full issue - British Association for Local History

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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
90
Built to last? The rise and fall of the church house
JOANNA MATTINGLY
107
Holiday plotlands and caravans in the Tendering district of
Essex 1918-2010
SEAN O’DELL
119
Country carriers revisited
BARRIE TRINDER
135
Review article: publications by record and special interest societies
VARIOUS CONTRIBUTORS
148
Review article: new directions in local history since Hoskins
MICHAEL WINSTANLEY
154
Reviews round-up
EVELYN LORD
157
Reviews
165
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
173
89
Themes in local history
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
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© British Association for Local History 2012
THE LOCAL HISTORY OF BRITISH SPORT
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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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THE LOCAL HISTORIAN/MAY 2012
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
96
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,
98
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
99
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
100
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
101
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
102
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
103
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
104
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
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
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),
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
‘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
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
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,
105
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
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,
106
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
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,
57
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
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
108
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
BUILT TO LAST?
109
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
110
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
BUILT TO LAST?
111
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
112
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
BUILT TO LAST?
113
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
114
(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
BUILT TO LAST?
115
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.
116
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
BUILT TO LAST?
117
3. The guild house at Poundstock, Cornwall
(photo: Keystone Historic Buildings Consultants)
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
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
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
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
120
(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
HOLIDAY PLOTLANDS AND CARAVANS
121
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
122
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
123
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.
124
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
129
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,
130
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
131
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
132
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-
133
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.
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,
134
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
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
57
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
136
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
COUNTRY CARRIERS REVISITED
137
(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
138
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.
139
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
140
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
141
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
142
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
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.
144
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
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
146
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’.
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
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
147
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
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
RECORD AND SPECIAL INTEREST SOCIETIES
149
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.
150
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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REVIEW: NEW DIRECTIONS IN LOCAL HISTORY
155
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
156
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
158
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
REVIEWS ROUND-UP
159
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
160
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
REVIEWS ROUND-UP
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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.
162
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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163
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
164
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.
•
REVIEWS •
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
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166
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
168
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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169
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
170
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
172
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
173
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)
174
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
175
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
176

full issue - British Association for Local History

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