May 2026 Reviews

By by Colin Fisher

(Hobnob Press 2025 vii+154pp ISBN: 978-1-914407-91-8) £14.95

Colin Fisher’s The Cost of Pleasure is a well-researched and engaging account of the leisure pursuits of Jacob and Priscilla Franks, a wealthy Jewish couple who spent much of their middle years enjoying the fashionable spa towns of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Britain. Drawing not from diaries or letters, but from the family’s meticulously kept cash books, Fisher reconstructs in impressive detail how they spent their time—and more importantly, their money—on the pleasures and obligations of polite society. The heart of the book lies in their repeated excursions to Bath Spa, which they visited eight times between 1777 and 1808. Bath, the social capital of Georgian leisure, offered every indulgence from balls and concerts to gambling, theatre, libraries, and of course, the famed mineral waters. Yet Fisher’s narrative extends beyond Bath to encompass other resorts which the family frequented, including Harrogate, Scarborough, Southampton, Ramsgate, and Margate. The result is a panoramic glimpse of the itineraries of a wealthy household navigating the circuits of fashionable society.

The material is financial rather than personal, and Fisher is candid about the challenges this presents: a cash book records payments, not sentiments. It cannot reveal the nuances of friendships, rivalries, or affections. What it does reveal, however, is a ledger of priorities, commitments, and pleasures—evidence which, through patient detective work, Fisher transforms into a lively portrait of elite leisure. What quickly becomes clear is just how expensive it was to maintain a season in Bath. The accounts record the rental of houses, the wages of servants, and the considerable costs of travel. Once in residence, Jacob subscribed to both the Upper and Lower Assembly Rooms, paying additional fees for dress balls, cotillion balls (a French square dance), and benefit balls held in honour of each room’s Master of Ceremonies. Membership extended further, with Jacob joining the York Club, a mark of his commitment to the city’s fashionable life.

Leisure in Bath came at many levels. The Franks’ expenses include concerts, plays, and libraries, though Fisher notes with characteristic care that not every ‘play’ listed necessarily referred to theatre—it might instead signify the far more costly pastime of gambling. Card games, both in public rooms and private lodgings, were an integral part of Bath life, and the records shows that they were unlikely to have abstained. Similarly, a curious series of nine entries for ‘gloves’ may not always denote items of clothing, but rather the eighteenth-century euphemism for gifts or bribes. The range of entertainments reflected in the cash books is striking. Subscriptions to play billiards were regular, while a payment from November 1777 covers a game of Real Tennis, the indoor ancestor of modern tennis, then played on a court near the Upper Assembly Rooms (now the Museum of Work). Alongside these pursuits were the numerous sundries that made up the fabric of fashionable living: hiring sedan chairs, tipping servants, buying wine, contributing to charity, acquiring keepsakes and clothing, even the obligatory Christmas boxes sent to both assembly rooms and donations for charity sermons. Interestingly, the Franks’ earliest trips show little interest in the medicinal side of Bath life. It is only in later visits that the accounts include payments for hot mineral water treatments, doctors, and apothecaries, reflecting Jacob’s declining health and his affliction with gout. In this sense, the Franks’ story mirrors that of many elite families: first drawn to Bath for the pleasures of society, later staying for its supposed cures.

The cost of this lifestyle was formidable. Over their first season at Bath in 1777 costs amounted to £377 12s 9d (equivalent to around £32,500 in 2017) with subsequent visits producing similar totals. Fisher rightly raises the question: how could the Franks sustain such expenditure? The answer lies in their considerable wealth, drawn from a complex web of transatlantic and colonial ventures. Born into families of merchants with ties stretching from North America to the West Indies and India, both Jacob and Priscilla inherited fortunes. Fisher devotes a chapter to the origins of their money, including diamond trading in India, speculative land schemes in pre-revolutionary America, and, most starkly, ownership of sugar plantations in the West Indies, dependent on enslaved labour. The leisured life of the Franks, he reminds us, was built on systems of exploitation as much as on inherited refinement.

What makes The Cost of Pleasure particularly valuable is Fisher’s ability to animate the bare figures of a ledger into a vivid reconstruction of elite sociability. His attention to detail is impressive, whether explaining the distinction between benefit and dress balls, identifying the location of the Real Tennis court, or clarifying the double meanings of words like ‘play’ and ‘gloves’. The result is a textured account that never loses sight of the human element, even when working from financial abstractions. Fisher’s prose is accessible and often witty, making the book not only scholarly but enjoyable to read. His detective work—piecing together names, places, and costs into a plausible narrative of family life—is particularly commendable. While some readers may wish for more direct evidence of personality or emotion, Fisher is clear about the limits of his sources and turns those limitations into strengths, highlighting the economic realities of leisure as much as its cultural pleasures.

In the end, The Cost of Pleasure succeeds in its dual aims: it is both a detailed case study of one family’s excursions and a broader reflection on the culture of leisure in Georgian Britain. It shows us how wealth was displayed, how money circulated in the social economy of Bath, and how families like the Franks positioned themselves within the rituals of fashionable life. It is a worthy book, and is recommended if you are interested in Bath Spa and its entertainments and the intricacies of the leisured classes in the eighteenth century.

MELANIE KING is a social historian, author of eight books including The Secret History of English Spas (Bodleian Library Publishing 2021) and founder of The History Forum, online talks by history professionals. Her latest book, Cold Comforts: a Journey Through Ice Cream will be published in 2026

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Edited by Roger H. White

(Oxbow Books/Script Books 2025 288pp ISBN: 979-8-888571-59-0) £45

As the title suggests, this is a book written to celebrate the work of the Shropshire Archaeological Society, which was founded in 1877 but, because of an erratic early history, has only just reached the 100th volume of its Transactions. Naturally, all the contributors to this volume are members of the Society and many are employed in higher education. They are joined here by an equal group of local authority employees with responsibility for archaeology and the countryside. Here they are given an opportunity to explore their specialisms in a rounded fashion. As befits a county history, the articles progress chronologically until the late seventeenth century. The last five chapters take a thematic approach, dealing with country houses, maps, industry, adult education and the future of the Shropshire Archaeological Society.

In the manner of earlier county histories this volume commences with two full-bodied chapters on prehistory. Whereas most modern county journals simply list early finds—with a drawing, if you are lucky—here we have some sort of narrative based upon Bronze Age barrows and lithics. Moreover, with the advent of field-walking, David Mullin and Jodie Lewis introduce us to ‘hot-spots’ i.e. burials that provide radio-carbon dates. Stone axes made on the border with Powys are found as far away as Cambridgeshire and Devon and, this being the Bronze Age, we have an up-to-date discussion of the famous Broadward Hoard (from Clungunford in south Shropshire). Interesting conclusions are drawn for the use of ridgeways, bogs and glacial pools for depositing and the arrival of metal from Wales. We are reminded that Shropshire, in the distant past, had no border to the west.

Andy Wigley takes up the story with the late Bronze Age and Iron Age, which was virtually ignored by earlier commentators. Excavations at Bromfield, near Ludlow (1982) and Hodnet (c.2002) have provided much new information, while dykes, pit-alignments and burnt mounds hint at settlements and community activity. This collaborative behaviour bears fruit in the first millennium BC with hill-forts, which now number about 54 in the county. Earlier historians were mainly interested in ramparts and entrances but here more attention has been paid to activities within the forts.

The editor of the volume, Roger H. White, provides a chapter on Roman Shropshire, taking the focus away from Wroxeter into the wider county. Early campaign camps suggest that the Romans approached from the south-east, along the line of Watling Street. Conquest came quickly with the exploitation of tribal wealth in minerals, cattle and grain. Young natives enlisted in the army and there were early marriages. Pottery made by the Dobunni (in the lower Severn Valley) was soon in use and even the smallest settlement engaged in trade. Much attention is paid to Wroxeter, which has been the subject of much recent archaeology. This indicates that there were many connections between the town and the Continent e.g. veteran soldiers from Germany settled here. As the author points out, market stalls placed outside the Roman baths were loaded with imported items. However, the picture in the countryside was very different, with the natives holding onto their traditional round houses. Decline came quickly in the fourth century AD but with significant benefits for the lower classes. The smart buildings of Wroxeter were dismantled and replaced with timber structures. It is suggested that the work may have been supervised by a Christian bishop. Wroxeter declined, but the countryside remained productive.

In chapter four Morn Capper uses archaeology, especially material produced by the Portable Antiquities Scheme, to illuminate the fragmented story of Shropshire from c.500 to 1050 AD. Again, Wroxeter provides a beginning where a great hall complex succeeded the Roman town in c.650. Capper employs her knowledge of St Guthlac (c.673-714) to pivot her account of early eighth century Shropshire, once again enriching the story with Portable Antiquities such as the Leominster Hoard and other Viking connections with the region. The section ends with an assessment of the local ‘burhs’ or ‘persistent places’, as the author calls them. Nigel Baker returns to the ‘burhs’ in his chapter on the medieval towns of Shropshire. He describes the recent project on ‘The Central Marches Historic Towns’ (1992-6). Only Shrewsbury has pre-Conquest origins, but all the later smaller towns receive attention, once again with a strong archaeological bias. The focus is on the early Middle Ages but the later Middle Ages receives some attention. It seems that this era was very hard on the smaller castle-boroughs. In the following section John Hunt caps the medieval story with a chapter of the changing religious landscape before 1200 AD.

Paul Belford bridges the gap between medieval and modern Shropshire with his chapter on early industrialisation. He demonstrates how the county’s diverse geology and topography provided early opportunities for mining lead and coal, as well as the processing of wool. Equally significant, the Protestant ethic facilitated the transference of entrepreneurial initiatives from the monasteries to laymen. Jonathan Wharton takes on the Civil War era and discusses the indecisive victory by Parliament in Shropshire. The rule of the County Committee is examined in detail, suggesting that it seems to have been particularly effective and was admired as a model for other counties. Naturally, it was very unpopular among the Royalists as it was maintained out of local taxation. Covert royalism survived during the 1650s, not least because of the 1900 men whom parliament maintained in arms to discipline the shire. Parliamentary government held firm in Shropshire, apart from during the debacle in the summer of 1648. Eighteenth century Shropshire is well served by Gareth Williams, who provides a tour of the shire’s country houses, enriched by the prudence and good taste of their owners while on their grand tours. At home the gentry were well-served by provincial mapmakers who surveyed their estates, a topic pursued by Robert Silvester. Unlike its neighbour Herefordshire, Shropshire had a significant industrial history, which is well summarised by Barry Trinder, with a strong emphasis on Coalbrookdale. Trinder makes a further appearance in the book, examining the role of adult education in the county. There was once a time when the West Midlands was dominated by tutors from Attingham Park in Shropshire. Sadly, this is no longer the case.

Roger White, the editor of the book, also makes a late appearance with the challenging title: ‘What future for Shropshire’s Past?’. This provides a mixed message. We have apparently lived through a great age of historical investigation. For example, the Portable Antiquities Scheme, provided for metal detectorists, has registered 1.7 million finds. However, very little of this information is accessed or finds its way into the written history of Shropshire. The last word is provided by Trevor Rowley, the author of The Shropshire Landscape (1972), who points to some of the salient features of Shropshire, namely its small population; a landscape that is the epitome of England; and a capital city that still does not need a ring road. This book distils the essence of Shropshire in a very readable fashion and in just under 300 pages.

DAVID WHITEHEAD is a former president of the Woolhope Naturalists Field Club (Herefordshire's archaeological society) and he has written several articles for its Transactions. He is the author of A Survey of the Historic Parks and Gardens of Herefordshire (2001) and is preparing for a conference on Herefordshire parkland in Summer 2026.

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By Sally Pointer

(Herbert Press 2026 160pp ISBN: 978-1-789943-06-1) £30

In the U.K. nalbinding is on the Heritage Crafts Red List of Endangered Crafts, with possibly as few as twenty recognised makers, mostly part-time. Nalbinding is the creation of textiles using a single needle and a length of thread in a series of loops and knots. Textiles created using this technique existed as far back as 6500 BCE, originally being created from plant fibres, and later also from wool ones. The textiles include mittens and gloves, socks, whole garments and hairnets, as well as bags and baskets. In the past, nalbinding has been confused with knitting: it is actually a very different craft.

This beautifully produced book combines an introduction to the history and techniques of nalbinding, with instructions to re-create some of the historic stitches and also to make objects that can fit into a modern lifestyle, thus linking past and present across the centuries. Sally Pointer is extremely well qualified to write this book, being an experimental textile archaeologist and heritage educator of many years’ standing.

The book is divided into four parts, all of which are well-illustrated. The first is a general introduction to the technique, including a historical and geographical overview: further historical information appears elsewhere in the book. It also discusses what is needed to start nalbinding, including instructions for making one’s own needle from wood, which is a fairly simple process. Later in the book there are instructions for creating one’s own thread from bast fibres such as linen or hemp, as could have occurred in the past. The final section includes published references and online resources for anyone wanting to pursue the subject further.

The majority of the book (around 100 pages) provides detailed instructions on creating six different needle looping stitches and includes at least one project for each stitch. The stitch instructions are concise, with clear pictures, and the book is bound in such a way that it lies flat when the pages are open. The instructions enable the reader to understand just how a specific stitch is constructed and how these stitches are worked successively to create a fabric, which thus enables them to create a sample.

Until recently, there has been little research into many aspects of daily life up to the early modern period, including textile production. Textile historians are now increasingly using the reconstruction of historic artefacts to throw light on the skills and working conditions of their original creators, and the overall logistics of the production process. The instructions in this book provide the basis for the potential to add to this store of knowledge, and expand our understanding of ordinary life before the modern era. In short, this is a very useful introduction to a forgotten craft. It is to be hoped that it will introduce nalbinding to a wide audience, encouraging people to take up the craft, and reduce its red list endangered status.

LESLEY O’CONNELL EDWARDS is a textile historian who concentrates on the history of hand-knitting, using both archival records and extant artefacts, including creating reconstructions of the latter in order to understand the practicalities of creating them. She particularly researches the production of, and trade in, knitted wool stockings in sixteenth and early seventeenth century England; she is also part of the Holy Hands project studying knitted liturgical gloves.

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By by Karen Ip

(Merton Historical Society 2025 140pp ISBN: 978-1-903899-88-5) £5 + p&p; ON THE BREADLINE IN IFFLEY AND LITTLEMORE The history of the Stephen Field Charity from its origin in 1727 to its demise in 1997 by Paul Bulter (Iffley History Society 2025 ii+58pp ISBN: 978-0-99295596-0) £5 + £2p&p from mpetipa@outlook.com

Two succinct and charming works of local history and historical biography demonstrate the continued interest of local and community historians in matters of charity, philanthropy, and community welfare and in how the effects of long-running bequests can echo down the decades in communities, shaping their cultures, landscapes, built architecture, and identity.

Paul Bulter’s study of the lengthy operation of the Stephen Field Charity of Iffley, from 1727 until its final closure in 1997, provides local historians with a sound example of ‘following the money’ and of how the long operation of this highly-localised annual bread dole could transform from a substantive addition to the annual pauper struggle to make ends meet, into a fascinating example of community-reinforcing rituals of residual charity in the twentieth century. The eighteenth-century charity saw remarkable longevity and it was still managing to dispense 80 loaves to needy parishioners on 31 December 1948. Detours are made to explain somewhat complicated attempts at land transfers and to map out the patchwork field-lists whose rents allowed the dole to continue, to look at a lull in the records and activities of trustees in the early to middle nineteenth century, and to explore how the Victorian Charity Commission intervened and a series of more activist trustees set the charity on firmer footing in partnership with the Iffley parish vestry and its vicars. The volume will prove useful for any local historians curious about patterns of longstanding charitable operation, and highlights how dependant on good record-keeping and active trustees these sorts of bequests can be. Bulter does a thorough job exploring the Stephen Field charity and includes a fascinating set of images, including some wonderful twentieth-century bread coupons, rare survivals certainly.

Karen Ip explores the life and charitable activities of Miss Mary Tate (1775-1849), daughter and heiress of the wealthy landowner George Tate, step-sister to Richard Moore (a financial advisor to the Regency government), and eventually wealthy philanthropist for poor women. Until her father’s death in 1822 and her sole inheritance of his estate, Mary resided with George in Hampshire in a country home called Langdon House in Hythe, close to Southampton Water and furnished with extensive gardens. Mary also inherited a fashionable townhouse in London’s Belgravia, at 21 Grosvenor Place, very near the Buckingham Palace gardens, and appears to have spent a considerable amount of her time there. It is important, as Ip rightly notes, to look carefully at Mary Tate’s relationship with Elizabeth, Lady Stuart, and how she featured in the diaries and socialite letters of the period, including in the coded diaries of Anne Lister (made famous now as ‘Gentleman Jack’), who visited Mary twice, first in 1833, when she reported on Mary’s apparent advanced age and ‘plainness’ but praised her musical talents. As historical biography and family history this volume provides sound material for local historians who might be interested in the lives of elite women in the late eighteenth-century and Regency period, women who often resided in and profoundly influenced a variety of hinterland parishes and fashionable rural retreats. When it does arrive at the establishment of Mary’s almshouses in 1829, in Chapter 4, Ip explores the finances of the almshouses, the considerable bequests which Mary left behind to ensure its operation, and the wonderfully gendered approach to its occupancies, with the almsplaces reserved for the poor women of the parish of Mitcham, Surrey, nearby where she had relocated later in life. Notices of admission survive from 1830 detailing clearly that a place would only be awarded to a ‘Widow, or an unmarried Woman, of respectable Character, and a member of the Church of England’, with legal settlement in the parish, and of ‘the Age of Fifty or upwards’.

While the balance of attention in this volume resides mainly with Mary and her fascinating life, as best as can be documented, ‘Miss Tate’s almshouses’ do play a prominent role. Short and focused works by local historians, curious about and embedded with their communities today, clearly still have much to contribute to the larger historical picture of charity and community in the parochial lives of Englishmen, women, and children.

DAVE HITCHCOCK, Senior Lecturer in History at Canterbury Christ Church University, is a historian of poverty and homelessness in England. His research looks at vagrancy and poverty in early modern England, and in the British Atlantic world. He is presently in the early stages of a new book project, tentatively called ‘The Ends of Poverty, c.1600-1800’, intended to cover material ranging from utopian imaginings to colonial displacement, and architectural and environmental design.

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By David Pracy

(Nazeing History Workshop no.6 2018 ix+381 ISBN: 978-1-911175-88-9) £10

In spite of its proximity to London, in the early twentieth century Nazeing (near Harlow in Essex) was a largely rural agricultural parish of around 4000 acres with a population of just over 800 in 1911. Before enclosures in the 1860s, nearly a quarter of the parish was common land, of which about 500 acres remain unenclosed today and administered by trustees. Essex agriculture was not faring well at this time. The writer Rider Haggard, who visited Nazeing and published a two-volume report on agriculture in 1906, recorded the local farmers’ difficulties in recruiting skilled labour, as well as finding youngsters willing to learn ploughing and milking. He noted the severe shortage of housing for farm labourers, and was shown a windowless ‘brick shed, measuring twelve or fourteen feet square’ which housed twenty men sleeping on sacks on the floor ‘with no washing apparatus and no fireplace’.

This present book is one of a series of local history research publications from the Nazeing History Workshop. It sets out to examine specific aspects of the parish in the context of the major political and social upheavals of the late nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth using familiar sources, such as census returns, records of births, marriages and deaths, trade directories, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website, newspapers, and eye-witness accounts. Even the 1939 electoral register, compiled just after the outbreak of war to assess the needs of the civilian population, was found to contain useful information not found elsewhere. The book also clearly benefitted from the five previous publications by the Nazeing History Workshop, as well as from their database and oral history recordings.

It also uses a source which may be less familiar to local historians. The 1910 Finance Act proposed a tax on property value, requiring the Valuation Office to conduct a national survey which included a questionnaire to be completed by each property owner or occupant. This comprehensive survey, which came to be known as the ‘Lloyd George Domesday’ was completed in 1911 in anticipation of a 20% tax to be imposed on any increase in property value which had taken place over the previous three years. For this purpose, the county was divided into a number of inland revenue parishes (IRPs) which did not necessarily coincide with local government parishes, though for Nazeing it did. The survey collected details of ownership and occupancy, value and rental details, land area, common rights and surprisingly detailed descriptions of every house and its structural condition in this rural parish just before the First World War. The tax proved to be unworkable and was abolished in 1920. Five decades later, the then Public Record Office, apparently considering this archive to be of little value, decided to retain only the maps and field books, and offered the valuation books to county record offices, though it is not clear how many of the latter took up this offer, or what happened to the unclaimed material. For Nazeing the archive is now inconveniently split between The National Archives at Kew and the Essex Record Office at Chelmsford. Anyone seeking more information about this survey can find details in Brian Short’s Land and Society in Edwardian Britain (CUP, 1997). The Nazeing History Workshop publication makes full use of the survey.

The book is divided into sections. Fourteen chapters provide well researched genealogical information about a number of Nazeing families and their interactions with local and national events. It is commendable that many of these flesh out the individuals from a range of sources, including law court prosecutions, and eye-witness accounts of life in the First World War trenches and work in the nearby Royal Gunpowder factory. However, in places, these consist of little more than lists of names and dates, and will be mainly of interest to the compilers of specific family pedigrees.

The next ten chapters, which started life as an Essex County Council historic buildings and conservation report from the 1970s, expand its coverage considerably using information from a range of sources including the ‘Lloyd George Domesday’ and eye-witness accounts. The result is a descriptive list of the owners and occupants of some 140 houses, with details of the history and physical state of these buildings, the tally of rooms in each house or cottage, the function of their various outhouses, and the use of surrounding land at the time of the survey. Contemporary photographs are included for many of the properties and, in some instances, the subsequent fate of the building is noted. It clearly shows the poor condition of much of the housing stock in the parish before the advent of modern utilities, and before local authorities had become actively concerned about living conditions, or had started providing council housing for the rural poor. The book’s coverage ranges from the grander houses, with their named individual rooms and outbuildings, down to the most basic overcrowded timber framed ‘two up, two down’ cottages in poor condition, including a few which were unoccupied or in ruins at the time of the 1911 survey. A chapter on pubs and churches, based on the same sources, is followed by an analysis of what the Lloyd George survey reveals about Nazeing’s housing stock in 1911. It particularly comments on the descriptions of outhouses and their usage, an unfamiliar subject which is now well beyond the span of living memory, and unlikely to be found in any other source.

The final nine chapters cover work, transportation, social mobility, water and sanitation, and the impact of the First World War for the village and its residents. Of the 150 men who served, 33 perished and are provided with short biographical notes. The book does not directly consider the impact of the war on the village community, though this must have been considerable, both for those bereaved, and for those who returned from that grim experience.

A formidable amount of work has gone into the preparation of this book which ends with an explanatory list of the sources used, a short bibliography and a comprehensive index nominum. It might be felt that much of the material included is only relevant to those living in, or particularly interested in, the parish. However, for any local historian planning a town or parish history of the early twentieth century, the thorough approach taken by this book is an excellent example of how to use a wide range of archive sources to provide a more comprehensive picture. Of particular interest is its introduction to the ‘Lloyd George Domesday’ of 1911, which gives a unique picture of rural housing stock in the years before the First World War.

MICHAEL LEACH is a retired GP with a strong interest in local history. Working in a rural practice, he was all too aware of the housing problems that still faced agricultural labourers and their employers.

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By Gareth Winrow

(The Book Guild 2026 269pp ISBN: 978-1-835743-44-7) £9.99

The first chapter of this book consists of a sterling appeal for family history to be regarded as a respectable means of historical enquiry. For too long, author Gareth Winrow argues, family history has been viewed as little more than worthless tittle tattle by academia. To be fair, it is not hard to see academia's point. Very frequently, reading someone else’s family history is as interesting as listening to their dreams. Interest in who married whom and who passed the eleven plus to get into the local grammar school can quickly pall. Yet Winrow defends his corner: ‘If I am asked what is one of the most important messages of this book, I would say that it would be that family and social history necessarily go hand in hand. The two are inseparably intertwined’. And his book is a lively example of the truth of this assertion.

Winrow uses the history of his own family to illustrate some huge events and social trends that took place in the north-west of England, especially Bolton and its environs. Chapter by chapter his family’s experiences illustrate the sociology of mining communities, the response to one of the worst mining disasters on record, as well as the impact of the appalling conditions in a mining area on his family. In another chapter he uses the life of a female member of his clan to describe the life of the music hall community through the eyes of a female whose act used blackface. In another he recounts the progress of a relative through the ranks of the mill hands of Lancashire and, using his experiences, illustrates how men, women and children lived and died. The same man became estranged from his son who became a prairie farmer in Canada. How did a lad from Bolton survive the winters of the New World with no experience of farming? Winrow gives us chapter and verse.

This excellent book, so well researched and supported by grade one evidence, is beautifully written and easy to read, with chapters that flow one to the other smoothly and logically. Occasionally I confess, I got a little lost in the thickets of the names which were advanced, but I wonder if this was just me. Beyond three consecutive names my grasp weakens as my wife will attest (she is my guide as to who is who in TV dramas.) The structure of the book deserves mention here. Winrow’s chapters detail the aspect of social history that he wishes to spotlight where his family members fit into the story. But then in a final section of each chapter under the subheading ‘Conclusion’, he brings his account back to the personal ramifications of their story on his own life and that of his nearest and dearest.

The only chapter that I found over-taxing was Chapter 8. Here the author gazes back into the possible antecedents of his family in the medieval period. This was never going to be easy and he is frank about the limitations of his gathered evidence. But the quality of evidence was the least of this reader's problems with that chapter. The thicket of names and places that filled the previous chapters turned into a blizzard in ‘Picerna, Le Boteler and Butler: Barons and landed gentry’, the chapter’s title. Perhaps it was just me. But between the names of people, of people’s titles and of the places they inhabited I found it somewhat challenging.

I wonder why Winrow decided against illustrating the relevant wings of his family by genealogical maps so that a general reader such as myself could see, in pictorial form, how the five times paternal great grandfather from Knowsley was connected with the great great aunt from Freckleton. For the avoidance of doubt, this is a connection I have made up to illustrate my confusion. I doubt if any such connection existed. Still, a family flow chart might have assisted the mildly amnesic reader such as myself to figure out their fascinating lineage.

In this book the author set out to demonstrate that family history could serve as a lens through which we could observe the social movements of previous generations in a manner that would not be possible using statistics and economic data alone. In this he has achieved his aim with a well-researched, impressively argued and well referenced study of a fascinating family. This book should serve as an inspiration to anybody considering writing their own family’s history. Winrow demonstrates what can be achieved using this method of historical research.

CHRIS JONES is a retired academic nurse, prolific local history author and Programme Secretary of the Liverpool History Society.

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By K.H. and E.J. Rogers

(Hobnob Press 2025 186pp ISBN: 978-1-914407-81-9) £17.95

The history of the West-Country woollen industry has usually focused on the prosperous clothiers whose accounts have demonstrated how, to their considerable enrichment, the product they bought from the men who had converted the yarn to cloth was distributed across much of Europe, marked with their personal signs as if it were their own creation. Most recently John Gaisford has, in his Clothiers & Merchants in Spanish Cloth 1627-1665 (Somerset Record Society 101, 2023), revealed the activities of the Ashe family on the Wiltshire/Somerset border. In a slightly later book on part of the Somerset sail-cloth industry Terry Stevens (Bucked in the Yarn (Graffeg, 2024)) drew welcome attention to the weavers, without whose high-quality ‘pieces’ the Royal Navy would have been the poorer. The main purpose of the book reviewed here is to draw attention to the woollen cloth weavers of the valley of the Bristol Avon and its tributaries, among whom were two known forebears of the authors. A lifetime of collecting rather unpromising-looking material among the Wiltshire archives has revealed the often very modest homes, and later attached workshops, where master weavers, their families and their journeymen laboured in an industry that was subject to serious downturns due to war; and changed in character as work gradually, though never exclusively, became centred on factory production.

More than half the book describes the single cottages and later terraces, often erected on waste ground and of questionable legal status, in and around the clothing town of Trowbridge. The disappearance of these in traffic schemes and other developments might give the impression that the builders were of precarious economic status, but the survival of two in North Bradley, built by two generations of the same family during the eighteenth century, together with a small selection of extracts from local wills, suggest that weavers were men of substance as well as skill. Successful opposition in the 1780s to a perceived challenge to their independence from the use of cheaper journeymen in large workshops, and united action in the form of at least one trade association (where they celebrated a coronation with suitable largesse), meant that the domestic weaver, supported by his family preparing and spinning the yarn, was able to maintain high standards in what was known as the ‘fancy’ trade in face of the factory-based power loom and the flying shuttle. Such work was still done in Farleigh Hungerford (in a rare excursion into Somerset) as late as 1910.

The weavers of West Wiltshire in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were at the core of a process that produced coloured cloth known as ‘medleys’ (suitable for a modern overcoat) recorded by Defoe at Trowbridge and Bradford-on-Avon. Half a century later thinner, more sophisticated but more durable ‘cassimeres’ (e.g. for waistcoats) were introduced, and the wide variety of West-Country cloth displayed at the Great Exhibition of 1851, and later at Paris, was remarkable. Some independent weavers were still producing pieces for local clothiers until the 1870s in the form of ‘doeskins’, but the increasing demand for cheaper cloth for the ready-made market, and the introduction of the home sewing machine, inevitably forced the master weaver out of business. The factories for fine West-Country cloth survived for a little less than a century, one in the centre of Trowbridge surviving only as the entrance to a shopping centre.

The story has been pieced together from title deeds, auctioneers’ notes, bonds, insurance papers, newspaper reports and advertisements, as well as ratebooks, censuses and maps. Add to those a splendid collection of illustrations and the remarkable memory of an author who could reach back with clarity and understanding to a time when those weavers’ cottages were still standing. As an archivist he could seek out the necessary sources and as an historian of his native place could interpret them.

ROBERT DUNNING was Editor of the Victoria History of Somerset and has a long association with the Somerset Record Society.

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By David A. Stemp

(the author 2025 120pp ISBN: 978-0-9525910-7-8) £8 plus p&p from the author david.stemp@virgin.net

This latest book by David Stemp is a biography combined with wider family history primarily told through the excerpts of writings by his mother, Bessie Stemp neé Peters. The subject herself lived a ‘normal’ life, but was a prolific writer, both professionally as primarily a secretary and in her spare time as the member of a writer’s circle. The combination of her professional and recreational activities also likely influenced her to document and keep records as well as other ephemera. Indeed, Peters wrote semi-autobiographical short stories as well pieces retelling family history, of which the book has some examples, and which are an engaging way of keeping family-lore alive. Stemp states that he may return to these in the future, and combined with his own research, they create a fascinating and often humorous exploration of the process of being a family historian.

The book initially focusses on Stemp’s family history and then Peters’ life from 1919 to 1946, or the ‘Darwen years’ as he calls them. It is clear throughout that this is a very passionate project for the author, and thus at times it is presented uncritically, and not particularly analytically. It is therefore more of a celebration than a traditional historical biography. However, the author’s inclusion of his own research, reflections, and insights into the process of writing the book are fascinating, and of real merit from a methodological perspective. They give a real feel for the ‘journey’ of approaching family history and of writing a biography of one’s parent, which can only be a cathartic process, regardless of how positive of a relationship one might have. The opening chapters which piece together earlier periods of family history through archival work and family recollections, and the snippets of his mother’s work, especially capture both the frustrations and excitement of undertaking such a project with wit and humour. This is especially the case with the chapter on the Peters’ family history, which offers an interesting rumination on the work of family historians and the ‘truth’ which archives can reveal. Large parts of it are speculative, at times too much so, but it is interesting to see the complexities of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century familial life in a generally rural and emergent mining area of Lancashire during the period, and Stemp is honest about his assertions and guesswork.

The second chapter continues this approach, with the author effectively fact-checking his mother’s recollections, as well as his own memories of growing up. It also includes other family members’ correspondence, creating a rich and complex approach to writing a biography. The third chapter moves onto Peters’ mother’s family. The author has much less information about this and thus has had to research much of it through the census. Again, some of the interesting discussion here is the author’s reflections on the process of undertaking the research, and how this compares to his own expectations.

The chapters that follow piece together Peters’ life from school to work. Here, the mixture of her records, such as school reports and letters, are combined with the author’s thoughts and reflections. This is also the case with ephemera such as photographs. There are some very insightful sections within the chapter that are largely excerpts from the 1937 diary, such as the list of books Peters’ ‘must read’ for the year that give tremendous insight into the life of a young Lancastrian girl. The layout and structure of these sections are a little unconventional, but the material in them captures the mix of the mundanity of everyday life against the backdrop of an extraordinary period of time, with some wonderful insight into the realities of living during the period. The section on 1940, for example, includes Peters’ meeting her future husband, the author’s father, during the Second World War while he was billeted to her aunt’s guesthouse in Blackpool. Through the correspondence, this chapter especially offers a fascinating glimpse into the realities of romance during the war period. This works well with the chapter entitled ‘Engagements and Weddings’ where the mixture of normality and broader comments on events etc gives an intimacy to Peters and her friendship group’s progression from teenagers to adulthood. The final chapter, memories of Darwen, highlights Peters’ love of her hometown and the significance of its history and memories for her.

There is real personality to the book, both in subject and the author. Although it does not offer much depth on the history of Lancashire for local historians, and there are some issues with the layout of the information, it does offer a passionate insight into both the day-to-day life of a young girl during the period, and also the process and complexities of working with family history and memory.

JACK SOUTHERN is a lecturer in History at the University of Lancashire. His research interests re primarily on industrial communities and local identities.

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By Maggie Ashcroft

(West Deeping Heritage 2026 48pp ISBN: 978-1-9162670-1-5) £10 + £2.20 p&p from West Deeping Heritage, 32 King Street, West Deeping PE6 9HP

The research behind this book literally began in Maggie Ashcroft’s back garden and gradually spread to the rest of the small South Lincolnshire village of West Deeping. In 1988 one of the documents handed over when she and her husband purchased 32 King Street recorded the enfranchisement, in 1876, of that property which then comprised ‘the homestead, yard, barn, stable, dovecote and appurtenances thereunto belonging’. A hand-drawn plan from 1923 indicated that the dovecote had been sited between the garden and orchard. This inspired Maggie to find out more about ‘their’ dovecote, whether there were any more in the village and what they were for.

The introduction opens by outlining the history of dovecotes in Britian. The earliest date from the Norman period. Initially their ownership was restricted to wealthy landlords by ‘manorial rights, customary law and aristocratic privilege’, but from the sixteenth century onwards wealthy tenant farmers gained permission from their landlord to construct dovecotes. They were usually sited near the house, or in some other sheltered position. Their brick-built construction is summarised and depicted. Some were freestanding, others might be above granaries or barns, or on the upper floors of stables, piggeries or hen houses. Important features were openings that allowed the pigeons in and out but prevented larger predators entering. Some openings were holes high up in the wall but others were small tower-like structures on the ridge of the roof (now known generically as ‘turrets’). Inside the dovecote, holes were built into the brick walls, either in vertical alignment or chequerboard pattern, to provide sheltered spaces for pigeons to nest in.

Documentary sources relating to these buildings referred to the birds kept in them either as doves or pigeons, but having outlined the various types, the author explains that the birds in village dovecotes in the past would have been descended from the original blue rock pigeon, Columba livia. The main reason for keeping these domesticated pigeons was to provide food: eggs (taken from nest holes before an embryo had formed) and meat (of the squabs, i.e. chicks, taken before they fledged). Mrs Beeton’s Household Management (1861) has eleven different recipes for cooking and serving pigeon, including pigeon pie.

Another very useful product of dovecotes was pigeon dung. The author draws on Edward Lisle’s Observations in Husbandry (1757) to show how valuable it was as a fertiliser for ‘keeping frost out of the earth’. Apparently it was particularly effective for parsnips. Local newspaper advertisements suggest that it was a saleable commodity. Pigeon dung was also used in the tanning industry and saltpetre was extracted from it for the manufacture of gunpowder. In the nineteenth century shooting pigeons was a popular organised sport but while some shoots obtained them legally from farmers, many were stolen, as revealed in numerous newspaper reports of trials and in the formation of local associations for the protection of property.

Having provided the background to dovecotes and their purpose, Maggie Ashcroft then turns to the dovecotes that she has identified in West Deeping. There are/were ten, mostly on King Street, the main village street, but only two are still standing more-or-less intact, another is hinted at by a louvred roof entrance, another is a twenty-first century construction and the rest are known about through documentary sources. The results of her research have been hard won, but the effort has been very worthwhile because whereas she has identified the sites of nine historic dovecotes in West Deeping, the website of the British Dovecote Society only identified one and a 2018 article, which noted more than 200 former dovecotes in Lincolnshire, mentioned none in West Deeping.

The dovecote at Molecey Mill was probably built in the late eighteenth century. The author surmises that it would have fallen out of use after the Second World War but fortunately later owners ‘had no wish to convert or demolish what we now consider to be such a valuable heritage asset’; it is currently used as a wine cellar. The other intact dovecote, built in 1755, is at Holly Lodge. The owners have been traced over time and several photographs show its condition down the years. In the 1970s a planning application to turn it into garage was refused. Its roof has been restored and it is now a garden store and beer cellar. Archival evidence, including a postcard from 1911, indicates that ‘The Granary’, 23A King Street, originally housed a dovecote. The other dovecotes that no longer exist have been located by searching maps, pictures, documents and newspapers. The dovecote at 32 King Street, which prompted this research, is shown on a map and a plan. In the accounts of William Ackland, the village carpenter, there is a detailed entry, dated 2 December 1926, for repairs to Harry Armstrong’s dovecote. Local memories regarding its demolition have proved contradictory: one recalled it being demolished in the 1950s, and another suggested it was taken down in the 1960s.

Maggie Ashcroft’s short but very informative book provides many answers about where dovecotes were in West Deeping and what they were for, although she would welcome further information about them. If you are researching aspects of your local built environment (not necessarily dovecotes), this is a model local history publication with its variety of sources, its references, index, illustrations and eminently readable text.

HEATHER FALVEY is the Reviews Editor for The Local Historian.

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By Tim Ward and Richard Skeet

(Logaston Press 2026 256pp ISBN: 978-1-910839-77-5) £20

The River Wye winds its way through the old Welsh and English counties of Cardiganshire, Radnorshire, Breconshire, Monmouthshire, Gloucestershire and Herefordshire. In this book the authors have captured the efforts and difficulties of navigation and the struggles of those working, managing and organising an unreliable trade along the Wye, with its fluctuating water levels varying from seasonal shallows to swift floods. Tim Ward, the originator of this publication, was a keen collector of local postcards, posters, photographs and ephemera of Herefordshire and the River Wye, including a valuable ledger of barge accounts dating from 1809 to 1812. This particular record led him to research the river trade and its navigation, barges, cargoes, bargees and barge-owners. Aware of illness that would shorten his life, Tim turned to Richard Skeet, a former chairman of the Herefordshire and Gloucestershire Canal Trust, to complete and prepare his work for publication. As a local historian Tim had written a number of books and Richard Skeet is the author of two editions of Rescued from Obscurity: the continuing story of the Hereford and Gloucester Canal.

The joint authors have compiled an excellent book full of colourful illustrations, including some rarely seen and, unlike a former publication, Herefordshire’s River Trade, covering the whole of the working river from Chepstow to Glasbury (above Hay on Wye), as shown on a printed map from the author’s collection. Apart from covering the river trade on the lower Wye, other new and detailed material appears in chapters on ‘New Weir’, ‘The Horse Towing Path Company’, ‘Piracy’ and ‘Accidents’. The story of New Weir, at Symonds Yat, is of interest as it was the only weir allowed to remain after the passing of the 1695 Navigation Act. The Horse Towing Path Company was formed after the 1809 Act allowing horses to tow barges from Lydbrook to Hereford on payment of a toll. ‘Piracy’ covers the political and economic state of the country. The traditional system of self-sufficiency with surplus sold to local markets began to end due to an increased urban population. The sight of barges loaded with corn, cider, wine and other provisions was more than poor hungry people could bear as shown by the raiding of barges reported in excerpts from the local press. On a working river accidents occurred mainly from drowning at a time when most were unable to swim. In difficult weather conditions barges hit banks and bridges with such force that bargees were thrown overboard and drowned. Accidental death by drowning also occurred when men lost their footing while loading and unloading cargoes or leaping to the quay or wharf.

An informative list records in detail known vessels working on the Wye, together with a table of other Wye barges. These are given in the text of the chapter on barges rather than in an appendix, and the same applies to the list of barge owners. There is a comprehensive listing of town wharves and smaller wharves, quarries and loading places, although it is a little sparse on the ones in the lower Wye, which could have been expanded. The main wharves are depicted on a clear plan of the Wye from Chepstow up to Glasbury. Only Mordiford is shown on the River Lugg, a navigable tributary of the Wye up to Leominster.

A detailed study of Tim’s ledger from 1809 to 1812 appears as the only barge accounts consulted and reveals the extent of trading mainly agricultural products to and from Wilton near Ross, with costs of hauling and beer money paid to the bargees. Other cargoes were transported, such as timber for ship building, rope for barges and boatyards, bark and lime for tanning, and coal for commercial and domestic uses. In Hereford coal was in great demand as the city was situated a good distance from any coalfields. Other goods and commodities transported were tiles, slates and bricks for building, cider from Herefordshire, and wine from Bristol and Chepstow. The coastal trade is discussed from Chepstow where transhipment on larger vessels took place.

The book ends with a chapter on ‘Pleasure-Boating on the Wye’, confirming that John Egerton, rector of Ross between 1745 and 1771, originated the Wye Tour. This was a boat trip down the Wye to entertain and show his wealthy guests the river’s stunning scenery. Due to its success the Wye Tour was continued by boatmen and innkeepers to earn an extra income, and became firmly established by Revd William Gilpin’s Observations on the River Wye, published in 1782. This tour was appreciated by many known poets, writers and painters over the centuries until canoes took over in recent times, with only an occasional pleasure boat seen at Symonds Yat.

This is another well-presented book from Logaston Press, offering a richly illustrated volume, with a useful glossary of terms and further reading lists including early and recently published books. There is a good index but no references to the information researched by Tim Ward and Richard Skeet. Barging up the Wye will be warmly welcomed on the shelves of local historians and those interested in trade, travel, rivers, boating and past industries.

HEATHER HURLEY is a local historian and author of many publications including Herefordshire’s River Trade on the Wye and Lugg (Logaston) 2013 and Horse-drawn Tramways on the River Wye (Logaston) 2022.

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By Elise Langdon-Neuner

(Hobnob Press 2025 388pp ISBN: 978-1-914407-98-7) £25

It must have been a herculean task to research primary source material for this detailed monograph of nearly 400 pages, packed with fascinating accounts of the many families who have ‘passed through’ this tiny village. The excellent Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre figures throughout the references and productive use is made of fourteenth century poll taxes, estate and tithe maps, a field book of 1597, inquisitions post mortem and court rolls, as well as the ubiquitous findmypast.co.uk and ancestry.co.uk. Local newspapers, such as the Salisbury and Winchester Journal and the Salisbury Times, and the venerable Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine also provided valuable sustenance.

The first chapters give a helpful survey of the one-street village (in 1886 W.L. declared Wiltshire ‘has many a charming hamlet, but none more so than Compton Chamberlayne’), with several Grade II listed buildings and a Grade I Big House. The Chamberlayne/Chamberlain family were lords of the manor of the ‘coombe tun’ (settlement in a wooded valley) in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Typical of the chalk downland estates in South Wiltshire, the nearby downs were used for grazing sheep—Wiltshires, then Southdowns, followed by the hardy Hampshire Downs--while wheat and barley were grown in the fields below.

Although the subtitle of the book is ‘from 1274 to the early twentieth century’, much of the interesting material comes from late sixteenth and seventeenth century records. The author guides us through the families who resided in the village over the centuries and through, for instance, ecclesiastical court proceedings, which give a variety of snapshots of communal life. There is an amusing account of the local vicar, Reverend John Dugmore, claiming his fee and a cake due to him for conducting the churching ceremony of Robert Ford’s wife, Agnes. However, the clerk, Osmund Fricker, challenged this right, asserting it belonged to his office. Beginning in October 1599, the case dragged on into 1600. Witnesses were called for both sides which merely showed up local enmities. Unfortunately, the outcome is not known, but Dugmore remained vicar for over 30 years—presumably suitably fed. Highwaymen operated on the downs above the village. In 1779, a feisty 23-year-old, Mary Sandall, was caught by a local posse. Dressed as a man and wielding a pistol, she was ‘unfrocked’ and sentenced to death, but granted a reprieve.

Perhaps the most famous family were the Penruddockes. In about 1557, George Penruddocke, from a village of that name just south of Penrith in Cumberland, bought the reversion of a half-manor in Compton; in 1596, his son Sir Edward purchased the other half-manor. The Penruddockes were to rule over the village for the next 381 years. During the Civil War, Sir John Penruddocke (1591-1648) fought for the Royalists, and two of his sons lost their lives for the cause. Captain Henry suffered a gruesome death at West Lavington in 1644, when he was unceremoniously roused from sleep and shot ‘in the belly’. Colonel John led a rebellion against the Cromwellian Protectorate in 1655, was captured in Devon, tried for high treason at Exeter and beheaded. His decapitated corpse was transported to Compton for burial. His head was exhibited on the castle gate at Exeter pour encourager les autres.

One amusing tale concerns a rogue called Newman in 1739. A surviving letter from Thomas Penruddocke (Colonel John’s grandson), who was trying to ensure Newman did not return to Compton, gives a caustic account of the cove: ‘he is a lazy louse and will set his hands to nothing for a livelihood as he can live idle … his nature bends to nothing but drunkenness and all sorts of idleness and adversaries [preferring] to mump about the country as a vagabond’. Intriguingly, not only does Thomas disown the villain but states ‘his mother never swore it was mine for she that will be a whore to one will be to another’. Poor Newman was further slated as having ‘nothing of a Gentleman in him. He is a great lust and has neither honour nor courage in him’.

In 1902, the Penruddocke family featured not only in the local newspapers but as far afield as the Manchester Courier, the Daily Express, the Dundee Courier and the London Evening News. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children had brought an action against Annie Penruddocke, the wife of Charles, for ill-treating their daughter Letitia Constance. The fifth of six children, she had been the subject of a letter sent by the senior housemaid and butler to the RSPCC. A surgeon, sent to the house, found multiple marks on her body and her face was swollen (apparent due to Annie rubbing it with nettles). Annie had been heard saying that it would be very good if Connie ate poisonous berries. Although most of the allegations were denied, Annie was found guilty of neglect and causing bodily harm to her daughter. A sobering afterthought is that Connie’s three brothers were killed in the Great War and her two sisters never married.

Up until 1924, when the Penruddockes sold Manor Farm, the entire village was owned by a single family. All bar 600 acres was sold to a London property developer in 1930, and then acquired as a unit by an industrialist in 1974. Familial affection shines through, particularly in the final chapters. The author’s great-grandfather, William Langdon, farmed Manor Farm between 1889 and 1920; her father, Willie Langdon, was a tenant of Naishes Farm from 1943 to 1978. Over twenty families’ stories are delved into and the author can take pride in the fact that four resident generations of her own family help to produce a fascinating account of these ‘humble, unremembered lives’ (W.H. Hudson’s A Shepherd’s Life, 1910). The paperback is well produced by The Hobnob Press, with a clear text, typeset in Adobe Garamond Pr, supported by useful family trees and a pleasing number of photographs, some in colour. There is also a list of sources and a bibliography.

KENNETH HILLIER is a local historian in South Derbyshire, but lived for many years in Wiltshire (albeit in Marlborough, 38 miles from Compton Chamberlayne). He has written several books on local market towns and villages, and reviews for The Local Historian and other journals.

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By David H. Aldred

(Hobnob Press 2025 vi+157pp ISBN 978-1-914407-99-4) £14.95

Between 2010 and 2020, David Aldred, a retired history teacher and local historian who has lived in north Gloucestershire since 1958, wrote a series of 62 local history articles for The Bishop’s Cleeve Directory, a free Independent Community Magazine that sadly ceased publication during the Covid pandemic. Having been encouraged by many of the Directory’s readers to gather the articles together in a single volume, he has now done so. This wide-ranging and well-illustrated book is the result.

Rather than simply re-publish the original articles, the author has, where necessary, updated them, and in many cases has combined several of them into a single article. These have then been grouped into five main headings: Place Names, Places, Transport, Events and People, each with between one and nine essays covering a remarkable range of topics from prehistory to the twenty-first century. These are supported by no less than 168 illustrations, the majority being photographs taken by the author, but also including documents, maps, plans, early prints, photographs and postcards.

Although originally focused on Bishop’s Cleeve, a large village with a population of around 14,000 to the north of Cheltenham (to which it is now effectively joined by suburban development), the Directory soon expanded its area of interest to include several adjacent communities. All of these are either on, below or close to the Cotswold scarp: hence the author’s choice of the term ‘Cotswold Edge’ in the book’s title. As a quick glance at the book’s index will reveal, the principal ones are Cheltenham, Cleeve Hill, Gotherington, Guiting Power, Postlip, Prestbury, Southam, Sudeley, Winchcombe and Woodmancote.

Inevitably, much of what is covered reflects the author’s own particular interest in subjects such as place names (the topic of his very first article for the Directory), landscape history and transport, but he was also clearly inspired by current events. Among these were Queen Elizabeth II’s diamond jubilee in 2012, which prompted an article on Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee in 1897; the commemoration of the centenary of the First World War from 2014 onwards, which resulted in a series of articles on its impact on local communities; and the extension of the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Steam Railway (the ‘Honeybourne Line’) to Broadway in 2018. He was even inspired by the inevitable road works across the area: the latter included the construction of a new roundabout at Bishop’s Cleeve in 2015, which prompted him to tell the story of area’s roads and country carriers from the seventeenth century onwards, and the uncovering of a short stretch of tram track on Cleeve Hill in 2016, which prompted him to tell the story of the trams that ran between Cheltenham and Cleeve Hill between 1901 and 1930.

Several of the updated articles have benefited from research and excavations undertaken since 2020, which will certainly be new to many readers, as they were to this reviewer. One of the most significant is the result of tree-ring dating on the roof timbers of the Great Hall of Southam House (now the Ellenborough Park Hotel) in 2023, which have enabled the history of the building to be moved back from c.1500 to the first half of the fourteenth century. Two others, photographs of both of which are included in the book, are excavations undertaken in 2024 on the site of the lost medieval village of Sudeley, which uncovered the foundations of buildings, and on the presumed site of the second horse-racing grandstand which stood on Cleeve Hill between 1835 and 1842, part of the foundations of which were discovered. The Cheltenham Races, and in particular the National Hunt (Gold Cup) Festival each March, are very much part of the area’s annual calendar, and the author wrote several articles about them, including biographical notes on three nineteenth-century individuals who are closely connected with them, whether for or against: the jockey George Stevens, the poet Adam Lindsay Gordon (both for) and Cheltenham’s Evangelical incumbent, the Revd Francis Close (very much against!).

Although much of the book has an inevitably ‘local’ flavour, there are several articles that I would argue make a contribution to this country’s economic, social and political history. Among these I would include the accounts of a visit to Sudeley Castle by Queen Elizabeth I in 1592, the cultivation of tobacco in the Winchcombe area during the early seventeenth century, the sorry tale of the short-lived Stone Pipe Company that operated in Guiting Power between 1806 and 1815, and an arson attack by Suffragettes on an empty house in Cheltenham in 1913.

This is very much a book for the general reader, and is wholly unencumbered with footnotes, although the absence of any suggested further reading for those inspired to learn more is a little surprising, particularly as the author has previously written or edited full-length histories of Bishop’s Cleeve, Cleeve Hill and Gotherington. In the very first line of his Preface, the author states that ‘This is a book for dipping into’, a sentiment with which this reviewer certainly agrees: it is written in an engaging and conversational style, and is without doubt one of the most enjoyable ‘literary dips’ that I have had for a long time!

STEVEN BLAKE is a retired museum curator and the author of a number of books and articles on the history of Cheltenham. He is a founder member and former Chair of Cheltenham Local History Society and of the Gloucestershire Local History Association.

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Edited by John Pinfold

(Liverpool History Society 2026 80pp ISBN: 978-1-8380323-6-4) £10

The focus of this slim volume is an excursion to Liverpool, undertaken in 1845, comprising a train journey from Bristol to Liverpool, then six days of walking tours around the city, followed by a ferry across the Mersey to Birkenhead, and a final day omnibus trip to the suburbs of Seaforth and Waterloo. Clearly the walks were planned in advance in some detail, with the aim of visiting every part of the inner city. The author remains anonymous, but he is obviously not your average tourist, being particularly keen on viewing and describing the architecture of Liverpool, at a time when Neoclassicism was still fashionable before the Gothic Revival took off.

The excursion was written up in a bound notebook, which John Pinfold acquired. The first half of this book includes his (failed) attempts to identify the writer, and his musings on whether or not the writer intended it for publication. However, the larger part of the extended introduction is a review of the context, as Liverpool outpaced Bristol and came to rival London as the leading port of the kingdom, with a wide range of public and private buildings, many of which exhibited considerable architectural merit.

Many of those buildings no longer survive, and that takes us to the third part of the volume, containing the end-notes relating to the text. It is clear that Pinfold devoted considerable time and effort in following up the life stories of every building mentioned by the anonymous author: and it is perhaps a sign of the city’s commercial success that so many churches, for example, have been replaced by retail centres or car-parks. The author himself thought there were 160 churches in Liverpool at the time of his visit, although Pinfold thinks this to be something of an exaggeration. Of these, the author notes 25 on his walks, of which, according to Pinfold, only five have survived through to today. In all, the author mentions around 70 buildings, of which only 27 have survived. Truly, the Liverpool that the author visited no longer exists.

The book has about four dozen illustrations, mainly engravings of buildings, ten of which were found inserted into the original note-book, the rest have been accessed by Pinfold. Extracts of several of maps are included, but if I have one criticism of the volume, it is the lack of a map of the city showing the line of the six walks. Although I am familiar with the streets of Liverpool, even I struggled to work out exactly where we were on occasions, as the city has changed so much. Thus, someone setting out today to walk from Lime Street Station up Mount Pleasant towards Abercromby Square will find themselves passing the RC Cathedral on the left. That same route in 1845 would have taken you instead past the Workhouse, which the author tells us had accommodation for 2000 persons: ‘In fact’, he writes, ‘it is quite a small town, the inmates carrying on all the various handicrafts as Carpenters, Blacksmiths, Masons etc and the women are employed in weaving, knitting etc’.

It has to be said, though, that this is not a book for everyone. But if you come from Liverpool and are into architecture, then this is clearly for you; and if you score on only one or other of those two qualifications, you will still find much of interest.

WILLIAM D. SHANNON is a landscape and cartographic historian, with an interest in antiquarianism. He was born and brought up in Liverpool, and his first degree was from Liverpool University.

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By Kim Bayne

(Unicorn Publishing Group 2026 184pp ISBN: 978-1-917458-55-9) £20

Tickeridge Farm lies in the High Weald of Sussex, a few miles south-west of East Grinstead. It stands on a sandstone outcrop above a small tributary of the Medway, its fields rising to 400 feet above sea level at one point. Its size varied over time, at its largest extent encompassing about 350 acres.

Built originally in the fourteenth century, the three-bay farmhouse was subsequently encased within a larger Tudor house, although leaving a distinctive moulded beam and various roofing timbers including a crown post as evidence of its earlier origins. The first mention of the name, in 1257, as Teggeherugge, predates the building. It is considered to have derived from the Middle English tegge, an enclosure for livestock, and the Old English herugge, ridge. As tegge itself derives from a term for ewe, the meaning is likely to have been a sheep enclosure on a ridge: sheep then, and still, being raised in the local area. Before medieval clearances, the land was originally heavily wooded, and 14 acres of ancient woodland survive today, replete with oak, beech and coppiced hazel.

The construction of the farmhouse was first described by R.T. Mason in 1942 in Sussex Archaeological Collections 82. But Kim Bayne’s approach is quite different, interweaving architectural history with the lives of the men and women who owned, lived or worked at Tickeridge, beginning with William de Teggeherugge who witnessed a land grant in the mid thirteenth century. The farm was part of the manor of Plumpton (specifically the northern, wooded part known as Plumpton Boscage), owned then by the Bardolfs. It was occupied by the Benke or Banks family from the 1330s until the 1620s, so they were responsible for its Tudor enlargement, probably paid for by selling fuel wood to nearby Wealden iron founders.

Subsequently, following Samual Banks’ default on a mortgage, the farm passed to wealthy London merchant tailor John Slany. The Slanys only owned the farm for fifteen years, letting it to tenants in that time and subsequently selling it to Simon Eaton of Croydon, a distant relative. Eaton served as a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Parliamentary forces in Ireland, where he was later granted land and, after the Restoration, became a baronet. The author helpfully appends extensive family trees to clarify complex family relationships.

In 1654, part of the farm had been sold to Sussex gentleman Francis Hamelin, who was probably the builder of the great barn, the oldest part of which dates to about this time. Hamelin’s son John became tenant of both parts of the farm, but he died young, less than a decade later, and the tenancies then passed to a related family, the Tullys. By this time, relative decline in the iron industry had meant that most of the farm’s income was coming from agriculture rather than timber; the farm producing wheat, barley, oats, flax, beans peas, apple and hops. A wide range of animals was also kept for food or work. As the century ended, the Hamelin family purchased the remainder of the farm for over £1000. The tenancy changed hands several times during the eighteenth century but ownership remained with the Hamelin family until the 1780s and then descended by marriage to the Hicks and by inheritance to the Woodmans.

The second half of the book brings the history of the farm from the start of the nineteenth century to the present day. The 1841 tithe map shows the land divided mainly between grazing, arable and woodland, with a small orchard and hop garden, suggesting that the farm’s activities had changed little in almost 200 years. The Woodmans were owner-occupiers, and made several modernising changes, including water extraction and piping from a borehole, a pump of which survives. In 1870 the farm was sold to the local Longley family, who were in possession in 1882 when the Lewes and East Grinstead railway was built across farm’s land, ten acres being sold for the track bed and Kingscote station, only a few hundred yards from the farmhouse. The line operated only until 1955, and part, including the station, is now preserved as the well-known Blubell Line. Successive censuses show the farm occupied by multiple tenants, a railway inspector being one in 1881. Several metal harness badges found on the farm bear the names or initials of identified occupants. The earliest photograph of the farm in the book dates from 1904, coincidentally about the same time as the first (of many) personal recollections of life at Tickeridge written by a tenant sawyer’s daughter.

In 1929, the Longleys sold the farm’s livestock and equipment at auction, although Tickeridge continued to be worked by tenants. The farm itself was sold in 1948, replete with the remains of an anti-aircraft gun emplacement built there during the Second World War. The house has since been substantially restored and modernised and its ownership separated from that of the surrounding farmland. Considerable damage to the seventeenth-century barn in the great storm of 1987 necessitated its preservation by conversion into housing in 2006.

Kim Bayne’s husband farms the Tickeridge land, which inspired her interest in the farm’s history. She illustrates the book with many of her own excellent quality photographs of the buildings, the land, and other local features that she mentions. She has also consulted a wide range of experts who have helped ensure that her work is appropriately contextually positioned.

This hard-backed book is beautifully produced and copiously illustrated in colour. It is very fairly priced at just £20. For the general reader interested in farming, it is replete with many fascinating insights into centuries of Sussex farming life. The local historian will also find much of interest in this book, although perhaps becoming, as I did, a little frustrated with the sparse footnoting of references and the frequent digressions into more general background, including at one point a marginal note outlining the Gunpowder Plot in which the farm and its early seventeenth-century inhabitants played no role. But these minor gripes should not detract from what is an important contribution to the historiography of the Sussex Weald.

MIKE KIPLING has lived in Sussex since 1978. He has recently completed a DPhil in English Local History focusing on trade and financial practices in early modern Sussex, with emphasis on the role played by personal reputation.

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By A.J. Pollard with David Butler, Finola Finn, and Martin Roberts

(Summerhill/The University of London 2025 xvi+149pp ISBN 978 1 911385 49 3) £25

Claire Cross once observed that for serious students of local history ‘there is simply no alternative to the big red book’: i.e. the 250 volumes of the Victoria County History. Professor Cross may have a point, but the ‘BRB’ model is a demanding one; hence the decades-long hiatus between the first three volumes of the Durham VCH and the two most recent ones. In 2012 the County Durham VCH Trust decided to tackle the south west of the county. Volunteers came forward and a three-year partnership with Teesside University began in 2016. When that ended, it was decided to opt for a ‘VCH short’, more attainable than a full BRB. These paperbacks plug gaps in the county coverage, using the VCH template. However, the first two chapters of the template are problematic here, because Gainford’s early history is strikingly different from your typical northern village. Uniquely among Durham villages, it had its own ‘shire’ (Gainfordshire) of significant extent. It was a special place, of considerable ecclesiastical importance, embracing many townships, and with a complex history of changing boundaries, contested lordships, far-flung connections and influences, plus a stream of subinfeudations and freehold changes. Gainford’s early history almost demands the greater space afforded by a BRB, so it is unfair to expect more in a ‘short’, but the first two chapters might be described as a careful, authoritative and brave attempt to squeeze a quart into a pint pot. An intriguing conclusion here is that the Lords Barnard acquired so much land that they became as dominant locally as the Baliols had been in the Middle Ages. We also learn that Legs Cross is a permanent remnant of an early territorial division, having remained in situ for a thousand years.

Martin Roberts sparkled when revising Pevsner's Durham, but his section on ‘The Built Landscape’ adopts a more reserved tone, apart from a punchy quote from his hero, Ian Nairn. To be judged ‘the best Elizabethan house in the county’ by Martin Roberts is praise indeed, and is entirely justified in the case of Gainford Hall. The wooden panelling, high-quality friezes, quirky fireplaces, and the startlingly unfinished third storey all catch the eye. The third storey was begun in the early seventeenth century, but a visitor four centuries later might suppose that the carpenters had downed their tools just yesterday. With so much to appreciate, the hall deserves a much longer account, like that of the parish church in Chapter 5, and the photograph of the hall would be better placed close to the text, rather than being marooned in a separate chapter.

‘Rig and fur’ rarely catches the eye around Gainford, but LiDAR finds it. A written extent of 1315 points to 600 acres of arable land and three open fields, with roughly half of the arable being converted to pasture before the mid-seventeenth century enclosure. A close investigation of disparate sources leaves the reader in doubt that the medieval centuries were far from static, and enclosure here was not a simple open and shut process. Seventeenth century wills and inventories show Gainford farmers involved in a rise in butter-making in the neighbourhood, through which Yarm merchants became rich by helping themselves to a generous slab of the London butter market.

By 1801, 45 percent of Gainford's population had a trade: a much higher figure than in nearby townships. The village had its own gasworks: ambitious, but not without problems. The building firm of Adamson Brothers became Gainford's biggest and most successful employer, with a bulging order book. Could they have had such success in another Teesdale village? Gainford had eight shops in 1914. Its growing reputation as a suitable place for genteel folk to move to meant good business for the shops and employment opportunities for grooms, gardeners, domestics and so on. The opening of the railway station in 1856 ushered in more developments in terms of employment, incomers, commuting, new housing and a new world of opportunity. The railway was at the heart of everything for just over a century.

Gainford’s ‘gentrification’, with some families becoming kith and kin through advantageous intermarriages, was reinforced by incomers of independent means. Exemplary research has found that in the second edition of his Tour of Teesdale (1813) Richard Garland inserted a new comment, that the ‘town’ had become the ‘residence of many who have sought refuge from the busy scenes of life’. The spa was only a minor attraction. Vera Chapman made a point of including it in her guided tours as the casual visitor might easily pass it by.

In the nineteenth century village life blossomed with all kinds of social events. In a review, there is only space to list them: for example, there were nonconformist festivals, annual shows, W.I. events, amateur dramatics and sports, which even included a rugby team, the Old Academicals. Listing, however, does this book an injustice. It is much more than a collection of narratives. The authors interrogate the evidence, bringing out causes, connections, themes and complexities. There is plenty of meat for the most voracious of readers. All social classes are embraced, so for example, the Literary Institute (technically a private club) became keen to cater for working class needs. Gainford had a parish school and an Academy. ‘Yorkshire Schools’ were notorious, but Nicholas Nickleby would have appreciated the Academy, where the curriculum included that most ‘modern’ subject—science.

Parish tithe history can be a mire which historians trudge through, but our guide is sure-footed, carefully selecting examples which throw light on the bigger story. There’s a lively discussion of the various intrusions, expulsions and restorations during those decades of religious turmoil leading up to the Restoration. Later, ‘low church’ features were introduced, only to be swept away by the medieval hand of Robert Edleston in 1863. Father Edleston’s legacy, however, was not set in stone: c.f. the installation of Maureen Alderson as the first female vicar. The architectural history of the church is instructive, especially the chequered life of the rood screen, with its two installations and two removals. The vagaries of local Congregationalism, Catholicism and Methodism are analysed and we learn about inter-faith collaboration and the redoubtable Alice Edleston, who is still remembered locally.

Passages on manorial courts, quarter sessions and the poor law lead on to the shocking state of public health in Victorian Gainford. Far from being ‘healthy and picturesque’, village wells were polluted, slops were thrown into the street and many houses lacked proper drains. Gainford became the principal polluter of the Tees. This unwanted crown failed to shame the ratepayers, who continued to thwart improvements, even delaying the introduction of street lighting until 1951.

The Wars of the Roses, the Pilgrimage of Grace, the Rising of the Northern Earls and the Civil War all tested local loyalties. Tony Pollard, playing to his strengths, offers examples of deserters, including nine Gainford men mustered to defend Barnard Castle against the Northern Earls. Most Gainford inhabitants seem to have ‘bent with the political wind’ and at the Restoration, freeholders and tenants of differing outlooks united to restore the status quo ante. Nineteenth century political swings in Gainford hung in the balance between the pressure of franchise extension nationally and the opposing pressure of an influx of professional people locally.

Finola Finn's chapter on economic history and Tony Pollard's three chapters slip elegantly into a model which is ideal for a VCH short. They marshal extraordinary amounts of evidence with careful analysis and a clear sense of purpose. The result is a broad and wide-ranging approach, which reminds us that history is a complex and constantly changing interplay of circumstances. A Big Red Book would have allowed more space to tackle the abstruse and problematic early history of Gainford, and, being in 4vo format with the possibility of foldouts, could have offered much larger maps than the 8vo ‘short’. However, for much of the book, the contributors have found effective ways to compensate for the size limitations of a ‘short’. For example, some topics are selected for a detailed presentation, demonstrating the potential of every other topic and enticing the local historian to explore some of them for themselves. Does this work take scholarship forward? Most certainly it does, both in its content and its methodology. ‘Boosterism’ is shown the door. Gainford is portrayed as much more than a pretty village: the rose has its thorns. In a 2017 review, Deborah Hayter observed that ‘Local history used to be largely written by the gentry, for the gentry and about the gentry’. This book is one of a new breed of VCH which embraces everyone, irrespective of their background. A considerable amount of valuable work has gone into this project and every single one of the volunteers deserves recognition. Although it may not match the majesty of a Big Red volume, Tony Pollard and his team have given the Queen of Villages a princess of a book.

GEOFF BRADDY is Chairman of the Cleveland and Teesside Local History Society. He is a regular contributor to the Society's journal Cleveland History, mostly concentrating on medieval Middlesbrough and East Cleveland.

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