May 2025 Reviews

By Graham Jones

(the author 2023 96pp ISBN 978-1-3999-9673-00) £19.95 but £14.95 to BALH members, post free

One of the appealing aspects of writing about local history is finding hidden gems in the records which, when brought to light, illuminate the thinking behind events which shaped the lives of former citizens. This is what Graham Jones has managed to do in his short account of the controversies surrounding ‘Town Dues’ in Liverpool which enmired a parliamentary committee in 1856.

A casual reader might regard Jones’ subject as unprepossessing at first glance. He examines the legal, commercial and maritime aspects of the claims made by shipping magnates that the charges for docking, anchorage, lighthouse, and other port services were being syphoned, sometimes arbitrarily, by the town authorities for purposes which were of no benefit to shipping. So bitter did this debate become that a parliamentary committee was set up to examine the issues. It is the deliberations of this committee that this book elegantly reviews. Jones has set out the claims and counterclaims of the leading protagonists using their own words, such that the book reads like a hybrid between a debate and a courtroom drama.

Without going into details Jones tells us that he was the beneficiary of a ‘chance acquisition of an … obscure House of Commons Report’. And from this tome he constructed the arguments presented to the Commons, using verbatim quotes wherever possible. It is hard not to feel some sympathy for the ship owners. Materials passing through the port were subject to charges, which were spirited from the port to the town. Charges were hard to check for accuracy because they bore no relation to the value of the goods, and no tariff of charges was available for audit. There had once been a tariff on a brass plate attached to a wall in the Custom House. This might have served as some objective measure of accuracy but, as Jones puts it drily it was ‘Seemingly lost (or well hidden)’. Freemen of Liverpool were exempted from the town charges if they signed, on their honour, that the goods being signed for were their own and nobody else’s. No further checks were made. The shipowners also disputed the legal right of Liverpool to charge dues for an area which stretched from the Ribble to the Dee and upstream to Warrington. The response from Liverpool Corporation was put by William Shuttleworth. He combined a lawyer's instinct for wrangling using obscure legal details with an impressive ability to avoid awkward matters—all of which would have been worthy of Sir Humphery Appleby (of Yes, Minister fame). The reader has to cling on to his arguments as many are difficult to follow.

In the end the Select Committee was evenly split and made no recommendations. Later on, the management of the shipping dues was passed on to a free-standing authority: the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board. Liverpool Corporation lost the right to charge ‘dues’ but the Harbour Board took on the duty to pay hefty rates, hence Jones’ intriguing title.

This is a well produced, well written and balanced account of events. The book is worth its cover price for the beautiful illustrations it contains. I was surprised that I enjoyed this book so much, given its apparently dry contents. But Graham Jones brought it all vividly to life.

CHRIS JONES (no relation to the author) was an academic nurse until he retired and now is the programme secretary of the Liverpool History Society. He has written a history of brain surgery and neurology on Merseyside and two short histories of inter war politics in the city. His latest work is a biography of Soviet spy Alexander Foote, a Liverpool-born man who became the chief telegraphist of the Lucy spy ring in Switzerland

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Edited by Rebecca Gill and Janette Martin

(Huddersfield Local History Society 2024 vi+208pp ISBN 978-0-9929841-7-5) £10

In 1932 Florence Lockwood (1861-1937), suffragist, pacifist, and artist, published her autobiography, An Ordinary Life 1861-1924. Lockwood, who was married to textile mill owner Josiah Lockwood of Linthwaite, first became interested in the campaign for votes for women after hearing Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst speak during the 1907 Colne Valley by-election. She did not, however, embrace militancy, but joined the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies and served as president of the Huddersfield Branch. She designed the branch banner (now in the Tolson Museum, Huddersfield), and later was on the committee of the Huddersfield branch of the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship, the successor to the NUWSS.

She was involved in local politics, and was president of the Colne Valley Women’s Liberal Association, served as a Poor Law Guardian, and was active in the District Nursing Association and the Huddersfield Temperance Society. During the First World War she joined the Women’s International League and the Union of Democratic Control. As a member of the Linthwaite War Distress Relief Committee she was involved in the care of Belgian refugees. When the war ended she joined the Save the Children Fund’s campaign for raising funds to feed starving German civilians. At the same time as committing herself to these many causes, Lockwood continued to practise her art. She was vice president of the Huddersfield Art Society, and produced many water colour paintings of the local area.

Lockwood’s autobiography is thus an important source for anyone interested in the history of these key movements of the twentieth century, as well as women artists, the development of Yorkshire’s textile industry, and the social history of a vibrant manufacturing community. Unfortunately, the 1932 edition is rare, and difficult to track down even in libraries, and I was unable to locate a copy when writing this review. Many of Lockwood’s diaries survive, scattered through the West Yorkshire Archive, the Women’s Library and the Brotherton Library, Leeds. Given the relative inaccessibility of this material, Rebecca Gill’s and Janette Martin’s new edition of the autobiography is extremely welcome. It is not, as they point out, a facsimile of the original, but ‘care has been taken to keep revisions to the minimum’. Most significantly, dates that were placed in the margins in the 1932 edition have been positioned as headings in the text of the new edition, and paragraphs have been adjusted by breaking down long paragraphs into smaller ones and amalgamating single-sentence paragraphs with the preceding one. Light though the editorial touch has been, I was not convinced these latter changes were achieved ‘without disrupting the flow of the text’. I certainly found the date headings within the text distracting, and it is obvious that rearranging the paragraphs alters the structure of a text. However, it is impossible to be sure how far these adjustments affect the autobiography, if at all, without being able to see the original, and it would have been helpful if some images of the 1932 edition could have been provided for comparison. In any case, I would have preferred to read the text as it was written, long paragraphs and all.

However, none of this affects the substance of the autobiography, or its value as a historical and social record. It is also a very readable one, vivid and idiosyncratic, and an illuminating account of the experiences of someone who was not always in step with her contemporaries. Such narratives, which challenge easy assumptions (for example, about the unity of the Home Front during the First World War) are a valuable contribution to deepening our understanding of the past. As June Hannam notes, ‘An in-depth look at the lives of individual women, in particular those who are less well known, is one way to build an understanding of the complexities of political choices made in this period’ (Mabel Tothill: Feminist, Socialist, Pacifist, Bristol Radical History Group, 2019, 1).

Lockwood’s autobiography illustrates that not everyone supported the war; not every community tolerated its dissidents; and people had to make difficult choices. Her pacifism caused a rift with her husband, who supported the war and, indeed, profited from it as his mill turned to the manufacture of military uniforms. It also won the disapproval of family, friends and neighbours. Like many people who did not support the conflict, she was caught between the need to work for peace and the need to provide aid to those who were suffering as a result of hostilities, which many argued was a form of supporting the war effort. Her own often ambivalent situation is illustrated by the fact that she once chaired a recruiting meeting: ‘I am ashamed now to own it … but I was not courageous or clear-sighted enough to protest against their sentiments’. Although she did join the endless knitting parties making socks for the troops, she thought machines could do the work better and instead of sewing and knitting, women should be ‘thinking how to prevent war’. And, of course, indirectly through her husband she too profited from the war, as his mill supplied their income.

The autobiography is also an example of how the study of individual lives can suggest new and unexpected perspectives and lines of enquiry. I was surprised to learn that, after her years of suffrage campaigning, Lockwood was so disgusted by the anti-German sentiments that dominated the 1918 election she ‘decided to renounce the privilege of voting, which was mine for the first time’. It is the first example of such a choice I have come across, and raises the interesting question of whether or not other women who were eligible to vote chose not to exercise their hard-won franchise for political reasons. If they did, was there any kind of organisation behind it, for example as a form of protest, or was it an individualistic action?

The book is very attractively produced, particularly the cover which features a painting by Lockwood, and her Huddersfield suffrage banner. A lovely feature is the artwork on the endpapers by local artist Sylvia Gibbs, who has used textile samples salvaged from a derelict mill in Slaithwaite. The original illustrations have been reproduced (one black and white image of a painting has been replaced by a colour version), and eight new illustrations have been added. The book includes explanatory notes at the end of each chapter. An excellent introduction outlines the background to the project, which grew out of Janette Martin’s purchase of a copy of An Ordinary Life which in turn ‘inspired many a lockdown walk tramping the steep footpaths upon which Florence and Josiah once trod’. The introduction also provides some biographical and historical context. A useful Appendix lists Lockwood’s manuscripts and publications, together with their location.

All in all, Rebecca Gill’s and Janette Martin’s new edition of An Ordinary Life not only gives the reader access to a valuable source for early twentieth-century history, but also introduces a wider audience to the pleasure of reading Florence Lockwood’s engaging memoir.

LUCIENNE BOYCE writes historical non-fiction and historical fiction. She has written a history of the local suffragette movement, The Bristol Suffragettes, as well as contributed to other books on suffrage history. She is currently writing a biography of suffrage campaigner, socialist and pacifist, Millicent Price (née Browne); and completing a collaborative project with Antonia Raeburn (who died in 2021; author of The Militant Suffragettes, 1973) based on Antonia’s interviews with former suffragettes in the 1960s and 1970s.

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By Linda Hart

(Friends of the Dymock Poets 2024 136pp ISBN 978-1-80517-565-0) £10

Dymock is a village on the Gloucestershire–Herefordshire border, set in a land of daffodils and cider, and overseen by May Hill, a tree-topped eminence visible for miles (I have just watched an indigo sunset glow behind it from my kitchen window). Here, at intervals between 1912 and 1914, six poets—three forgotten, three remembered—spent long evenings in the cottages where they were lodging to write, discuss and publish poetry over their pipes and flagons. It was a homegrown literary movement, steering poetry into a Georgian, post-Victorian, direction, and this little group was much later dubbed the Dymock poets. The drivers were Lascelles Abercrombie (one of the forgotten) who moved there in 1910, and Wilfrid Gibson (also forgotten), there in 1913. The three visitors who achieved celebrity were Rupert Brooke, Edward Thomas and Robert Frost.

This anthology of their work was published thirty years ago, in 1995, long before Matthew Hollis’s Now All Roads Lead to France, and is now reissued (revised edition is perhaps an exaggeration, as there seems to be little new material). So why should an old poetry anthology with a somewhat pedestrian title warrant a review in The Local Historian? When first published it became the manifesto for a newly-fledged fan club, Friends of the Dymock Poets, one of many which continue to promote their literary heroes. Its author, Linda Hart, was instrumental in this, and her method—a short biography of each of the six poets followed by a selection of their poems—is logical and makes perfect sense. Furthermore, her scholarly attention to detail inspires our confidence so that we trust her judgement.

But the thing about this little book that should pique the local or landscape historian’s interest is that here is presented another way of seeing, appreciating and describing an English village and its surroundings. Almost every poem included has been selected because it was written in, connected with, or says something about this ordinary Gloucestershire parish and its surroundings. And some, such as Frost’s ‘The Road Not Taken’ have become well known. My organisation, the Victoria History, ‘did’ Dymock in 2010, and very competently in our methodical, meticulous way. But local history has other ways too, roads not taken, and poetry is one of them—'for poets,’ wrote Hoskins, ‘make the best topographers’. Reading this book, who would disagree?

Alongside inspiration for the local historian, there is sadness in this book too. Gibson’s poem, The Golden Room, describes a still summer evening in July 1914 when ‘in the lamplight we talked and laughed … while the day died from the rose-latticed casements and the plovers called over the low meadows’. But, the poem continues, ‘Then August brought the war, and scattered us’. Brooke and Thomas perished, Frost returned to America, and the poets’ days of daffodils and cider would never return. That, too, is the local history of everywhere.

JOHN CHANDLER is a VCH editor in Gloucestershire and Wiltshire, publisher of regional history, and BALH trustee, chairing the Publishing Committee. He lives in Gloucester.

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By Ian Jackson

(Northern Heritage 2024 114pp ISBN 978-1-739486-14-3) £12

Ian Jackson has applied both his experience as a professional geologist and his passion for archaeology to produce a compelling volume. At first acquaintance one might regard The Rocks at the Edge of the Empire as merely a field guide to fifty interesting geological sites in the vicinity of Hadrian’s Wall, but it is much more than this: key to the book is a consideration of the relationship between the local geology and the Roman occupation of the northerly part of its empire. It is this aspect of the book that should appeal to historians.

Following the presentational style of previous well-received volumes by the author on the geology of Cumbria, Durham and Northumberland, this roughly A4-sized book is presented in landscape orientation. Although a challenge to place on a typical bookshelf, this increasingly popular format lends itself to a pleasing layout of text and illustrations. Jackson has clearly embraced digital technology in his professional life and used it to good effect in this publication, including the use of QR codes to point the reader towards relevant Web pages.

The bulk of the book covers fifty locations, mostly along the Wall corridor, but with outliers well to the north and south. Each site is located both by grid reference and on a map extract. These map extracts vary in scale and, while useful on the whole, one or two are too small to read easily. Typically for each site a text-dominated page faces a full-page photograph or illustration. By way of introduction the sites are located on a generalised geological map of Northern England and listed under colour-coded categories: ‘Before the Romans’; ‘Reading the landscape’; ‘How do we know?’; and ‘Natural resources’. The last category is the largest and this reflects an emphasis on the ways that the Romans, once in situ, exploited a wide variety of geological resources. This aspect is covered thoroughly and is one of the strengths of the book.

Strip maps of the bedrock geology and Quaternary deposits along the Wall corridor are made clearer by a third strip map, which indicates the thickness of the Quaternary deposits. This illustrates clearly the limited extent of bed rock at the surface under the Wall corridor. A simplified vertical section through geological time has an adjacent expansion of the Quaternary with dates for the arrival of humans, the divisions of pre-history and key events in the Roman occupation. Although one tends to think of geology in terms of staggeringly long time-scales, it is important that this diagram reminds the reader that the most recent of geologic time is contemporaneous with the advent of human beings.

We are told that the book ‘looks at the region’s ancient history through a professional geologist’s eyes, a perspective which inevitably raises questions about several long held archaeological interpretations’. It has been stated that the lure of silver-rich lead ore was a driving force behind the Roman occupation of the north of England but Jackson relates scientific evidence indicating that most of the local galena has a low silver content. The Romans may have travelled in hope based on false rumour and, as the author points out, typical economics regarding silver extraction may well have not applied because of the use of slave labour, but when primary written sources are considered by some as problematic the input of science can contribute to our understanding. This is not a crude debunking of a long-held explanation as to the motivation for invasion for clearly Jackson wishes to enhance understanding, and it should be noted that he engaged two archaeologists to comment on the text.

Underlying Jackson’s commentary is a plea to work together across discipline boundaries. By way of example as to how geology might inform archaeology and, given the period concerned, history as well, he explains how the techniques of geology (in this case analysis of the rock and identification of the micro-fossils it contains) could give provenance to coal found during archaeological digs at Roman sites, but he does also acknowledge that the attribution of provenance to sandstones found in Hadrian’s Wall is much more problematic, the regional sandstones being very variable over time and space.

It is correct to assert that this book will ‘provoke debate …. and your curiosity’. It is often the case that the perspective of a different discipline can challenge and illuminate the received wisdom of its host. Ian Jackson has contributed just that sort of analysis.

ALAN DOUGHERTY was raised in Somerset but is now hefted to the northern fells. A sometime teacher of geography and geology, he finds such a background brings enhanced pleasure to a day in the mountains. A keen rock-climber, he can attest directly to the defensive sense of building a section of Hadrian’s Wall above a Whin Sill outcrop.

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