies Newsletter (October 2011) details from Centre of East Anglian Studies, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ Walberswick goes international

Bedfordshire & Luton Archives & Records Service News (no.90 Winter 2012) details from [email protected] Bedford settlement examinations Berkshire Local History Association Newsletter (no.102 January 2012) details from www.blha.org.uk

Eastbourne Local Historian (no.162 Winter 2011) Eastbourne LHS £1.50 details from www.eastbournehistory,org.uk Caffyns’ coach bodies; enthusiastic cyclists in 1900; Eastbourne’s appeasement years; centenary of aviation in Eastbourne

Pennant: the local history journal of Blackwell, Nailsea, Tickenham and Wraxall (no.60) £4 from Nailsea and District LHS, c/o 15 Goss Close, Nailsea BS3 4HV Tom Roberts MM; William Hinkes surgeon late of Nailsea; Nailsea glass; Orchard House School; two Nailsea families c 1800-1850; Heath Cottage

East Yorkshire Local History Society Newsletter (no.26 Winter/Spring 2012) details from [email protected] The Hospital History Unit; Hymers College evacuation; the restoration of Wetwang Church 1843-1845

Local History Records: journal of the Bourne Society (vol.69 November 2011) £5 details from Derek Neal, 21 Park Road, Caterham CR3 5SN Henry Ward, photographer; aircraft crashes in the Sanderstead area; further memories of Chelsham and Farleigh; the Juniper family of Kenley

Farnham & District Museum Society Journal (vol.16 no.4 December 2011) £15 p.a. details from Mrs P. Heather, Tanglewood, Parkside, Upper Hale, Farnham GU9 0JP A council house kid in the 1960s; history of Ball and Wicket Lane, Upper Hale; Aldershot Observatory and its telescope

The Griffin: quarterly newsletter of the Chadderton Historical Society (no.59 November 2011; no.60 February 2012) historic pubs of Chadderton details from www.chadderton-historical-society.org.uk

Forest of Dean Local History Society News (January 2012) details from www. forestofdeanhistory.org.uk: Pine End Works; Newnham-on-Severn

History and Heritage: Cheshire West and Chester Council (Spring 2012) free from [email protected] Fire, famine and sword: a city under siege; Billy Hobbie’s Well; early

Formby Civic News (August 2011) details from Dr R.A. Yorke, 3 Wicks Lane, Formby L37 3JE Two Formby brothers

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FRAM: journal of Framlingham & District Local History & Preservation Society (no.20 December 2011) details from the Editor, 43 College Road, Framlingham IP13 9ER Framlingham on film 18751975; Sir Robert Hitcham School 1653-2010; Framlingham Castle Friern Barnet Newsletter (no.48 February 2012) Friern Barnet & District LHS details from [email protected] Coronation Day; the Orange Tree and Mamie Place Transactions of the Halifax Antiquarian Society (new ser. vol.19 2011) details from Publications Officer, 6 Baker Field, Halifax HX1 5TX: the medieval park of Erringden: use and management; Sir Henry Savile: the making of a Halifax scholar 1549-1622; Hall End and its cloth halls c1557-1779; local history in Halifax 17082008; house organs in Halifax and West Yorkshire in the 18th and 19th centuries; Jonathan Crowther 1799-1824; membership of the choir of St Hilda’s, Halifax 1929-37; Joseph Horsfall, worsted spinners: the final years 1938-2008 Hampshire Studies: proceedings of Hampshire Field Club and Archaeological Society (vol.66 2011) £20 details from [email protected] Excavations at Adanac Park, Nursling 2008; prehistoric remains at Worthy Down Camp, Winchester; a Roman enclosure at Park Prewett Hospital, Basingstoke; an Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Twyford; Iron Age, RomanoBritish and Saxon activity, Latimer Street, Romsey; shops and shopkeepers in medieval Hampshire; watermeadows of Itchen Valley Country Park; homophobia in eighteenthcentury Southampton Hedon History: journal of Hedon Museum and Hedon District LHS (no.42 Autumn 2011) details from [email protected] The Duncombes; Hedon MPs; the Holderness writers Hexham Local History Society Newsletter (no.62 Spring 2012) details from [email protected] The great clock mystery; a road scheme for Hexham 1857 Journal of Kent History (no.74 March 2012) £10 p.a. details from http://kenthistoryfederation.org Kentish history in two opposite corners of Spain; England’s fourth largest Bronze Age hoard found in Kent Lincolnshire History & Archaeology (vol.44 2009) Society for Lincolnshire History and Archaeology: details from Jews Court, Steep Hill, Lincoln LN2 1LS Caister Canal; Lincolnshire tickets, checks and passes of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; lawyering and politics in Lincolnshire: the Smith-Heathcote connection 1760s to 1850s Lincolnshire Past and Present (no.84 Summer 2011) details from above address Girls and swimming, Gainsborough BIFFS; memories of Louth 1947; first county cricket championship (no.85 Autumn 2011) Lincolnshire Carnegie Libraries no.1 Gainsborough; Spilsby St James Llanelli Historical Society Newsletter (vol.9 no.2) details from www.llanellihistorical.co.uk

Loughton Historical Society Newsletter (no.190 September/October 2011) 40p details from www.loughtonhistoricalsociety.org.uk George Pearson in Loughton; Warlies Park House; Loughton bus services in the 1930s; Glasscock’s Rose Nurseries Northamptonshire Industrial Archaeology Group Newsletter (no.121 Winter 2012) details from northants-iag.org.uk Pinner Local History Society Newsletter (no.116 Autumn 2011) details from [email protected] Old days at St. John’s School; World War II Spitfire hero from Pinner Ricksmansworth Historical Society Newsletter (no.94 January 2012) details from Geoff Saul, 20 West Way, Rickmansworth WD3 7EN Ricksmansworth wills pt.5; Faden’s map of NW London and the coming of the canal, Rickmansworth from the Watford Observer Winter 1911 Scottish Local History (no.80 February 2011) details from Scottish Local History Forum, PO Box 103, 12 South Bridge, Edinburgh EH1 1DD Victorian woollen mills in Peebles; migration of farm workers to Macduff 1850-1970; the Watchmeal of Kilpatrick; Britain’s first filtered water supply: Paisley (no.81 August 2011) Bewitching of Sir George Maxwell; Inverkeithing salt works; newspaper promotion of planned villages; compensating Scottish slaveowners; opening up Calton Hill; John McFarlane of Ballenderoch Send and Ripley History Society Journal (vol.7 no.222 Jan/Feb 2012) details from www.sendandripleyhistorysociety.co.uk The Hargreaves of Sendholme; was Ripley a planted settlement; the London to Portsmouth road 2 Wiltshire Local History Forum Newsletter (no.80 Winter 2011) details from [email protected] The riddle of the Redbridge Stone Woodsetts Local History Society Magazine (no.47 Michaelmas 2011) details from www.woodsetts.com Computers: a recent history; a Sheffield diary; the village school; beating the bounds Forest Clearing (vol.5 no.2 November 2011) Wyre Forest Historical Research Group: details from [email protected] Open History: journal of the Open University History Society (no.118 Winter 2011/12) £5 from OUHS, c/o 77 Marford Crescent, Sale M33 4DN Beating hearts and beating Hitler; 1611-1711 a hundred years of change shown in NE Cheshire probate inventories; Quay Street: a nineteenth century fishing community; Fighter Defence 1922-1936 (no.119 Spring 2012) Sir Thomas Allin and the Battle of Lowestoft 1665; Elizabeth Gray of Risley The Link (no.87 December 2011) Wessex Newfoundland Society £10 p.a. details from [email protected] Poole and WWII: a parliamentary candidate

The Record: London Colney History Society (no.23 Summer 2011) 50p from [email protected] Sunday football

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