February 2024 Reviews

By Michael A. Mullett

(Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society Tract Series vol.30 2022 vii+182pp ISBN 978-1-873124-90-1) £20

I begin this review with a humble apology. The book was published two years ago, and the review was written soon afterwards, but inexplicably it did not progress to print. The delay in the review appearing is entirely my fault.

Over the past twenty years Michael Mullett, whose particular historical specialism is the religion and politics of the seventeenth century, has undertaken extensive research on Cumbrian towns, focusing on the boroughs and analysing the detail of local political life. One of the boroughs, Appleby, was the smallest county town in England, but had a mayor and corporation and elected two MPs. Another town, Cockermouth, was not legally a borough in the sense of municipal government, but it was a parliamentary borough and likewise sent two members to parliament. These otherwise modest places, with only a local importance, therefore had a greater significance in political terms than their size might imply. Their internal politics, given the narrowness of the franchise, was clearly a major determinant of the process of electing MPs.

Both places had urban status, but they were physically and demographically small. Carlisle was a very different proposition. It was among the largest towns in North West England, governed by a mayor and corporation but with strong and influential trade guilds. Since the 1130s it had been a cathedral city, and the ecclesiastical establishment was a powerful force in its social, political and cultural life. Most significant, perhaps, was its role as a garrison town. Although the Union of the Crowns in 1603 had to some extent removed the immediate security threat on the Anglo-Scottish border, the political and military crises of the late 1630s and 16540s, which involved Scottish invasions of North East England, had emphasised once more that the border was vulnerable. The garrison at Carlisle Castle was therefore strengthened and retained, and its commanding officers were a major force in the life of the city. In particular, the military governor, Sir Philip Musgrave, was a highly forceful personality who was for long periods engaged in bitter and acrimonious disputes with leading citizens. Furthermore, Michael Mullett argues, Carlisle’s border location and geographical circumstances meant that it was economically underdeveloped in comparison with other towns of comparable size, and this allowed local landed interests to play a dominant role in the political affairs of the city.

This fascinating and very readable account highlights the importance of local factors and the local context in the social, economic, political and (in this case) military history of any town in the early modern period. It is essential to avoid over-generalisation and to resist the temptation to assume that the general trends of national history applied to the experience of individual places. The complex interweaving of power and authority in Carlisle—with civilian, ecclesiastical and military power bases, and interest groups ranging from trade companies to rural gentry, demonstrates that each place will have its own distinctive characteristics.

Michael Mullett skilfully traces the history of the city through the reigns of Charles II and James II, convincingly proposing that because Carlisle had not, and did not, develop a significant Protestant nonconformist faction, the unholy alliance or coalition between Catholics and nonconformists which in the reign of James II formed the mainstay of the king’s political and religious agenda in other boroughs was simply not possible. He argues that instead James relied upon the recusant county gentry from the city’s hinterland, ‘making this city an exceptional case of a briefly successful Catholic local political ascendancy in late Stuart England’. Thanks to the assiduous research and accessible and stimulating writing of Michael Mullett, not only are Cumbria’s towns in the later seventeenth century well documented, but the evidence of their experience can help to create a more rounded and nuanced view of urban life in England more generally in this period.

Alan Crosby is the editor of The Local Historian. He is also one of the editors of the Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society, and has published work on (inter alia) new markets and economic expansion in early modern Cumbria.

[Hide]

By Mary Bodfish

(Smethwick Local History Society & Smethwick Heritage Centre 2023 77pp ISBN 978-1-3999-5145-6) £9.95+£3 p&p from www.smethwick.org.uk

Every inhabited place has a past, but not all have easily identified origins or published histories. Two Smethwick groups have combined to present an attractive and profusely illustrated account of one such place in Staffordshire, a variation on a popular approach to exploring the past. Eight sites within Smethwick today are selected from the space mapped as a landscape in its pre-industrial condition by, among others, William Yates in the late 1760s. Mary Bodfish’s first person narrative style produces a smoothly flowing text and makes the author quite justifiably part of the story. She could not resist the temptation to begin with prehistory and the location of three ‘glacial erratics’ and their associated myths. These landmarks dictated the pattern of council housing in the 1920s, but two have subsequently disappeared and the third moved to a park site.

After this, the sound of a gurgling stream leads to the Thimblemill and research among medieval documents linking water mills to Yates’ map. One of the virtues of this study then becomes apparent as Mary Bodfish neatly combines online newspaper sources, maps, memories of people interviewed forty years previously and census records to provide a narrative account linking the present to the past at each site. A succession of advertisements for the sale of the Thimblemill and land around show that it operated from the end of the eighteenth century as a metal processing workshop. It certainly made hand tools and, presumably, ‘thimbles’, used both for protecting fingers and as spirit measures in public houses. Curiously, the site became a Mitchell and Butler public house in 1928, recently demolished in favour of houses and an apartment block.

A tree identified as the Three Shires Oak appeared on an early Ordnance Survey map and serves as another pointer to the past. An 1830 sketch is reproduced as further evidence. More intriguing is the way that a previous writer on Smethwick’s history reported interviews with an elderly resident showing that the tree was not felled until the late 1890s. Its significance is that it grew with roots in three counties: Staffordshire, Worcestershire and Warwickshire. Long since forgotten, the tree is used in this study as a way of introducing readers to the creation of counties in Anglo-Saxon times as local government units. William the Conqueror’s subsequent distribution of lands among his followers is noted as the cause of subsequent anomalies in county boundaries. Three counties meeting at one tree was the result.

Warley Hall Farm is another site investigated, but the longest account refers to Warley Hall, more popularly known as Warley Abbey. Now a parkland and golf course, this estate with a misnamed structure (demolished 1957) was first intended as a home for Samuel Galton, a Quaker gun manufacturer, after he purchased the property in 1792. His son, Hubert, had the house built to a design by Robert Lugar, finished by 1820. Mary Bodfish has accumulated a substantial body of information, much derived from newspapers, about the building and a succession of owners and occupiers. Chief among these was Hugh Reid, journalist and a principal executive officer of a newspaper conglomerate, knighted in Queen Victoria’s Birthday Honours list 1893. He and his family, deeply engaged as Liberals in local politics, brought fame and prosperity to this corner of Smethwick. Hugh Reid designated his house an Abbey and thereby created a false understanding of its pre-industrial origins by invoking the aura of medievalism and religious piety. Harold Tangye, the next owner, soon sold off much of the estate as the region’s industrial expansion forced rapid encroachment on green belt estates for housing. Part was saved as a gift to Birmingham City Council as a public park.

The chapter on Old Chapel farm includes a glance at the fortunes made by Birmingham sword makers during the Civil Wars and explains how the ‘Old Chapel’, built around 1730, was a project funded by Dorothy Parkes to allow her and her neighbours to avoid travelling along the hazardous trackway to the parish church at Harborne. This gave Smethwick its first focal point, but it did not become a commercial centre.

Minutely detailed investigation into two other farm sites point to the way that an agricultural district was transformed by the late Victorian and twentieth century industrial and housing sprawl of the Birmingham conurbation. Numerous similar developments took place around Manchester, in the Potteries in North Staffordshire, and no doubt Leeds and Bristol. Histories of such places require the kind of investigatory work exemplified in Mary Bodfish’s contribution to a history of Smethwick.

Paul Anderton has recently published an account of Newcastle-under-Lyme market since 1835, which invites similar studies elsewhere. He is also working on Arnold Bennett’s ‘Bursley’ by approaching the nature of nineteenth century Burslem in the Potteries through a recently discovered diary of a member of the Wedgwood family: fact set against fiction, partly as a response to an article in The Local Historian in 2022.

[Hide]

By Martin Stallion

(author 2023 94pp ISBN 978-0-957676-02-2) £12 inc p&p from martinstallion1@gmail.com

In the early years of the nineteenth century, it was recognised that the country’s policing methods needed to change. Industrialisation and the growth of towns had led to a massive increase in crime rates and there was widespread unrest in the countryside, as many agricultural labourers faced unemployment following the introduction of threshing machines. This led to farmers’ property being destroyed and they and their families being threatened. The creation of London’s Metropolitan Police in 1829 was one early attempt to deal with the problems, but society’s response to crime, which still relied largely on the annual election of often reluctant local men to the post of unpaid parish constable, was clearly ineffective.

The period covered in this book is relatively brief, but it was significant in the creation of the modern, professional police service. Stallion highlights the importance of the Municipal Corporations Act 1835, which was introduced to improve local government in England and Wales. The act created 178 boroughs, to be governed by town councillors elected by ratepayers. One such borough was Saffron Walden, which had a population of approximately 6000. Many were employed in agriculture as there were a number of farms in the area.

A responsibility of the new boroughs was to establish a police force, overseen by a watch committee. Saffron Walden’s met for the first time on 1 January 1836, its immediate task being to recruit the number of healthy men needed to preserve the peace, prevent crime and arrest offenders within the borough. Those selected were to receive a salary and allowances. Two constables were recruited, together with Joseph Kent, who was appointed chief constable, a position he would hold for a decade. Stallion acknowledges that there is an absence of official records and so he relies on local press reports to describe the crimes the police had to deal with. Assaults, burglaries and thefts, especially of sheep and horses, were commonplace. Ironically, the only murder committed during this period was that of the town’s chief constable William Campling, on 31 October 1849. A local man, with whom he had argued, was accused and put on trial, but was found not guilty and the crime remained unsolved. However, the book is not about day-to-day policing but focuses on the issue of police organisation.

Subsequent events showed that there was insufficient spending on equipment and personnel throughout the whole of the period in question, and thus no meaningful improvement in policing the town. The watch committee accounts were included with those of the full council, making it difficult to calculate how much was spent on policing, but it does appear to have been kept to a minimum. An indication of the low salaries paid to officers of all grades is the fact that Kent supplemented his income by also acting as collector of the town’s tolls. Furthermore, following Kent’s death from typhus, his replacement, the unfortunate Campling, was also the town’s inspector of weights and measures and surveyor of highways. Unsurprisingly, the costs of policing would influence the town’s attitude towards future legislation dealing with police reorganisation.

The County Police Act 1839 encouraged, but did not compel, borough forces within counties to merge. In Essex some did so: the county police force, under chief constable Captain John McHardy, came into being in February 1840. Initially in Saffron Walden there was a good deal of support for amalgamation, and in December 1840 Captain McHardy visited the town to explain the advantages of such a move. The issue was discussed for several months, but concerns were raised about the increased costs this would involve, so in October, the town council rejected the proposal.

That remained the position for five years. Following Campling’s murder, the next three chief constables had experience of working in the Metropolitan Police, but they made little difference. The first, James Doss, left in 1852 after being accused of assaulting a man. He was replaced by Benjamin Judd, who was succeeded by Oliver Kerbey, who was appointed on 6 August 1856 and dismissed 15 days later for being drunk on duty. During this period, two more attempts were made to merge with the Essex force, firstly in 1846 and again in 1851, but these failed, again for financial reasons. By the mid-1850s the government was clearly determined that all borough forces in a county should combine, but resistance persisted in some boroughs including Saffron Walden. Opponents argued that it was unconstitutional as it would bring an end to the independence of boroughs guaranteed in the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835. The County and Borough Police Act was passed in 1856 and in August the following year Captain McHardy attended a town meeting and confirmed that henceforth Saffron Walden would be policed by a chief constable, together with two first-class and two second-class constables. The Essex Constabulary came into being on 9 November 1857. Richard Harvey, who had been appointed Saffron Walden’s last chief constable in September 1856, became an inspector in the new force.

This book is highly recommended as it provides an insight into the early days of law enforcement and is a welcome addition to the literature on police history.

Martin Baggoley is a retired probation officer with a master’s degree in criminology. He is the author of several books on the history of crime and is a member of the Police History Society and the Crime Writers Association.

[Hide]

By Mike Kingman

(Brewin Books 2023 312pp ISBN 978-1-85858-758-5) £14.95

This is an extensively researched subject for those interested in brickmaking and the use of bricks in a large area of the Midlands, defined as the counties of Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire and Warwickshire (which the author acknowledges is an arbitrary region). The study period starts in 1438 with the building of Prior Overton’s Tower at Repton, the first brick structure in the area, and finishes in 1780, just before the advent of mass production of brick which was distributed by the growing canal network. Chapter 2 discusses why brick buildings become popular in some area but not others. An emphasis on ‘geographical or geological determinism’ by many researchers is, Kingman claims, only part of the reason: wealthy patrons both lay and ecclesiastical were an important factor in where brick is used because in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries brick building was a status symbol.

Chapters 3, 4 and 5 present research on brick and tile making. Chapter 3 includes an interesting discussion of the differing opinions about what influenced the areas where brick was used, such as the availability of suitable clays or social pressures and preferences of the client. Chapter 4 provides very detailed coverage of the prices of bricks, both estate- and non-estate-made, and Kingman reminds us that production was still closely associated with sites of building. Chapter 5 explores the differing fuels available for firing clamps and kilns. There is possible evidence for the use of peat, and a widespread use of wood, but by the seventeenth century coal had become the fuel of choice In the study area the use of timber to build houses seems to have continued from the late medieval period into the eighteenth century, with brick building perhaps being used as a statement of status rather than because of the availability of bricks or their relative cost.

The chapter on transport gives a wide-ranging discussion of road conditions and the development of canal transit. Following these studies of aspects of brick production and use, there are two detailed chapters on the reasons why brick became fashionable for house building. The next chapter returns to the cost of brick building, with many examples provided. The final sections are on municipal involvement in brickmaking, and the industrial and horticultural use of brick.

Clearly this book is the result of extensive research by the author into the making and use of brick in the defined area. There are numerous quoted and referenced examples of all aspects of the industry. Chapter headings give some indication of what they might contain and where one might look for the reader’s specific interest subjects but, regrettably, the lack of an index makes the task of finding information relating to particular subjects or places very difficult. Likewise, anyone hoping to find references to specific persons involved in the brick industry is a lengthy, if not impossible, task.

Excavations for the National Trust, where seventeenth to nineteenth century brick structures predominated, led Michael Coles to a dissertation for a Master of Studies degree at Cambridge on the subject of the brick industry in west Cambridgeshire. More recent study has been directed towards the use of brick in surviving buildings in rural areas.

[Hide]

Edited by Judith Mills 

(Friends of Nottinghamshire Archives 2023 iv+146pp ISBN 978-1-739391414-0-9) £6.50+p&p

Local historians and archivists depend on each other and yet after a lifetime spent working across both sectors I am not convinced that they work well together. This book is an honourable exception, almost a role model for future projects. Judith Mills is chairwoman of the Friends of Nottinghamshire Archives (FONA), and she has worked with three other local historians on preparing the text while two further local historians catalogued the Savile collection. The Nottinghamshire Archive staff have greatly helped the project by the way they made archive material available to the team.

Rufford Abbey was the home of the Savile family, earls of Scarbrough, one of those mid-Nottinghamshire families who formed the Dukeries, at least according to Horace Walpole. The family estates ran to c.18,000 acres, and the archive to 226 boxes of material, all of which were catalogued during this project. The collection has not always been together as it is now in Nottinghamshire Archives. Much of it reached the archives in 1957 and the estate material from the Estate Office at Thornhill in Yorkshire in 2012.

The Savile project involved both cataloguing the collection and working through it to write a history of aspects of the estate. Both strands are discussed in the book, together with pitfalls such as the COVID outbreak when work had only just started. Judith Mills refers to the chapters in the book as opening up opportunities for further research into the estate, who lived and worked on it, and what was achieved. She also suggests that there is more work to be done, and here of course was a potential problem: the research team wanted to find out more about the estate while the archive staff were primarily concerned with conserving the material for the future. Allowing for these potentially conflicting priorities the authors do generally handle the different priorities well.

The opening chapter looks at the ownership of the estates over several generations, with portraits where they have survived. Next Karen Winyard disentangles the Savile inheritance and Sheila Leeds writes about land and people 1737-1847 using surveys from the collection. This includes vignettes of the Boughton court leet, but minimal attention was given to Wellow, neither its ford nor its maypole, which presumably reflected the constraints of the commission which was to write about the findings from the documents rather than to discuss the manorial holdings in a wider context. Ruth Strong provides a chapter on the people of the estate, notably the employees such as the agricultural labourers. This is based on detailed contemporary labour books. It covers the 1890s and it includes estate workers (including women), estate farms, senior staff such as the gamekeeper and butler. The second part of the chapter moves away from wages towards the tenants of farms and other buildings, among them those in Ollerton including the Hop Pole inn and garden allotments. Ruth is right to conclude that 'this glance at the rent books has been a taste of the detail and events that could be gleaned from a deeper study'. Later she writes about the estate in a wider context.

Judith Mills contributes two substantial chapters. The first is on leisure pursuits, among them foxhunting and game shooting, at Rufford Abbey for gift giving and sales. She concentrates mainly on gifts of game for various groups and individuals. Her second chapter covers horse racing and the Rufford Stud, concluding that 'the fate of the Rufford Stud Farm is very closely aligned to the interests and enthusiasms of the estate owners', a point she demonstrates concisely in this chapter.

The book ends with suggestions towards future research, but as the Savile project is finished it is not clear who is going to take that on. There is certainly work to be done. Unfortunately, the ‘finish’ of the book leaves something to be desired. First, there are many images but none includes the archive staff, while Jim and Betty Chettle, the cataloguers, are not named in the group photograph. The book would have benefitted from having an index and running chapter heads. These omissions are not venal, but they do make it awkward to use. Also, as is often the case with local histories, the emphasis is on the documents at the expense of context. We know only about hunting and shooting on the Rufford estate, not about where that hunting and shooting fits into the wider picture of landed estates and their sporting interests more generally. Overall, though, there is much to admire in this volume and Judith and her team have produced an interesting and enjoyable book.

John Beckett is Emeritus Professor of English Regional History at the University of Nottingham and was the first chairman of the Nottinghamshire Archives User Group. He has written extensively on English landed estates and worked in archives on both sides of the Atlantic.

[Hide]

Edited by Alan Greenwood

(Lightcliffe and District Local History Society 2022 viii+144pp ISBN 978-1-9162983-1-6) £15+£2.75 p&p;

HIPPERHOLME AND LIGHTCLIFFE MEMORIAL STRAY by Bob Horne (Lightcliffe and District Local History Society 2023 xv+140pp ISBN 978-1-9162983-47) £15+£2.75 p&p

These well-researched and attractively produced local studies are testimony to the thriving interest in the study of distinctive historical features in their respective local landscapes and indeed their regional contexts. Alan Greenwood’s specified purpose in Drawn on the Landscape is to focus on the story of the roads east of Halifax, the people who made them and the transport that used them. Tracing the changing local landscape from the prehistoric era to the present day he uses an adapted section of Jeffrey’s 1771 map of Yorkshire to show the road which unwaveringly followed the surviving medieval route of the much older Wakefield Gate, skirting Beacon Hill. Another even more ancient route, proceeding via Ealand chapelry then via Brighouse, Clifton and Birstall and on to Leeds, is also considered, as are routes which also partially made the transition from packhorse trails to accommodate wheeled vehicles during this period.

In his preface Greenwood reveals that, after moving to Yorkshire in the late 1960s, he was struck by how much history he found literally ‘on the doorstep’ and how strong, among his new friends, local identities of place were. Moreover, his love of walking in the hills and dales around Halifax made him increasingly aware of the ‘many little byways that are tucked away in the corners of valleys and villages’. Members of the Halifax Antiquarian Society will be impressed that he was soon introduced to the pioneering local research of W.B. Crump, one of its stalwarts, and indeed to the more recent and continuing research of Mike Beecham, some of which has appeared in the new series of the Transactions of the Halifax Antiquarian Society.

The chapters of Greenwood’s illuminating book focus predominantly on local ways from prehistoric to pre-industrial times; the local network of lanes and tracks around Lightcliffe, Hipperholme and Bailiff Bridge; increasing traffic and the turnpike movement which transformed the road network from 1820 to 1840 with regional implications. He also includes extensive references by chapter, a glossary of abbreviations, measures and money, and a bibliography of books and maps. The book tells the story of the roads leading out from Halifax eastwards from the earliest times until the middle of the nineteenth century when the road network was recognisably what we have today.

Bob Horne’s declared purpose in commencing with the official opening of the Hipperholme and Lightcliffe Stray—the solemn unveiling of a granite obelisk—is to commemorate the 110 villagers who lost their lives in the First World War, predominantly young men but also one woman. However, the Stray’s origins as pastureland are carefully traced and other interesting later associations are explored. These, topically, include the ownership for a few years of nearby Lydgate House by Ann Walker, who lived there ‘before she took up residence at Shibden Hall with her lover Anne Lister’, and almost two centuries later, in Sally Wainwright’s groundbreaking television drama Gentleman Jack. More prosaically, in 1867 Joshua Smithson bought Lydgate House and acquired some of the surrounding land, part of which eventually became known as Smithson Park. Joshua was born in Westmorland but had set up in business with Thomas Collinson as a tea dealer in Fountain Street, and later in Gibbet Street, Halifax, with John, one of his younger brothers. The Smithson family also included prominent textile manufacturers. Titus Salt, the Bradford industrialist, lived in the neighbourhood at Crow Nest. From 1874 to 1881 Joshua was the chairman of Hipperholme Local Board, the forerunner of the urban district council. In 1907, having been owned by the Smithson family for nearly forty years, the fields were divided into building lots, though never actually sold. Eventually, Hipperholme Council decided to provide a public open space for the community, which proved exceptionally useful for years to come for outdoor activities and sporting events and was indispensable during the Second World War in providing ‘Holidays at Home’. This book presents a remarkably interesting illustrated historical survey of these eleven acres of ground from the early nineteenth century to the Silver Jubilee Gala of Queen Elizabeth II in 1977.

The Brighouse Echo described the Hipperholme ‘Stray’ first and foremost as a ‘Unique War Memorial’ and the unveiling, dedication and tree planting as ‘impressive public ceremonial’. At the unveiling ceremony the Rt Hon, J.H. Whitley MP for Halifax, Speaker of the House of Commons, delivered his moving address ‘with clarity and impressiveness of tone and gesture’. He proclaimed that the memorial was for ‘remembrance and dedication’ so that ‘those who come after may never forget a great story of sacrifice and devotion’. After the ceremony he went on to say that ‘there was no greater gift a village or town could have than an open space belonging to the community forever’.

Bob Horne reveals that he has lived close to the Stray for more than seventy years and that for him it holds ‘memories of endless games of cricket during summer holidays, football and sledging in the winters and games of hide and seek and its variants Kick Can and Oppit, the swings and the slide, monkey climb and other playground equipment’. He concludes ‘Our village would be a very different place without the Stray’ and reveals that he ‘walks across it on most days and it almost always busy with people of all ages’. Experiences of the Stray are truly memorable and not without poignancy, as others, including Dorothy Barker (Secretary of the Friends of St Matthew’s Churchyard and other burial grounds), acknowledge and reflect on ‘the names of these young soldiers’, both male and female.

These two books have been beautifully designed and typeset by Malcolm Heron and are fully illustrated. They are a testimony to the strength and capabilities of some of the grassroots local history societies in Calderdale and West Yorkshire, which appear to be flourishing despite the pandemic. A glance at the contents of the books under review indicates the range and structure of these welcome additions to the study of local history in this vicinity.

John A. Hargreaves is editor of the Transactions of the Halifax Antiquarian Society.

[Hide]