Local History News Number 137 Autumn 2020

By Alan Crosby

Many thanks, John! That excellent fellow Dr John Chandler, chair of the BALH Publishing Committee, recently sent me a splendid example of what he termed, in a paper written in 1983, ‘polemical indexing’. It occurs in the book Feudal England, first published in 1892 by the eminent historian J. Horace Round (1854-1928), whose irascible temperament was legendary. Round’s Wikipedia entry notes that “he often indulged in castigating his contemporaries. He pursued disputes with other academics vigorously, and on more than one occasion, the level of acrimony was sufficiently high that the editor was forced to close correspondence on the subject”.

Round was a pioneer of new methodologies in history, and reserved his particular contempt for predecessors who, he felt, did not make proper use of the right source material, and who romanticised the past. A victim of special denunciation was Edward Augustus Freeman (1823-1892), Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford—‘modern’ meaning (this being Oxford) everything that had happened since the end of the Roman Empire. Freeman, a man of violent racial and social prejudices (he privately termed Disraeli “the dirty Jew”), had a very specific view of his subject, arguing that “history is past politics and politics are present history”. No room for social or economic analysis there, although he was insistent that primary sources were fundamental to good historical research and interpretation.

So here were two highly opinionated historians a generation apart, and the younger man’s loathing for the elder was the stuff of legend. Historians always argue (or more politely, they discuss and debate) but the usual medium for their condemnation is the coded language of the review (“It is surprising to find no mention of …”, “Surely he was aware that …”, “The arguments rehearsed were convincingly refuted several years ago by …”). Round’s particular genius was to recognise that in his book, which referenced Freeman’s monumental six-volume history of the Norman Conquest (1867-1879), anybody wanting to look up Freeman had to use the index … so where better to lay out his contempt for all to see?

The result is a masterpiece which makes one realise that the university presses and commercial publishers of our age are pale, feeble and timid (and doubtless frightened of legal action – Freeman, perhaps fortunately, died as Round’s Feudal England was in publication). Round spared nothing in his polemical indexing, as John Chandler summarises:

Freeman, Professor: unacquainted with the Inq. Com. Cant.; ignores the Northamptonshire geld-roll; confuses the Inquisitio geldi; his contemptuous criticism; when himself in error; his 'certain' history; his 'undoubted' history; his 'facts'; underrates feudal influence; overlooks the Worcester relief; his bias; confuses individuals; his assumptions; his pedantry; misconstrues his Latin; imagines facts; his supposed accuracy; his guesses; his confused views; his dramatic tendency; evades difficulties; misunderstands tactics; his failure; his special weakness; his Domesday errors and confusion; his wild dream; necessity of criticising his work’.

The entire index is sprinkled with such uniquely idiosyncratic statements. Thomas Andrew Archer (1853-1905), historian of the crusades, had blotted his copybook by favouring Freeman but then redeemed himself, and is indexed thus: ‘his remarkable statement; champions Prof Freeman; throws him over; contradicts him flatly; opposes him wrongly; his tactics; his knowledge of Old French; on Prof Freeman's errors’. Sir Henry Ellis is likewise enmired in Freeman’s machinations: ‘ignored the Inq. Com. Cant.; misrepresented the Northamptonshire geld-roll; unduly depreciated by Prof Freeman’.

The index even includes the elusive Holy Grail of historical research: ‘Historical Truth’ (page 332), but there we find that poor or villainous Freeman is again the object of wrath, though I very much fear that the same condemnation could be laid at the door of many other historians over the past two centuries: ‘Through all Mr Freeman's work we trace this same tendency to confuse his own conjectures with proved historic fact’. Let he/she who is without fault cast the first stone!

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‘The history of Rutland would be immeasurably poorer without them’

Robert Ovens and Sheila Sleath were nominated for a joint award by Rutland Local History and Record Society. They have kindly written this account of their active involvement in local history there over many years:

We were both born in 1943 in the Rutland village of Belton (now Belton in Rutland) where our ancestors have lived and worked for more than 200 years. We were educated locally, latterly at Oakham School (Robert) and Stamford High School (Sheila). After this we moved away to pursue our separate careers, Robert as an electrical engineer and later as a clockmaker, and Sheila as a primary school teacher.

A chance reunion and early retirement, together with our mutual interests in family history and the local history and archaeology of Rutland, enabled us to work together on many related projects. We joined Rutland Local History and Record Society in 1990 and our first project together was the detailed study of the history of the deserted medieval village of Martinsthorpe in Rutland. The archaeological fieldwalking associated with this project enabled us to identify Roman and Saxon occupation on this site. Another early project was the investigation of a late medieval watermill site near Belton, for which we received the Miss Linford Award for the best archaeological project in Leicestershire and Rutland.

When the Society was looking for a project to celebrate the millennium, we offered our research on the clocks and bells of Rutland, inspired by an article we prepared for A Celebration of Rutland edited by Bryan Waites. This four-year project involved us in recording the details of every clock, bell, scratch dial and sundial in the 50 churches of Rutland and many of its secular buildings. Time in Rutland was published by the Society in 2002 with the aid of an Awards for All grant, and almost 1000 copies were sold.

Following a successful application for a heritage lottery grant in 2004, we led a four-year community project to study the history and development of the area now covered by and surrounding Rutland Water. This was the most ambitious project undertaken by the Society, involving considerable numbers of local people. It included a new oral history group and a competition for local schools, both of which introduced and involved many who were new to local history. The resulting 680-page book, The Heritage of Rutland Water, with contributions from 27 authors, was launched by the Society in 2007. It is now out of print but can be read for free on the Society's website.

We continue to contribute articles to Rutland Record, the Society's annual journal. Also, Robert, ably assisted by Sheila, has been editing the Society's annual Newsletter since 2002.

We are involved in the organisation and presentation of the Society's annual Built Environment Awards at Oakham Castle. These are made for recent building projects which maintain or enhance the built environment of Rutland (for more information, see the April 2019 Newsletter at http://www.rutlandhistory.org/newsletters/202004.pdf). Over the years, we have devised and led many historical walks in Rutland, and we continue to prepare the village walk which is part of the Society's annual Village Visit to one of Rutland's parishes. This is yet another way in which enthusiasm for local history can be spread more widely.

One abiding passion is researching our family history which very conveniently is largely centred around the former occupants of our birth village, and our enduring interest in the history of Belton has resulted in several exhibitions and talks.

We never cease to be impressed by the amazing on-line search and research resources which are now easily available. A far cry from the days, weeks, months and years we have spent travelling to record offices to wade through parish registers and other old documents, but there is nothing like seeing the originals.

We would like to pay tribute to the late Bryan Waites who died on 11th January 2020. He was an Honorary Member of the Society and its first honorary editor, and a recipient of the

BALH award for personal achievement in 2006 (see Local History News 82, Winter 2007). We worked with Bryan on several projects and he always kept a friendly eye on what we were doing. It was Bryan who recommended that the Society should nominate us for this award.

With thanks to Robert Ovens, Sheila Sleath, Debbie Fearson, Tim Clough and Mike Tillbrook.

http://www.rutlandhistory.or

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By Gillian Draper

This resource was launched at a webinar of the Medieval and Tudor Studies seminar at the Institute of Historical Research (IHR) in June 2020. It brings together editions of (printed) primary sources, for example chronicles, together with lists of secondary occupations and crafts, national records concerned with Londoners, Gresham lectures, records in the AALT (Anglo-American Legal Tradition), archaeological, visual, and cartographic sources, reconstruction of medieval streets and buildings and much more. From all of these has been constructed the medieval London prosopographical database c.1100-c.1550 with a major focus on office holders such as mayors, sheriffs and aldermen. This has 10 500 entries at June 2020, and what has been inputted so far depends partly on the interests of student cataloguers. One function of Medieval Londoners has been to offer training and experience in digital humanities. For all of us, we can search the database for individual by name, occupation, office and so on, by running queries- no technical knowledge is required. The database uses Omeka S, a ‘a next-generation web publishing platform for institutions interested in connecting digital cultural heritage collections with other resources online’. The key to the database- as it was with earlier prosopographical databases using, for example, Access- is the Person ID. This brought back happy memories of constructing a prosopographical database for the town of Rye a few years back, where the key to the design was the interaction between the right IT and historical skills. The Rye data was then largely entered by volunteers, as it has been with Medieval Londoners, and local historians are invited on the website to contribute further data on Londoners. I commend an exploration of the website to you, preceded by viewing a video recording of the webinar on https://medievallondoners.ace.fordham.edu/

Gillian Draper, Events and Development Officer development@balh.org.uk

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By David Tilsley

Lancashire Archives closed its doors to researchers on 23 Mar and, as I write, they are unfortunately still shut. We hope that this will not be the case for much longer, and during the intervening months we have done everything possible to ensure that our wonderful collections are safe, enquirers continue to get the information they are looking for and people are still able to engage with us and the archives in our care.

A home working day has, to some extent, simply involved doing the same pc-based things we would have been doing in the office, with our families and/or pets for company instead of work colleagues. We have also been able to do other jobs though which we cannot usually make a priority, such as the typing-up of paper lists and catalogues so that they can be made available online. Fortunately, staff members have been able to access our building throughout, even during the earliest days of lockdown. An archive conservator has regularly inspected the strongroom conditions and we have alarms set which trigger a warning email to staff at home if environmental conditions deteriorate. Thankfully we have had no problems. We have also maintained an enquiry service, although limited access to the collections has meant that sometimes we have not always been able to provide a full answer. As the weeks have passed, more of the staff has returned to the building on a part time basis, to resume our copying service and look up information for researchers. As well as these efforts to continue with business as usual and catch up on other jobs, we have tried to respond to the new challenges the closure and the pandemic have thrown up with new and different approaches.

We have provided primary school teachers with resources to support home schooling and also completed a new learning resource - You Are Here - in partnership with the county council's primary school history advisor, which aims to support teachers in using maps as part of local history studies. Along with the general guidance, each primary school will be offered a digital resource pack containing local maps with the site of the school at their centre. As we know, a local perspective can make looking at maps more personal, more relevant, and the associated thinking and questioning more animated and enjoyable.

Back in in April we also launched a campaign to collect the experiences of Lancashire residents during the pandemic. We asked people to send us anything they wanted to share, and we have had an incredible response. Just over 100 people, from pre-schoolers to nonagenarians, have sent us poems, diaries, photographs, artwork, videos or sound recordings. Some submissions were simple and heartfelt, some comedic, some ambitious. We've had videos from drama groups and walking groups, posters from tennis clubs and jujitsu classes and illustrations from home-schooling children. All kinds of photographs have reached us from socially distanced celebrations to a collection of closure messages from the Lancashire's high streets; photographs which contrast the empty streets and motorways with evidence of the natural world expanding and exploring new territories. In addition, joyful art projects expressing hope, diary entries and poems sharing fears and worries. Lancashire's residents have answered our call with enthusiasm and honesty. There are no typical examples of what people have sent, but here is an excerpt from a poem by Dorothy Smalley, aged 86, which made me smile:

I've never been locked up before

And told to stay inside

So I wrote a list of things to do

To keep me occupied

The drawers have all been tidied

The paintwork's looking smart

The cupboards have all been sorted

And the garden's a work of art

I've read some books and magazines

And sat and watched the telly

And out of frustration

I even made a jelly

My family do my weekly shop

And leave it at the door

They make sure I don't go hungry

They keep coming back with more

I see them through the window

We keep in touch by phone

I wave goodbye as they go home

Standing here alone

As well as asking people to think about the pandemic and how it has affected them, we are also offering a chance to get away from it all, if only mentally. 'Escape Lockdown?' is a creative writing project which started in June. It is quite simple: a selection of images of archives in our collections have been put online, grouped together in lockdown themes, such as Get Some Exercise, For Medicinal Purposes, Home Schooling and Working from Home. People from beginners to seasoned writers have used these as inspiration to write, well, whatever they want! And we have been publishing as many submissions as possible in our monthly newsletter.

We have been planning for our reopening for months now, and a huge amount of work has gone into making our building safe for staff and researchers and in developing new procedures to help us provide an onsite service which is as much like the one we were delivering back in March as the new limitations will allow. Some aspects of how we used to do things are more difficult to resume than others, talks and other events for example, visits from school groups and work experience placements, and we may have to look for different ways to do things. There have been some positive aspects to the last five. Our closure and the effects of the pandemic more generally has made us think hard about how best make sure our collections and expertise add value into people's lives. I'm sure that when we do reopen - and we hope to announce a date very soon - some new ways of working which have developed initially as ‘stop-gaps’ out of necessity will become established as how we do things.

David Tilsley is Archivist at Lancashire Archives

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By Alan Crosby

In a fascinating paper in the current (October 2020) issue of The Local Historian, Anthea Jones discusses the work of the Dutch-born but long-time resident in England master-engraver Johannes Kip (1652-1721), who in the late 17th and early 18th centuries specialised in finely detailed and meticulously produced panoramic scenes of great houses in their garden and landscape settings. Anthea’s analysis focuses on Gloucestershire, and Kip’s remarkable series of 63 double-page engravings which were published in Sir Robert Atkyns’ Ancient and Present State of Glostershire, a history of the county which appeared in 1712. She has pointed out that at one of the Gloucestershire houses, Dyrham Park near Bath, the National Trust has been engaged in a tremendously ambitious and exciting 15-year project to remodel and restore sections of the gardens and grounds using Kip’s 1712 engraving as the guide for the landscape work. It is described as ‘no ordinary restoration, but a reimagination and reflection of the spirit of this place’, drawing on Kip’s depiction but not seeking to copy its every detail. It’s a very intriguing example of how historical sources can both inspire and inform 21st century design, and a tribute to Kip’s exceptional talent that his work is still relevant over three centuries later.

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By Megan Dennis

The More Than Oliver Twist project, by the Workhouse Network, is nearing its end.

The project saw volunteers at six workhouse sites enabled to research the lives of inmates and their institutions recorded in the 1881 census. These lives have been interpreted in a moving and resonating digital exhibition published on Google Arts and Culture. The exhibition links the historical enquiry with contemporary issues. The project has also created the largest known database of biographies of individuals and families who encountered the workhouse during their lives. This fantastic resource is freely available for local and family historians and sheds light on the diverse experience of those who came into the workhouse.

The project began by creating new research workforces at each of the six sites. At each workhouse Regional Mentors trained and supported teams of staff and volunteers to carry out family history research into the people recorded as inmates in the 1881 census using local and online resources. Starting from census records freely available on line the teams explored births, marriages and deaths, local and national workhouse records and the British Newspaper Archive to build up a picture of a life in the past.

With guidance from Nottingham Trent University the project then provided templates and frameworks for recording this research and writing it up into fully academically referenced biographies. These broadly follow the Oxford Dictionary of Biography guidelines and provide a full and accurate record of the resources encountered and used to write up the research. Each biography has been published on the Network’s eHive database (https://ehive.com/communities/1167/more-than-oliver-twist), which is fully tagged and searchable, and provide a fantastic resource for those wanting to explore the diversity of experience of those who lived (sometimes very briefly) in the Victorian workhouse system.

We explored the lives of orphaned children, single mothers and widows and widowers, as might be expected. Less likely were the histories of Jesse Brown who was awarded a Distinguished Conduct Medal for Defence of Ladysmith after growing up at Mitford and Launditch Union Workhouse; Frederick Hewley, a well-to-do postal clerk and book keeper, who ended up at Leeds Union Workhouse or Elizabeth Chilton, a well-educated lady of independent means, who spent time in the Guildford Union Workhouse.

Six of the biographies are explored in depth in the exhibition, with incredible illustrations, moving audio discussions and a resounding link to contemporary issues. Volunteers have worked with artists Mel Rye and Morgan Tipping to share their experiences of research and to create an evocative and resonant experience. Each life has reflected on by someone living through similar experiences today and this bridges the gap between past and present and creates a resounding empathetic effect. The exhibition was originally planned as a physical touring exhibition, but the coronavirus lockdown resulted in a change of plans. The shift to an online digital format means the exhibition can be enjoyed and explored by a much wider audience in perpetuity. We hope it will encourage people to respond creatively to the lives we have so carefully explored. The exhibition has been described as a “social history learning curve” and we can’t wait to share these incredible stories. The More Than Oliver Twist exhibition will be available on Google Arts and Culture from the end of September 2020.

The Workhouse Network is an Arts Council England Subject Specialist Network bringing together museums, heritage organisations, archives, universities and individuals with an interest in workhouse and welfare history. The network exists to share expertise, develop skills, knowledge and understanding and to promote the appreciation of history and the contemporary relevance of poverty and welfare. Membership is open to individuals and organisations and we are always happy to connect with people interested in exploring their own local workhouse. To find out more explore our website: https://www.workhousenetwork.org/

The More Than Oliver Twist project is funded by Arts Council England, with support from Nottingham Trent University and The National Archives. The six heritage sites in collaboration for this project are: Gressenhall Farm and Workhouse, Norfolk Museums Service; The Workhouse, Southwell, National Trust; Thackray Medical Museum; Llanfyllin Workhouse; Workhouse Museum and Gardens, Ripon Museums Trust; and The Spike Heritage Centre, Guildford.

Megan Dennis is Curator, Gressenhall Farm and Workhouse, Norfolk Museums Service and current Chair of The Workhouse Network.

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By Kate Tiller

In 2020 AASLH celebrates its 80th anniversary. Over those years it has evolved and developed, reflecting trends in American local history and demonstrating links, parallels and contrasts with British local history. From beginnings in 1904 as the Conference of State and Local Historical Societies, operating under the umbrella of the national body for historians, the American Historical Association, AASLH became an independent body in 1940. It is a membership organisation for individuals and historical groups across state and local historical societies, academic departments in colleges and universities, archives and libraries, and for the professionals, volunteers and grass-roots historians who work for or participate in them.

AASLH aims to preserve, research and interpret evidence of the American past and to provide its members with the tools and services to enable them to do this. It is also closely concerned with connections between the past and the present day, and how history is understood and used. Given the current climate in the US, this perspective has become more prominent and sometimes highly controversial. Local history has featured centre stage as attention focuses on statues and memorials, race and diversity, on gaps in traditional histories and contested understandings of the evidence we do have. The teaching of history in schools is another strong interest of the Association.

From headquarters in Nashville, Tennessee AASLH promotes its aims in print and increasingly online. Conferences and meetings continue, mostly online, as in the case of the AASLH annual conference in September 2020 on the forward-looking theme of ‘What sort of ancestor will you be?’ There is a regular magazine, History News, and a weekly e-mail dispatch with news of events, projects and publications throughout US local history as well as of AASLH’s own activities. These include webinairs, training sessions, continuing education courses, and practical and technical advice for local historians, professional and volunteer, on themes from conservation to fundraising, and exhibitions to publication. There is a significant programme of professional development for the large constituency of public historians working in US archives, museums, historical societies and funded projects.

AASLH is linked to a professional publisher, Rowman & Littlefield, with major projects such as the Encyclopaedia of Local History (Alta Mira Press, 2013 and subsequent editions), which defines the field of American local history and includes some UK coverage. Over recent years BALH and AASLH have formed a number of links. In 2014 contacts developed at the Anglo-American Conference at the IHR in London, on the theme of the impact of the First World War and how it might be explored through local history during the centenary period. I contributed an article to History News in 2015 on ‘Anniversaries, war and local history’ from a British perspective. More generally, entries on English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh local history, and on BALH feature in the first and subsequent editions of the Encyclopaedia of Local History. The two Associations aim to keep in touch on developments, via magazines and journals, e-mail dispatches and correspondence.

As AASLH reaches its 80th birthday and BALH approaches its own 40th in 2022 how do the experiences of our two national organisations compare? A new AASLH initiative say a good deal about their present approach. The online Inclusive Historian’s Handbook, at inclusive.historian.com, was launched by AASLH in 2019 and is co-sponsored with the National Council on Public History (NCPH). It is ‘for individuals and groups engaged in historical work in a wide range of settings—not just paid professionals or academic scholars. It is intended to provide community groups, educators, museum professionals (paid and unpaid), students, scholars, activists, historical societies, preservationists, archivists, and others with easy-to-find information that is directly applicable to inclusive history practice. We hope that the content is accessible to all people who are doing historical work, including those who may not identify as historians.’

British readers will likely recognise the same basic triumvirate of key kinds of participants and activists in local history on both sides of the Atlantic. There are grass-roots, locally-based historians. There are academy-based historians. Then there are the professional public historians, archivists, librarians, curators, ‘heritage providers’ and communicators. However, the mix and emphases between the three elements has been rather different in the development of the American and British national associations. This was apparent when John Dichtl, present CEO of AASLH, took stock in the Winter 2020 issue of History News, on the occasion of his organisation’s 80th birthday. He discerned a major shift in the American historical community around the time of AALSH’s fortieth year. This was the emergence of public history as a newly-named field, with increasing numbers of historians working in local settings, and the formation in 1980 of the National Council on Public History.

This trend was less marked in Britain. There, in 1982, BALH emerged as the new national body in succession to the National Council for Voluntary Service, parent body of the Standing Conference on Local History. Coming in the wake of the Blake Report, BALH carried forward existing networks of county, city and local historical organisations with a strong emphasis on grass-roots activity. This coincided with a boom in academic outreach, through the Open University, and university extramural and continuing education courses, and in newly popular areas of academic history which together aligned strongly with local studies, as in social, economic, landscape and population history. This combination of grass-roots and academy-based local history generated a lively momentum in British local history.

In 2020 there are some 160 programmes in America and Canada offering public history or related master’s degrees. In 2019 there were public history graduate degrees at just 8 UK universities, with a further 12 offering options within wider programmes (https://www.history.org.uk/student/resource/2785/public-history-courses ). Will this contrast between a British emphasis on grass-roots and academy local history and an American public history orientation continue? Taking the UK Historical Association’s definition that , ‘Public History is about understanding how the past has affected, and is used by, the present’ the British experience of local history may be moving nearer the American. In one of the most intense recent experiences of mass local historical mobilisation, the centenary of the First World War, it was notable how strongly active public history initiatives figured (see ‘Local history and the First World War: the centenary experience’, The Local Historian, 49.2, April 2019). We saw it in museums, archives, outreach projects to collect, record, publish and broadcast, and working closely with the other two elements of the triumvirate, academe (including university Public Engagement Centres), and actively involved local and family grass-roots historians, and those who (in the words of The Inclusive Historian’s Handbook) ‘may not [yet] identify as historians’.

In America, AASLH is now a partner in Framing History, a national project, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and running from 2019-22, to ‘study gaps between how the general public and we practitioners think about history and historical organisations’. They are looking forward to an infusion in historical interest around the 250th anniversary of American Independence in 2026. It will be interesting to follow AASLH’s work and the ideas and parallels it certainly sparks about directions to take and aspirations for the next forty years of British local history and BALH.

Kate Tiller is a BALH correspondent with AASLH

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By Margaret Hughes

Many readers will recognise the common factor shared by these sites: Virginia Water, Dunstable, Heydon Valley, Arbury Banks, Towcester, Church Stowe, Clifton-on-Dunsmore, Catthorpe, High Cross, Mancetter, Hints. All eleven bid to be recognised as the place of Queen Boudica’s last battle, where the Romans finally put paid to the astonishing freedom-fight waged by the Iceni and neighbouring tribes.

With their castra derived origins, two of those eleven place-names signal a Roman connection: Towcester and Mancetter. Of the others, Catthorpe speaks more clearly of Vikings. The two Duns- and the –don and the –ton reveal Anglo-Saxon presences, as do the -bury and the Stowe. The origin of the Virginia of Virginia Water is not firmly established, although links to the American colony have been suggested. Hints derives from hynt, Welsh for road (fittingly, as sitting on Watling Street).

Of course, name-based clues are only part of the evidence we need. A Roman element in a place-name is not a necessary signifier of Roman presence; ask anyone from York! Nevertheless, in the search for Boudica’s end, one of those two castra-based names unquestionably invites attention for its extra-ordinary background. The distinction goes to Mancetter.

The name is traceable to a former version, Manduessedum, via the typical Anglo-Saxon process whereby the first syllable of a Roman name (here, Man-) takes on a common suffix denoting a Roman station, in this case, -cetter. The name Manduessedum is verifiably in use around 100 years after Boudica’s downfall, its appearance in the Antonine Itinerary testifying to a mid-second century currency. This gives us a functioning name, synchronous with other Romano-British place-names, in a document respected by the Romans. But its composition is a curiosity in that company. Even in Roman times it would stand out as odd. Its two elements, mandu and essedum, are absent from any lexicon of place-names of that era.

The broad brush strokes of their meanings have been established for perhaps half a century now, as is noted, for instance, by place-name specialist Margaret Gelling in 1999 [i]. She straightforwardly gives the whole as ‘Celtic-horse chariot’. But further exploration of that bare outline proves illuminating.

Mandu is no generic word for ‘horse’; it is a select word for a small, speedy pony, one eminently trainable to work with Celtic war chariots.[ii] The availability of such a breed to Boudica’s charioteers would be useful to know, and in fact it does seem probable. The lineage of a breed of horse used in modern-day chariot racing can be discernably linked to the strong, swift line of pony known as the Norfolk Trotter, native to East Anglia – Iceni territory – until the fifteenth century. The lineage lends credibility to the image of the Boudican battle chariot powered by these racy horses between its shafts.

Because mandu is a very specific designation, its use is rare. This exceptionalism is illustrated by the fact that only one other place-name throughout the whole Roman Empire includes it: -Epamanduodurum, in Gaul. It does make rare appearances in proper names, as in Cartimandua, the Brigantian queen (whose nickname was ‘sleek pony’), and Mandubracius, a high-ranking Trinovantian youth at the time of Caesar’s second British invasion - elite personages, both. It seems mandu carries connotations of specialist performance and nobility, characteristics we might associate with high-ranking Celtic warriors.

When we turn to the second part of the name, essedum, again a singularity jumps out; its use as a suffix is an extreme rarity, possibly even unique. Caesar’s account of his brief encounter with Celtic warriors in Britain notes that Gauls and Britons fought in a similar manner. We know from Caesar’s record of his experience against the Celts in Gaul that he was fascinated by the whirling manoeuvres of their chariots. His interest was such that he adopted into Latin the chariot’s Celtic name, essedum. Margaret Gelling’s ‘chariot’ becomes something precisely definable.

Finally, there comes a clincher of an idea. In the latter part of the first century, or as entering the next, what brought about such a rare label of a name for a small, successfully developing Romano-British settlement straddling the Watling Street? Why this unique coinage? Professor Kenneth Jackson puts his finger on it: ‘The answer must be that some local legend or historical event is involved’.[iii] What more of a legend could there be than Boudica? What more historical an event than the battle which permitted a Roman occupation for close on four hundred years?

Whatever other powerful clues there might be (and there are several) to suggest that it was Mancetter that hosted Boudica’a last battle, it certainly seems that Manduessedum the name offers intriguing food for thought.

Margaret Hughes is the author of Boudica At Mancetter (Feb, 2020, Atherstone Civic Society)

[i] M. Gelling, (unpublished, 1999) A review of William Dugdale’s lecture ‘Our Local Place Names’, delivered in 1927 to Atherstone Archaeological Society. Gelling’s review is amongst papers of the late Colin Baddeley, author of ‘Roman Mancetter’. See also A.L.F. Rivet and C. Smith Place Names of Roman Britain, Book Club Assocs. 1979)

[ii] P.Kelly, ‘The Earliest Words for Horse In the Celtic Languages’ in S. Davies and N. Jones (eds) The Horse in Celtic Culture ( University of Wales Press,1997).

[iii] Kenneth Jackson, ‘Romano-British Names in the Antonine Itinerary’. Britannia, Volume 1 A.L.F. Rivet,The British Section of the Antonine Itinerary, Appendix ii. (1970)

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By Ben Cunliffe

Recently, while doing some work in the Staffordshire Archives & Heritage ‘Dartmouth Collection’, I came across a 1772 poem and covering letter addressed to the Earl of Dartmouth from Phillis Wheatley of Boston, Massachusetts. It was unusual to find such a letter, as most of the Earl’s correspondence in the collection is from men in an official capacity or the occasional titled lady discussing matters in 18th century aristocratic society.

The name Phillis Wheatley also sounded vaguely familiar, and I then remembered a trip I had taken to Boston a few years earlier where I came across a display about the remarkable story of an African American woman called Phillis Wheatley. She was brought to America as a slave from West Africa but quickly impressed the Wheatley family who had bought her, as she displayed an amazing talent for language and writing poetry. Using the boundless resources of the internet, I was able to establish that the letter I was holding was indeed the work of the same Phillis Wheatley!

But why would there be a poem by Phillis in our collections here in Staffordshire? Well, the link is the Earl of Dartmouth, whose family seat was at Sandwell (historically in Staffordshire), hence the deposit of the collection here at the archives. He became secretary of the American Colonies in 1772, and in his honour, Phillis was asked to pen a poem – which she duly did and sent it to the Earl along with a personally signed letter. He was suitably impressed with Phillis’s literary talents, so much so that the following year she visited London and secured both the Earl and Selina, Countess of Huntingdon, as patrons. Thanks to their support, Phillis was able to have a book of her poetry published in London – the first time an African American woman had ever had her work published, and all the more remarkable as Phillis was still legally considered a slave.

Amongst the poems published in Phillis’s book was that dedicated to the Earl of Dartmouth. However, this more widely known published version differs in several parts from the original first draft in Phillis’s own hand that we hold at Staffordshire Archives and Heritage, making our document truly unique!

Phillis returned to Boston, where the Wheatley family granted her freedom and she went on to marry and have children. Sadly, later circumstances conspired against Phillis’s family and she died in poverty aged just 31. However, Phillis’s remarkable legacy is celebrated today – and a small part of that legacy can be found today right here in Staffordshire’s archives!

You can read the full story on our blog, https://shcvolunteers.wordpress.com/2020/08/17/finding-phillis/

Ben Cunliffe is Archive Assistant, Staffordshire Archives & Heritage

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By Marianne Howell

To his immense surprise, in August Alan Crosby was presented with a book of essays written in his honour.

The Federation found a uniquely appropriate way of marking a significant birthday of someone who has made an incalculable contribution to local history, in a national, regional and local context.

Alan’s first degree was in geography, with an early intention to be involved in town planning. After working first in Surrey and Norfolk, he has lived in Lancashire since 1985. His many activities include written work; his extensive published corpus encompasses numerous books, articles for learned journals, reviews, and biographical articles for the New Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. (Lancashire studies includes a select list of publications.) Alan’s lectures and talks are well-researched and delivered in an engaging style; he has taught university courses, and delivered hundreds of talks to different groups and societies. He is of course the editor of The Local Historian. This brief sketch scarcely begins to convey the breadth of Alan’s knowledge, nor the many ways he has shared it.

The book Lancashire studies: historical essays in honour of Alan Crosby was commissioned and published by the Lancashire Local History Federation. Nine people who have known and admired Alan for many years, and who were themselves accomplished writers on local history topics, readily agreed to be involved in the enterprise.

The resulting collection encompasses many centuries of Lancashire history, and a broad range of topics. All were meticulously researched and referenced. The editors made no stipulation about which subjects should be chosen, but the result is both varied and stimulating.

Because of the need for social distancing a planned event could not be held, but the editorial team met Alan in the open air to present the book. To say he was delighted hardly conveys his reaction. The editors and contributors had managed to keep the secret for over two years.

After Alan had a chance to read the book, he reflected, ”The contributions are so enjoyable, because each of them reflects an aspect of my own interests in the history of Lancashire and of local and regional history more widely, ranging from place-names and maps, via food and estate management, faith and belief at different levels of society, artistic and cultural history (including stained glass and pageants) and the built environment.

“During the past five years I’ve written contributions to four commemorative volumes of this sort. Sadly, in three of those, the dedicatee is no longer with us, so it’s been a real delight to be the recipient of such a volume and to be around to receive it! But I also feel a special satisfaction in knowing that people have enjoyed and appreciated my work over the past 35 years. I love what I do, and for me work is a pleasure (most of the time!) but knowing that others have responded to it in this way is particularly rewarding.”

Marianne Howell is Chair, Lancashire Local History Federation

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A socially-distanced presentation of ‘Shaping the Past: Theme, Time and Place in Local History’ was made to David Dymond in his garden on a lovely warm summer evening in July. One of Britain’s most highly respected local historians, David has long been associated with BALH, as Chairman, editor of The Local Historian, and now a Vice-President. The 17 ‘varied, scholarly and engaging papers’ were edited by Evelyn Lord and Nicholas R Amor.

Dr Nick Amor thanked the contributors, and the publishers the University of Hertfordshire Press. He said that David Dymond, as teacher, editor and author, had done more over the past 60 years than any other person in this country to promote the study of local history as a serious academic pursuit.

In his prodigious output, his unique approach brought out the warmth of human experience in times gone by.

Replying, Dr Dymond thanked the contributors for ‘two most precious things …your time and your historical expertise’. In his work in adult education he reflected that he had two objectives: to improve the standard of local studies and thereby make them more accessible and usable … And (which some may consider an obsession of his) to ensure local history is written clearly and economically yet with ‘plenty of sparkle and plenty of bounce’. Reading any of his publications demonstrates how effectively he set an example in his own writing.

Readers can share the occasion online https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OfeEFwRBw8

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By Cyril Pearce

Six years ago in the Spring 2014 issue of Local History News, the editor kindly agreed to publish my piece, ‘War Resisters in Britain during the First World war – an online opportunity for new research’. As the centenary of the First World War approached and plans were being made for its ‘commemoration’, it struck me and many others that the four or five years of the commemoration period stretching before us was an ideal opportunity to re-visit all manner of accepted accounts of the war. In particular, the apparent consensus that the war had been popular. For me, the touchstone was the experience of those men and women who refused to support the war and, given the comparative silence on the matter of the usual sources and received wisdom, the only way to do that was by way of new local histories.

Looking back to that time, now more than six years ago, it seems that a lot of people had the same idea and some of its results are sitting on the bookshelf above my desk. Major ‘national’ studies of war resisters in Wales, by Aled Eirug, and in Scotland by Robert Duncan, drawing heavily on more local studies, sit alongside studies of war resister communities and their conscientious objectors in Glamorgan, Leeds, Leicester, Manchester, Southwark, and Staffordshire.[1] The output of the particularly prolific Bristol’s Radical History Group occupies its very own part of that shelf with its biographies of important local anti-war figures and organisations.[2] With them, but less a history and more a collection personal reflections, is a particularly poignant book of the responses of young people from Derbyshire to the experiences of conscientious objectors.[3]

But the pursuit of stories of resistance has been expressed in more than books. Local group projects have contributed exhibitions, day schools, talks, films and theatricals throughout the commemoration period. Puppeteers in Bristol even produced their own play and urban trail led by their puppet characters. The Hornsey First World War Peace Forum has been especially creative in discovering their local anti-war stories and in telling the local community about them. Websites and data collections have burgeoned and the Peace Pledge Union’s on line presence now has a growing feature in ‘Remembering the Men who said No’. In 2018 even the long-running TV ‘soap’ Emmerdale devoted a whole episode of its special commemorative programmes to the tragic story of Alfred Martlew a York conscientious objector.

National grant-awarding bodies have not shied away from supporting potentially challenging projects dealing with the anti-war community. The National Lottery Heritage Fund has been generous in its funding for a great many local and groups projects as have the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the Arts Council. The team at the University of Hertfordshire charged with co-ordinating work on the ‘Everyday Lives in War’ strand of the AHRC First World War Engagement project has been particularly pro-active. The same is true of Leeds University’s ‘Legacies of War’ team.

Three major conferences informed the more general debate. In 1914, the Peace History Network’s, Alternative Voices of World War One: the courage of their convictions; in 1916, Leeds University’s Legacies of War project’s Resistance to War conference and in 2019 the Bristol Radical History Group’s festival, Commemoration, Conflict and Conscience, celebrated the facts of war resistance and the work of the many people and local history groups who had worked to explore its history. A form of authoritative approval was conferred by the Imperial War Museum’s (IWM)1917 exhibition, People Power: Fighting for Peace and by English Heritage’s conservation work at Richmond Castle recording the anti-war movement’s ‘Richmond Sixteen’.

In the face of the intermittent and insubstantial attention of the main stream media this vigorous exploration and celebration of the alternative view of Britain’s response to the war has been quite remarkable.

At the core of that 2014 article was the description of a database called the Pearce Register of Conscientious Objectors and the announcement that it was to become part of the Imperial War Museum’s inter-active on-line platform ‘Lives of the First World War’. With the end of the commemoration period in 2019 that platform had ceased to be inter-active and its version of the Pearce Register frozen in time. However, that has not prevented it from growing, as intended. In 2014 it contained entries for 17,000 conscientious objectors; it now has more than 19,900 and continues to grow. Sadly its up-dates are not reflected in the IWM’s on-line version although regularly up-dated versions can be consulted at Friends’ House Library in London and at the Working Class Movement Library in Salford. Free copies for personal use can also be obtained from c.pearce@btinternet.com. All you need it a computer running Microsoft Access. Work to create the Register’s own free-standing and flexibly searchable internet presence begins this autumn.

The database has not only been influential in much of the activity described above but has been central to my own work. The resulting book – Communities of Resistance: Conscience and Dissent in Britain during the First World War – is now published. It is, in effect, a survey and analysis of war resister communities in England, Scotland and Wales, in at least sixteen counties and forty specific places – far too many to list here. In it I have tried to stay true to that original commitment which I urged on others, to re-tell the story of Britain’s popular attitudes to the First World War through local histories. Given the success of so many local projects, it is now up to my readers to tell me whether I too have succeeded.

[1] Aled Eirug, The Opposition to the Great War in Wales, 1914-1918 (Cardiff, University of Wales Press, 2018); Robert Duncan, Objectors and Resisters: Opposition to Conscription and War in Scotland 1914-1918 (Common Print, Berwick upon Tweed, 2015); Philip Adams, Not in Our Name: War and dissent in a Welsh town (Philip Adams, Ludlow, 2015); Veronica O’Mara (Ed.) Quakers and the First World War : Conscience and Courage from a Leeds Perspective (York, Quack Books, 2018); Leicester Memories in Conflict Collective, Uncovering Resistance: Leicester and Leicestershire in World War One (Leicester CND, 2015); Alison Ronan, Unpopular Resistance: The Rebel Networks of Men and Women in Opposition to the First World War in Manchester and Salford 1914-1918 (North West Labour HGistory Society, 2015); J. H. Taylor, Against the Tide: War Resisters in South London, 1914-1916 (John Taylor, 1917); Gerry Baron and John Babb, ‘Who Does want to kill anyone?’ The Story of Conscientious Objectors in Mid-Staffordshire and the Black Country during the First World War (BBN Staffs Publishing, 2018).

[2] Lois Bibbings, Jeremy Clarke, MaryDobbing, Colin Thomas, Refusing to Kill:Bristol’s World War 1 Conscientious Objectors (BRHG, 2019); Colin Thomas, Slaughter no Remedy: The life and times of Walter Ayles, Bristol Conscientious Objector (BRHG, 2014); June Hannam, Bristol Independent Labour Party: Men, Women and the Opposition to War (BRHG, 2014); June Hannam, Mabel Tothill: Feminist, Socialist, Pacifist (BRHG, 2019).

[3] River Wolton (Ed.) Courage of Conscience: Imagined Voices of Derbyshire’s WW1 Conscientious Objectors (Chesterfield, Wood Work Press, 2016)

Cyril Pearce is Visiting Research Fellow, School of History, University of Leeds

Available from www.francisboutle.co.uk

Communities of Resistance Limited edition 560 page hardback with more than 70 illustrations and eight full colour map pages, price £30 (Including p&p)

Cyril Pearce, Comrades in Conscience: the story of an English community’s opposition to the Great War (2014 Edition) price £15 (Including p&p)

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By Angela Blaydon

Like many local history societies and their members around the country, a member of the Send & Ripley History Society (S&RHS) in Surrey proposed researching and producing a book about the men who lost their lives in WWI and who were mentioned on the War Memorials in both our villages.

A quick history lesson: the two villages of Send and Ripley are very closely linked. Originally they were known as Send with Ripley, Send being the parish including Ripley. Ripley had a priory – Newark Priory, now in ruins – and a chapelry, now the chancel of the parish church, in the village that started life as a ‘hospice’ for travellers (Ripley being on the main road between London and Portsmouth) operated by monks from the Priory. They provided sustenance and shelter as well as help for the sick as far back as the 12th century. It wasn’t for a further 700 years, until 1878, that the two villages separated and became independent ecclesiastical parishes. However, it took another fifty-five years before the villages became independent civil parishes in 1933.

The project started in 2013 with six members showing interest, but very quickly the number dwindled to three, myself, Terry Hewitt, who had proposed the research and with a vast knowledge of WWI, and Janet Tice, all of us members of the history society. Research started immediately but it very quickly became apparent that there was a huge amount of material relating just to the two villages that needed to be included. We took the decision to restrict all our research exclusively to the villages and any tenuous links to people outside the villages would have to be excluded. We used the usual resources of parish records, parish magazines, parish council records, census returns, newspapers and the society’s own large store of material including past Journals, but also consulted the village school log books for Ripley, the Send school log books sadly having been lost, and various outside resources. These included various websites, the Imperial War Museum’s photo catalogue, and the Queen’s (Royal West Surrey) Regiment’s war diaries and the Rifle Brigade’s war diaries, amongst others.

Sadly, a couple of years into our research, in 2015, Terry was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and not too long afterwards died following a stroke in 2016. Because of his love of history and especially that relating to WWI, Terry was able to continue contributing for some time to the early stages of writing up our research. With Terry’s death, Janet and I were left to continue writing up the vast amount of material we had discovered, but with neither of us being versed in military matters the task was daunting, especially as we kept discovering new material! We struggled on, preparing as much of the material for publication that we could, but it was going to be a long haul.

Then, in the spring of 2017 Alan Cooper came with some artefacts for us to include in the chapter on ‘Interviews and Artefacts’ and agreed to join us in the preparation of the book and to check all the military aspects for correctness. It was Manna from Heaven for us – someone with a vast knowledge of military matters, who could check that all the material we had was correct. But he not only helped with military matters, he also wrote a couple of the short, introductory chapters and helped with the placing of photos.

S&RHS has a vast collection of local images, fortunately all digitised, that we could call upon to use in the publication. There are well over 350 images throughout the book, mostly from the society, but also many contributed by others and with a Preface by Dr Daniel Weinbren of the Open University. The end result is a book of almost 400 pages that we are all proud to have been associated with and we hope will be a lasting tribute to Terry.

From the idea of researching a few names on two War Memorials to researching all those who signed up for the Army, Navy or Air Force and all the residents left at home and their exploits, this became a mammoth task that took six years to come to fruition, from six researchers down to three, then two, then back up to three, it has been a roller-coaster of a research ride but we hope we have done the residents of our two villages during those dark years of WWI, and their descendants, justice.

Heroes All: Send and Ripley at home and abroad during World War One by Terry Hewitt, Janet Tice, Angela Blaydon and Alan Cooper is available from Send & Ripley History Society. Full details can be found on their FaceBook page on the pinned post at the top or, alternatively, you can e-mail the Chairman, Cameron Brown, on cmb@aappl.com for more details.

https://www.facebook.com/sendandripleyhistorysociety/?epa

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or did a famous actor have tea in your grandmother’s front room?

ReelStreets is a website that started nearly 20 years ago identifying ‘real streets’ that have appeared in feature films. Some 2,400 films are included, with nearly 94,000 stills of identified buildings, streets, coastlines and countryside. It is freely searchable and can reveal what a place looked like when the film crew and stars were there (though of course they might be dressed up a bit to remove telephone wires and modern street furniture for a medieval set). Films have been made outdoors for a century, and backgrounds to the action can prove a valuable source of information. Before and after images add to the interest.

Another fascinating feature of the site is ‘Katie’s film listing for the week ahead’ with information about the locations used in films to be shown on TV in the coming seven days.

Contributions of more location identification, information, anecdotes or references are always welcome.

www.reelstreets.com or contact jtustill1@gmali.com

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By Kevin Newman

In 2016, I was contacted by the Claremont Guest House in Hove explaining that they had some letters between two ex-pupils from the days when the hotel had been a small school; one of the boys had started up the school himself. Could that really have happened?

It had. The boy in question, James Bernard Clifton (‘Bernard’ or ‘Clifton’ to his friends), at the age of 11 had set up Claremont Preparatory School in 1925, persuading a group of adults to work for him, and gaining funding from a wealthy golfer. This team (including Clifton, who taught several subjects) then built up the school so it was able to move into a larger premises by 1933, survive a close encounter with a German bomber, endure the duration of the war in ‘exile’ in Berkshire, and move to Baldslow Place where it continues today with around 700 students. This remarkable achievement was at the age when most children haven’t yet started their first paper round and Clifton came from, (in his words) ‘a broken home’.

He had attended Holland House School (today 35-36 Cromwell Road, Hove). Clifton admits himself in his letters that his choice of Headmaster for Claremont (the school took its name from Claremont House that the boy rented) of Mr. Mick O’Byrne was due to ‘MOB’ (as he was known) being somewhat of a father figure to him. MOB was still an unorthodox choice; a shellshocked, alcoholic figure noted for his temper, and his habit of sending boys to purchase his cigarettes. Most of all, it was MOB’s accurate throw (he was a keen cricketer) which resulted in the bringing together of a maths book and Clifton’s head which prompted Clifton to decide he needed to look into setting up his own school. Holland House’s Headmaster, the wonderfully-named Clovis Chubb and his fondness for the cane may well also have had something to do with the decision.

Then the tale becomes even stranger. A.A. Ross, the golfer who funded the school seems to be the brother of Donald J Ross, who went on to design many of the United States’ premier golf courses and who bears a close likeness to the Ross who also taught geography at Claremont. He has been the trickiest to research and led to me contacting the Donald J Ross Society in America. A yet more unusual recruitment was of Herbert Marshall, who was a successful actor who would have a lengthy Hollywood career. Marshall famously had a tin leg (like MOB, the result of an injury from the Western Front) and had got George V to guess which was which (he guessed incorrectly). Clifton recruited him as swimming teacher, leading to some ‘unusual’ swimming lessons. Even the school dog was unique with a taste for eating the school’s sole football. The father of Clifton’s best friend was Austen Bowen Payne, who was a well-known cartoonist for the Daily Mirror at this time and may also have provided investment in the school.

By 1926 Clifton left to take up his scholarship at Herne Bay School. MOB departed two years later as his war wounds and alcoholism continued to impact upon him. He lost touch with the school but his son Bill then took over at a young age, not quite as young as Clifton, but still impressive enough at eighteen. With the help of a mortgage from Sir Egbert Cadbury he bought out the school from Ross and dedicated his life to running it and getting it through the tricky war years. This was managed despite ill-health that would lead to his premature death at the age of only 43 in 1951. His beloved wife Jean followed him to the grave in 1958 and this meant that the third young man to run the school and the third O’Byrne, Bill’s son Jeremy (still alive and well today in Sussex) briefly took the helm. Jean and Bill are rightly commemorated in the school’s chapel today at Baldslow and I was pleased to see that the O’Byrne Theatre also commemorates this Sussex schooling family.

James Bernard Clifton died on 20 September 2000, aged 87 and left behind a richer legacy than just being the only boy to successfully set up a school in the country. He enjoyed an impressive wartime career, playing his part in beating Nazi Germany by designing transmitters for the Royal Navy. During the Cold War, his ‘power inverter’ helped lead to the success of NASA’s Gemini spacecraft in the early Sixties. He also created the ‘Clifton Nanoliter Osmometer’, a high-tech scientific instrument which bears his name. He produced a power supply for early computers, and a transmitter for the Titan II Booster, a broadcasting device. He was both an incredible boy and man who deserves greater recognition, and just wanted to be known as ‘a bloody good engineer’. He was that and more and his decision in a Sussex classroom after a maths book bounced off his head has left us with a unique tale; of another, very different ‘Twenties’, with its own set of difficulties and challenges. It has been the most rewarding of stories to research and write and has made me determined to continue to visit more hotels to see what other hidden tales can be uncovered.

The full story of James Bernard Clifton and the establishment of Claremont School is described in a new book, Beef Every Day But No Latin by Kevin Newman, published by The Real Press, 2020.. The book contains a full set of notes on the book’s genesis and the historical foundations behind the novel.

Notes

A Short History of Hove, Frank Willy/ Judith Dale (Brighton and Hove Environmental Study Group, 1978)

The letters of James Bernard Clifton, Marjorie Clifton and Maurice Brigden, 1999-2001

Claremont School archives, Claremont Preparatory School, Baldslow, Sussex.

Claremont Guest House archives, Second Avenue, Hove.

Pylons and Prefects – Barbara White (Now Veness) – published by Claremont School, 2004

The Encyclopedia of Hove & Portslade, various volumes – Judy Middleton (2003)

The Road Home, Max Arthur (Phoenix, 2003)

The Keep (Brighton, Hove and East Sussex’s record office) was also vital in researching the school and Hove in the 1920s.

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We are very pleased to introduce to you our first BALH Fellows, Dr Daniella Gonzalez and Dr Claire Kennan. Over the past couple of years the Trustees have been discussing developing our team to include Fellowships, which in turn offer development opportunities for researchers. We have created two Fellowships that will work on our digital presence. With our new website launched last year we realised we needed to do a lot more in this area, such as social media and digital content. This has now become a priority in the current situation, so our two Fellowships are timely indeed! Each will last for a year, and will benefit from mentoring and development from BALH, and we of course will benefit greatly from their skills and energy.

Social Media Fellow – Dr Daniella Gonzalez

Born and raised in Gibraltar, I came to the UK in 2010 to study a BA in History at the University of Kent and I’ve never looked back since. Upon the completion of my BA, I continued my studies at Kent undertaking an MA in Medieval and Early Modern Studies between 2013 and 2014. After taking a gap year, I returned to Kent in 2015 to pursue my PhD and passed my viva in February 2020. Funded by the Consortium for the Humanities and Arts in the South East (CHASE), my PhD, titled ‘Common Profit and Civic Governance in Ricardian London, c.1376-c.1391’, focused on political discourse and how this was expressed within civic records in Richard II’s London.

I am interested in the social, cultural and political history of late medieval London, especially understandings of medieval political theory in an urban environment. I have an interest in political language and the way this was used by London’s civic leaders to enforce their authority and negotiate the political landscape that they found themselves in, examining how ideological concerns, specifically common profit rhetoric, influenced documentary culture. Part of my research is also concerned with the relationship between monarch, civic officers and the London populace and how ideas of body politic are expressed in London’s civic records.

After completing my doctoral studies, I have taken on work in the archive sector working on local history projects for several archives. These include projects undertaken with Special Collections & Archives at the University of Kent, focusing on early modern legal documents produced in Kent between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, and, more recently, with the Gibraltar National Archives, where I’ve been transcribing eighteenth-century letter books outlining Gibraltar’s administrative history. I have a deep interest in making archival records more widely accessible to the public and am very keen to work with county archives to engage audiences with historical records and to learn more about the communities that they are a part of. As from September 2020, I will be undertaking a distance learning MA in Archives Administration at the University of Aberystwyth.

I am also a Co-founder and Editor of MEMSlib, a lockdown library created in response to the Covid-19 pandemic to assist medievalists and early modernists in carrying out their research from home (https://www.memslib.co.uk/). Recently, I have also taken up the role of Communications Officer for the Archives and Records Association’s Section for New Professionals, which aims to support archivists and records managers in the early stages of their career.

I am absolutely honoured to join BALH as the Social Media Fellow and I’ll be responsible for BALH’s various social media platforms. This is a very exciting opportunity for me and I’m very much looking forward to highlighting the importance of local history and engaging wider communities with the stories of the places that they live in.

Digital Engagement Fellow – Dr Claire Kennan

My background is in medieval history and I completed my BA (2010-13) MA (2013-14) and PhD (2014-18) at Royal Holloway, University of London where I was supervised by Professor Nigel Saul. I’ve always had an interest in local history and my PhD explored the parish church, guilds and merchants of Louth in Lincolnshire. I am currently working on a proposal to turn my doctoral thesis into my first book along with researching Lincolnshire’s Corpus Christi guilds and editing the 1389 Lincolnshire guild returns for publication with the Lincoln Record Society. My research interests cover all aspects of British history between c.1066 and c.1500 but I am particularly interested in medieval religion, small urban centres, trade and guilds.

Since 2017 I have worked on a variety of digital engagement projects. I was the Medieval Specialist and Education Lead for the £1 million Heritage Lottery Funded Citizens Project at Royal Holloway, University of London between 2017 and 2020 which explored the relationship between the citizen and the state from the time of Magna Carta until the present day. During my time on the Citizens Project I researched and presented numerous educational YouTube videos, covering topics including national events such as the 1381 Great revolt, but also important events in local history such as the Lincolnshire Rising. I designed and ran a number of workshops for school pupils across the country, delivered teacher training events (both online and in person) and worked with a range of local museums to produce their own digital resources. I was also a featured contributor for a Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) on FutureLearn.

In 2019 I was appointed as one of the AHRC’s Creative Economy Engagement Fellows. As part of my fellowship I worked at The National Archives on a range of digital projects including blog posts, content for another MOOC and a range of online resources for Chertsey Museum which explore the history of Chertsey Abbey and its dissolution using documents and artefacts from Chertsey and The National Archives.

In 2020 I have been working with the Tudor Chamber Projects team at the University of Winchester to develop and deliver a suite of online, self-guided research tasks for Key Stage 4 and 5 students studying the reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII.

I am delighted to be joining BALH as the Digital Engagement Fellow. In this role I am going to be developing a range of online resources for the BALH and working on the Teacher Fellow Programme run jointly by the Historical Association and BALH in 2021. I am particularly interested in collaborations and facilitating engagement between researchers and secondary schools, teachers, museums, archives and the creative industries so this role is a perfect fit and I can’t wait to get started!

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By Margaret O’Sullivan

Local archive services rarely buy documents but such acquisitions can be important, especially when they complement existing collections. In their report for the financial year 2019-2020, the Sales Monitoring Team at the National Archives noted 100 purchases, mostly at auctions including eBay, by 57 repositories. Documents were diverse in type and geographical spread. Less expected was the generally low level of expenditure: 45 cost between £101 and £500, and 26 between £1 and £100. Given the prices realised by other types of ‘collectables’ in recent sales, these seem reasonable outgoings. Friends’ groups and local history societies not only raised money, but also had the flexibility to bid when services might be constrained from taking action at short notice if official approval were needed. The Friends of the National Libraries provided financial support speedily and straightforwardly, while assistance for higher value bids came from the Purchase Grant Fund administered by the Victoria and Albert Museum. The coronavirus pandemic meant that auction houses moved to virtual viewing and exclusively online bidding, but it is clear that archives and their supporters responded effectively to new circumstances. The outcomes show adaptability and astuteness in gaining new assets, thereby conserving unique material, as well as increasing original sources available to researchers.

What did local archives acquire? Manorial and related documents featured in accessions for archive services in Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, Wiltshire, Dorset, Berkshire (twice), Hertfordshire (twice) and Suffolk (twice). Painswick Local History Society and the Friends of Gloucestershire Archives bought manorial documents relating to the Manor of Painswick for Gloucestershire Archives, particularly useful because full court rolls remain in private hands. Similarly, a licence to Ralph Sadler to sublet the Manor of Shelve (now Shell) went to Worcestershire Archives and Archaeology Service with the support of the local history society. Suffolk’s acquisitions in this category were sizeable: manorial records of Dagworth with Sorrells, 1682-1859, and a run of court rolls for Wathersdale in Laxfield, 1381-1603. Another noteworthy success was by Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre for Swindon’s market charter of 1626. Family papers were prominent in purchases by archive services in Essex, Leicestershire, Norfolk, Cumbria (twice), Somerset and Staffordshire (twice). The Friends of Essex Record Office obtained nine lots of household account books, albums and papers of the Benham family of Colchester in an eBay auction, while five commonplace books of the Ponsonby family of Haile Hall were acquired for the Whitehaven office of Cumbria Archive Service, which was also successful in bidding for a substantial group of papers of the Sumner family of Kelbarrow, including letters of John Ruskin to Margaret Sumner. Anecdotes of Thackeray and other writers added interest to the journals and letters of Lady Ann Cullum (1807-75) of Bury St Edmunds from which five important lots were bought by the Friends of Suffolk Record Office. Personal correspondence sold during the year included letters of Richard Cobden/Henry Ashworth concerning the Corn Laws, of considerable local and national interest and eventually purchased by Manchester University Library. Other private papers went to Norfolk, Bristol and Staffordshire archives, while the National Library of Wales bought illustrated letters of the poet and painter David Jones (1895–1974). American institutions continue to pursue British material and one disappointment was the sale to Harvard of a record book for 1808 to 1810 of Preston Subscription Assembly, directly complementary to series of records at Lancashire Archives. This led the Sales Monitoring team to comment on the permanent loss to an outstanding collection from the relocation abroad of a manuscript of greater local than national or international significance. Happily, Lancashire were later able to acquire a copy.

The auction bargain of the year was probably a run of seven account books of an Oxfordshire estate agent, bought by the county archive service for £10 to complement its existing holdings. Architects’ drawings were among other business records offered for sale and one series, for Dryderdale Hall, designed for Alfred Backhouse, proved to be the 10,000th accession for Durham Record Office. The visual appeal of maps often means they command high prices but, nevertheless, archives in Berkshire (twice), Hertfordshire, Essex and East Sussex were successful buyers. A map of lands in Thatcham, Berkshire, surveyed for the coming of the railway in 1837 was of notable historical importance, while a most attractive cartographic item was a 1638 survey of the estate belonging to Thankfull Frewen in Icklesham near Hastings in East Sussex in which metal stamps were used to depict figures and animals in the landscape.

with thanks to James Travers, Cultural Property Manager at The National Archives

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Overleaf, Margaret O’Sullivan has reported on some of the many successful purchases of archives that are now safely in the public domain. Unfortunately not every such opportunity has a happy ending. The Essex Journal relates what is described as ‘a chastening experience’ for one society that might be of value to others. Stebbing Local History Society were contacted by Friends of Historic Essex about a late 18th century book describing, and illustrating with beautiful maps, the estate of the Earl of Essex in their area that was coming up for auction two days hence, considered ‘the single most important historic Stebbing item to come on the open market’ in recent years. Within 24 hours the society, FoHE and Essex Record Office had raised £1,200 which it was hoped would be sufficient, given the auction house’s estimate of £400-£600. Sadly the item sold for £1,400, perhaps due to the artistic merit of the calligraphy and the maps. The society immediately contacted the auctioneers requesting the purchaser get in touch with them, but the buyer did not respond. They have now set up online alerts to get more warning of potential sales of interest, and will be better prepared to approach Stebbing ‘angels’ should they be in that situation again. Essex Journal: A Review of Local History & Archaeology, vol. 55, no. 1 (Spring 2020) p.7.

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Wallasey Historical Society has launched a new website displaying over 900 scanned images from the Society's large glass slides collection. The photos are from the late 19th and early 20th century. They are free to view, and there is also the facility to order and purchase prints on line. The project was funded by a grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund. The glass slides collection comprises both negatives and lantern slides. The subject matter of the collection includes local views of Wallasey Village, New Brighton, Wirral and Liverpool, a large collection of shipping in the Mersey, and photos from elsewhere in the UK and the continent, for example several lantern slides of Paris by E Mazo. The Society was also able to restore two magic lantern projectors to working order which has allowed themed projections of the lantern slides, using the technology of an earlier era. Two of the scanned images are shown here, one of harvesting near St Hilary's Church, Wallasey, and the other of boys with model boats at Fort Perch Rock, New Brighton. The website address is www.wallaseyhistoricalsociety.co.uk see our front cover

Borough of Twickenham Local History Society (Newsletter 184, September 2020) published part 1 one an article by Paul Barnfield wo has been exploring the Legacies of British Slave ownership database for his area, Hampton and Whitton in that issue, Twickenham and Teddington next. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/. for example, Sarah Hodges of Hampton Court, widow, left the bulk of her property to her son Thomas and grand-daughter Selina Elizabeth Hastings. At some time between 1791 and 1805 the Hodges family sold Lacovia on Jamaica. The estate was used for sugar, rum and livestock in 1817 there were 346 enslaved people on the estate (180 female and 166 male). In that same issue of their Newsletter is an article using the online archive of the Old Bailey to investigate criminal trials involving local characters and events. The example given is from 1722 and concerns rabbits. The accused (of murder) was William Chun[n] a warrener. He was acquitted on the grounds of self-defence, having come across three armed men near a warren, with a dead rabbit in the early hours of the morning. http://www.oldbaileyonline.org./ Two valuable online resources for local history. www.botlhs.

In common with most organisation that meet in Church premises, Burbage Heritage Group’s planned talks programme had to be cancelled and we are not planning to meet indoors before the end of 2020. A couple of outings also had to be cancelled, so group activity was looking bleak. The committee was able to meet via zoom and we investigated the possibility of having a zoom group meeting. Nearly all of our 50 membership is available via the internet and so feelers were put out to see if such a meeting would be something they would enjoy and the feedback was very positive.

Our July meeting had originally been organised as an outside meeting – Pimms in the Paddock – so the invitation went out for everyone that could log in to raise their own glass and an illustrated presentation took place on Thursday 6th August. 25 members were able to ‘attend’ and the evening was a success and another zoom meeting is being organised in October. We have also distributed a newsletter to keep our members updated.

Pughe’s Paddock has a fascinating history and if anyone is interested the presentation is available to view on Youtube. Log into Youtube, search for Burbage Heritage Group and the presentation is listed. www.burbageheritage.co.uk

Scottish Local History (Summer 2020) from the Scottish Local History Forum contains an article ‘Secret Cold War Maps of Scottish Cities’, which begins ‘Life in Scotland during the Cold War could sometimes feel fraught with the sense of impending doom’. But the analysis of secret maps, discovered in the wake of the collapse of the USSR, perhaps suggests otherwise. Comprehensive depiction of facilities, utilities, industry, transport and other infrastructure might imply appreciation of heir value rather than a desire to reduce to rubble. Created by the Red Army between the 1950s and the early 1990s, over 100 maps of British cities have so far been discovered. The article contains coloured illustrations which reveal the great detail depicted. There is little internal evidence of personal inspection on the ground, suggesting that they were largely derived from existing publications and aerial imagery. The maps are available to view (and buy copies of) at http://redatlasbook.com/maps

Revised dates from Society for Lincolnshire History & Archaeology: the Local History Conference ‘Leeches and Levellers’ has been moved to 13 March 2021, and the Churches Conference, organised by the Local History Team is on 19 June 2021. The society’s website contains a new selection of interesting articles specially introduced for the current situation. www.slha.org.uk

Covid Diaries Local History Project is a joint activity by the Three Rivers Museum, Abbots Langley Local History Society and Rickmansworth Historical Society to capture as wide a perspective as possible of how the current pandemic has been affecting the daily lives of everyone. alcoviddiaries@gmail.com

‘Today is tomorrow’s history’. Fleet & Crookham Local History Group are collecting experiences too, they suggest members record how the pandemic has had an impact on their lives, with a series of starter questions such as ‘what has changed?’, ‘what have you missed most?’, ‘what have you learned?’, ‘do you think any good will come out of this’? They also report the project ‘Making History’ from Hampshire Archives, on a similar mission. www.fclhg.org.uk
https://www.hants.gov.uk/librariesandarchives/archives/collections/collecting-covid19-archives

In The Blackcountryman, Summer 2020, from the Black Country Society, Ned Williams writes about how his interest in local cinemas and theatres lead to other topics such as the history of local dance troupes and dance schools. Such activities involved large numbers of people and can be found in towns around the country. His article describes his research on dancer Celia Couper whose troupe provided entertainment in the Midlands during the middle decades of the 20th century. www.blackcountrysociety.com

In LHN 135, Spring 2020, we drew readers’ attention to The Ramblers campaign to ensure all local footpaths are added to the definitive rights of way maps by 2026. In a detailed article for Oxfordshire Local History Association entitled ‘Five years to find the ancient ways: a challenge to Oxfordshire’s local historians’ Jack Cornish explains the criteria for qualifying as a public right of way, particularly the importance of using documentary evidence in which, as he says, ‘the experience and skills of local historians can prove vital’. The information and advice applies elsewhere; this is a very valuable article recommended to anyone interested in this project. Oxfordshire Local History (vol. 10, no. 3) (Summer 2020) www.olha.org.uk

The survival of decorated stall risers (the part of a shop front between the bottom of the window and the pavement) varies widely around the country. Here is one in Merton Park Parade, formerly a butcher’s shop and now a bakery. Merton Historical Society’s editor is collecting information and photographs in his area. This would make another diverting ‘while out walking’ project. editor@metonhistoricalsociety.org.uk

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A sixth-form school student from Coleshill has won the Dugdale Society's Centenary Prize competition for an essay on a historical theme. The essay by Emily Crichton of Coleshill School entitled How did Coleshill Grammar School develop between 1520 and 1613? impressed the judges with its clear writing, careful use of well-referenced sources and firm and reasoned conclusion. The prize cheque for £150 will be presented to Emily at Coleshill School on behalf of the Dugdale Society by the Headteacher, Ian Smith-Childs. Professor Christopher Dyer, Dugdale Society Chairman, said: 'Emily's essay was well-presented and demonstrates her skills as a historian. The Society congratulates her on the high quality of her work.' http://www.dugdale-society.org.uk/

The Historical Association online library offers over 350 podcasts covering a wide range of historical subjects. Non-members may listen to the first tack of each one for free. www.history.org.uk/podcasts

The Institute of Historical Research’s History Day 2020 will take place on 19 November. This is day of online interactive events for students, researchers and history enthusiasts to explore library, museum, archive and history collections across the Uk and beyond. The Social Media and Digital Engagement Fellows will be representing BALH and contributing to Session 3 ‘New Approaches to Local and Community History: Show & Tell’. Further details of the programme and instructions for booking can be found at https://www.history.ac.uk/events/history-day-2020

The IHR’s seminar series is continuing, and taking place on Zoom. For example the People, Place and Community Seminar is on Wednesdays at 17.30. the programme for this term is here https://www.history.ac.uk/seminars/people-place-and-community

The Centre for English Local History at the University of Leicester runs a seminar series that is open to everyone, and is now being delivered live and remotely. You can join from your home computer. Details here: http://www.englishlocalhistory.org/wp/2020/09/21/seminar-programme-2020-21/

Warwickshire Local History Society has been receiving enquiries from primary schools wanting to study their local history. They are asking members to volunteer with this. The level of involvement could be simply a phone conversation with the teacher, or more substantial help suggesting sources or ways of interpreting local material for young children. Contact rowanfisher367@gmail.com. www.warwickshirehistory.org.uk

The Huguenots of Spitalfields publish a number of educational resources online. ‘Meet the Huguenots’ is a primary school programme supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund. ‘Huguenot Threads’ is a fashion college initiative. The charity’s programme of pubic lectures and other activities is being delivered online. http://www.huguenotsofspitalfields.org/huguenot-learning/huguenot-learning-intro.html

Registration for the Warwick Network for Parish Research symposium ‘Remembering the Parish’ on 7 November closes on 31 October, so this information may be too late. However, the programme and tasters of the papers are available on line, and the work of the Network continues to be relevant to local historians around the country. It is possible that a complete recording of the event will be online. https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/myparish/posts/preview/

A fun way of learning to explore archives catalogues from Bedfordshire, find the animals and stop Desmond the Rat nibbling the documents!https://bedsarchives.bedford.gov.uk/ExploreYourArchive/Hidden-Nature/Hidden-Nature-in-Bedfordshire-Archives.aspx

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By Alan Crosby

Long, long ago, when I was doing A-level history, one of the most interesting themes which we studied was ‘The Industrial Revolution’. Decades ago it all seemed so simple---sometime around 1775 the world turned upside down, steam was everywhere, and Britain became top nation. Subsequently, for many of us, the waters have been muddied by the cogent arguments that industrialisation was a process, not a revolution, and that the world did not change overnight. Old ways, methods and technologies lingered lengthily and were slow to depart, while the supposedly radical new technologies of the 1760s and 1770s were in reality long and slow in development and can be traced back to the early eighteenth century and indeed into the seventeenth. These much more subtle, sophisticated and nuanced narratives are entirely convincing, and they make a far more plausible and realistic framework for local and regional studies, not least in Lancashire.

However, in all the A-level work, and in much of the subsequent reappraisal and reassessment, we were at least quite clear about what ‘industry’ meant … it was coal and stone, iron and steel, textiles and engineering. It connoted the senses of heavy, noisy, steamy, dirty, dangerous, manual. It was the mainstay and the underpinning of a national and increasingly an international economic system, and it was inextricably associated with population growth, pollution, poverty and wealth, overcrowding and disease, bad housing and urban transformation. Clichés no doubt, but they have an underlying ring of truth which we all recognise.

Now, though, the times have changed, and so have the industries. Most have gone or cling to a tenuous existence. The clash of metal on metal, the smash of hammer on stone, the demented clacking of a vast room full of looms … these are in the past. But industry has not gone – it is a term with an even greater currency today. It’s just that its connotations have changed, changed utterly. It seems that no longer can we (or to be more accurate, no longer can the media) use such base and passé terms as ‘sector’, ‘business’ or ‘trade’. No, today anything to do with employment, services or even – perish the thought – productivity must by definition be an ‘industry’.

It’s become so commonplace that we probably no longer note the use of the term in, for example, a news item which refers to problems in ‘the travel industry’, the latest updates in ‘the entertainment industry’, the most recent products of the ‘film industry’, or the ingenious offerings of ‘the beauty industry’. The leisure industry, the catering industry, the education industry … the list goes on and on, as actors refer to the challenges of ‘our industry’, and pundits even analyse the products of the ‘public opinion industry’.

The ubiquity of this sea-change was really brought home to me by a characteristic Guardian headline in May: ‘Thread carefully: how the eyebrow industry is navigating lockdown’. The article explained (very helpfully, for this particular reader) that ‘Eyebrow grooming has been the biggest beauty trend of the last 10 years. But while the explosion in video calls is fuelling demand, social distancing rules means salons must work miracles to satisfy it’. To one who has reached the age when his eyebrows suddenly look like the burst-out stuffing of a horse-hair sofa, this was strange indeed – maybe I need to call on the eyebrow industry for assistance.

And then I speculated about whether in fact there had been a long-forgotten report of the almost unknown Royal Commission on Employment Conditions in the Eyebrow Industry (published in 1834, I suspect), and I began wondering if it contained pitiful tales of hardship and deprivation, given in harrowing evidence by the downtrodden and often maltreated eyebrow-pluckers, the starving threading-artists, the young tweezer-operatives. What about the chronic illnesses suffered by the dye- and colour-appliers, the innocent victims of ‘brusher’s finger’, the travails of the workers who develop ‘gel smoother’s rash’.

I woke from my musings, smoothed down my wayward eyebrows, and returned to the keyboard, a miserable drudge in the local history industry.

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I have always been interested in the relationship between people, places, and local history. Growing up on the Fylde coast I was struck by the different types of settlements, and the contrast between the ‘ancient’ and modern that was reflected through the built environment and anecdotal stories.

I was lucky to be able to study local and regional history as an undergraduate at Lancaster University, and this brought a focus to my enthusiasm for historical study. After several years working as a teacher in Hong Kong, I returned to Lancashire to undertake my postgraduate studies at the University of Central Lancashire, working with the Lancashire Museum Service. My research is based around communities and their relationships with the decline of industry, primarily focussed on Lancastrian cotton towns.

I’ve worked on various projects in collaboration with local history groups, helping, advising and training those who are interested. I also work with the Lancashire Local History Federation as a committee member. I’ve collaborated with artists, dancers, and musicians to explore new ways of communicating local history, and have recently worked with colleagues in Fashion and Textiles to explore immigration in East Lancashire on a project called ‘Heirloom’, interpreting life stories through the creation of new items of clothing.

I currently teach at UCLan, focussing on Public History and Heritage, alongside outreach work with community groups. I’m passionate about encouraging local and regional history amongst students and the wider-public, and look forward to working with everyone at BALH in the future.

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Bill Serjeant died in January at the age of 98. He joined the BALH Council (as the Board of Trustees was then known) in 1991, but had for some time been a member of, and latterly chairman of, the Publications Committee. For many years he served as BALH’s Honorary Archivist, advising on both the Association’s own record keeping, and often contributing his knowledge to TLH and LHN. For example, in The Local Historian Vol 22.2 May 1992 he wrote an article marking the 40th anniversary of founding of The Amateur Historian (predecessor of The Local Historian) which reviewed his experience as an archivist during that time in the context of local history and its relationship with the work of the archive profession.

The Suffolk Local History Council Newsletter, Autumn 2020, publishes a tribute to Bill written by Vic Grey from which the following information comes, we are grateful to them for permission to use it.

Bill Serjeant was born in Sheffield in 1921. On leaving school he became an articled clerk in a firm of chartered accountants, then entered the wartime Government Training Scheme as an engineering draughtsman. After the war he was awarded a state scholarship to read history at Manchester University, followed by the Diploma in Archive Administration at the University of Liverpool. He thus became one of the first professionally qualified archivists. His career coincided with many changes in local government organisation which had implications for archive services throughout the country. After working in the isle of Man, and from 1962 as County Archivist of Nottinghamshire, Bill was appointed joint archivist of the Ipswich and East Suffolk Record office 1970-1974, and then became the first County Archivist of Suffolk. After his retirement in 1987, Bill Serjeant continued to be closely and actively committed to local history in the county, as well as becoming part of BALH.

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A new experience for BALH took place on Saturday 12 September when the Association’s Annual General Meeting was held via video conferencing. It also saw what is probably the largest attendance ever, with over 100 members involved. They joined from the length and breadth of the UK – from Cornwall to Kent, Wales to Norfolk, Dorset to Orkney – and beyond (Holland and Chicago). [see map in supplement].

Prof Caroline Barron, President of BALH, introduced the speakers and guided the meeting through the agenda. Prof David Killingray is handing over as Chair to Dr Jessica Lutkin. In his remarks, Prof Killingray commented that the Association is indeed making history by adapting to change. One of its functions would be to develop ways to support local history societies through difficult times.

Dr Iain Taylor, Treasurer, introduced the Annual Accounts, and concluded that the Association’s finances are in good shape. Income comes almost entirely from subscriptions, but so far the pandemic has had little impact of on net membership. A close eye is being kept on costs. The Trustees are discussing ways of spending some of the current assets to enhance benefits of membership.

There will be no increase in membership subscriptions for the coming year [see further information in Supplement, p4]

Members of the Board of Trustees for 2020-21 are named on page 36. We are delighted to welcome new people as well as continuing to have the benefit of the experience, knowledge and support of long-serving Trustees.

After the business meeting, Professor Catherine Clarke, Centre for People, Place and Community, IHR, gave her presentation ‘What is Local History? And how do we know when we are doing it?’ members shared thoughts and opinions in an interesting discussion stimulated by Professor Clarke’s ideas and examples.

Photographs of the event can be found in the Supplement. Recordings of both the AGM and Prof Clarke’s paper are available on the BALH website. https://www.balh.org.uk/resources-agm-2020-video

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by Paul Welsh (Elstree Screen Heritage 2020 309pp ISBN 978-1-913218-97-3) £20 + p&p, see www.ElstreeScreenHeritage.org

Have you ever watched ‘The Day of the Triffids’, or ‘Casino Royale’, or ‘2001: A Space Odeyssey’? All made in Hollywood, L.A.? No, all made in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire. In this lavishly illustrated book Paul Welsh tells the story of rise and fall of the MGM studios at Boreham Wood (as spelled at the time). These were/are not the only Hertfordshire film studios – the county’s proximity to London and good transport network make it an ideal location for the industry – but they were described by Oscar-winning director of photography Ossie Morris as ‘the Rolls Royce of British film studios’. They produced numerous ‘classic movies’ during their short existence; indeed their ‘filmography’ dating from 1946 to 1969 comprises 192 films, and include other well-known titles such as ‘633 Squadron’, ‘The Man Who Never Was’, and ‘Village of the Damned’.

As a local inhabitant Welsh recalls events connected with filming, such as the violent explosions that rocked the neighbourhood during the filming of ‘The Dirty Dozen’ in 1965 (released in 1966). While the studios were still open he spoke with many actors, some then famous, others to become so, including David Niven, Dame Anna Neagle and Nicky Henson, and with behind-the-scenes people such as cameramen and publicists, to gain insights into what went on during filming. Later he interviewed the top management of the studios and nearby Elstree enabling him to reconstruct the facts behind MGM’s closure. The result is a detailed account-cum-memoir of the studios, together with a pictorial record of the stars who filmed there and of the 115-acre site, both in its glory days and in the years since.

Although parts of some films were shot on location, for others sets were constructed on the backlot at Boreham Wood, which was formerly Thrift Farm. One backlot set was the castle used in ‘Ivanhoe’, built during 1950-51 (key stages of construction are shown in Appendix A-10 It remained in place until 1958; indeed some visitors to the town thought it was real. ‘Ivanhoe Castle’ was demolished to make way for the Chinese village set for ‘Inn of the Sixth Happiness’; the latter eventually taking up half a million square feet (46,451 m2).

The text of the four main chapters, which cover each decade of the studios and ‘The 1970s and beyond’, is followed by a series of photographs relating to relevant films. Within the chronological narrative of the films – and insights into their making – are occasional inset boxes giving facts and figures relating to the studios, such as the low profits made on films (p.15) and the various stages and offices on the site (pp.96-7). The appendices include: aerial photos of the site over time; detailed site plans; wartime correspondence regarding using the site to store documents (the site was acquired in 1944 but not used immediately); photos of the site being demolished; and an interview with Julian Senior, Unit Publicist from 1962 onwards.

The author led the ‘Save Our Studios’ campaign and chairs the Elstree Screen Heritage group. His book will appeal to classic film enthusiasts, wherever they are.

Heather Falvey

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by Monica Askay and Tom Williamson (Bridge Publishing 2020 viii+105pp ISBN 978-869831-32-5) £9.95

Eastern England is a prolific fruit growing area with a rich history: fruit production in Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, as defined by their nineteenth century boundaries, is discussed in individual chapters. The introduction explains how varieties of fruits (now much depleted) were cultivated, usually by grafting on to a rootstock and notes that fruit trees, especially apples, thrive only in orchards planted with a mixture of varieties. Some of the varieties discussed are ancient (e.g. Norfolk Beefing), others were developed from the eighteenth century onwards (e.g. D’Arcy Spice), yet others more recently (e.g. Discovery, in 1949).

Orchards were frequently referred to in deeds, wills and legal documents, some dating back to the medieval period. Fruit was important to the local economy and might even feature as elements in rental payments. The locations of orchards in 1900 – growing not only apples but also pears, cherries and plums – have been plotted from contemporary Ordnance Survey maps, clearly indicating not only clusters but also widespread distribution. Establishing orchards was determined by two factors: the local soil type being suitable for fruit growing and the acreage of farms in the area. Large commercial farms concentrated on grain production; the majority of orchards were small and attached to farmhouses of small-scale farms, providing fruit for the family and a small surplus for sale. Furthermore the great agricultural depression of the late nineteenth century encouraged small farmers to diversify out of cereal growing and into fruit production. In some areas small holdings with orchards were also established by County Councils after the First World War.

A striking feature of Hertfordshire and Essex are what might be termed ‘institutional orchards’, attached to large hospitals, asylums and the like, serving a therapeutic role and providing work for residents. Somewhat different is the surviving institutional orchard at Girton College, Cambridge. Most major stately homes had orchards and also numerous fruit trees trained against the walls of kitchen gardens: in 1896 when the Pines estate at Mettingham (Suffolk) was put on the market the orchard contained specimens of 57 varieties of apples, as well as pears, plums and greengages.

Some commercial orchards served the London market, others were established for jam factories, such as those at Tiptree and Elsenham (Essex) and Histon (Cambs). The availability of suitable transport networks was crucial for commercial success. Railways provided easy access: in Norfolk to the north and the Midlands; in Essex, Herts and Beds to London. Commercial cider making was also important to local economies. In Suffolk the Aspall Cyder company was established by Clement Chevalier just after 1722; his original press is still on site – a precious piece of industrial archaeology.

As the title suggests, each chapter includes delicious recipes, some ‘traditional’ (such as Bedfordshire Clanger), others specially devised to showcase particular fruit (such as Chicken, Gage and Almond Salad for Cambridgeshire). Information is provided on orchards that can be visited, such as Stone’s (Cherry) Orchard, Croxley Green (almost literally on my doorstep), which is maintained as a community open space. This engagingly written and beautifully illustrated book is one of the outcomes of ‘Orchards East’, a project supported by the Heritage Fund.

Heather Falvey

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