November 2012 Reviews

By Various

Reviewed by Kate Thompson

WHEN WE WERE YOUNG Wartime memories of Countesthorpe and beyondedited by Mike Thompson (Troubador Publishing 2011 xii+111pp 978-1848765-580) £7.95; 

TUGBY and KEYTHORPE THROUGH THE AGES by Maureen Bullows(Troubador Publishing 2010 978-1848765-559 vii+130pp) £9.99; 

THE ‘TOWN’ CHARITIES OF MARKET HARBOROUGH, GREAT BOWDEN AND LITTLE BOWDENby Pam Aucott (Great Bowden Historical Society 2010 87pp no ISBN) £5

These three books are welcome additions to writings on local history for places and subjects in Leicestershire but, sadly, all three fail as serious academic studies and will therefore be largely ignored outside their local patch. To be fair, two of the three have no pretensions towards academia, but unfortunately for those of us who want to see local history taken seriously as an academic discipline, these books rather reinforce the view of the subject as amateur and parochial. It rather begs the question, why send them for review to a national publication?

Mike Thompson’s book was the one that I, a former resident of Countesthorpe, was particularly looking forward to reading. It is divided into four parts: Countesthorpe; elsewhere in Leicestershire; London to Leintwardine; and a soldier’s wartime diary. Many of the articles were first written for the BBC’s ‘WW2 People’s War’ archive between 2003 and 2006.  The idea for the book came from one of the contributors, Anne Tester, and there are 18 other authors. The length of the pieces varies considerably and they include memories of inhabitants, people evacuated to the village and those who have located there more recently.  Most of the contributors were under the age of ten at the outbreak of war.  Inevitably the articles also vary in their interest: to this reviewer the least interesting was the diary of a local soldier which was a mere list of his not very exciting military life. There are no footnotes or references, which it is assumed were felt to be irrelevant in a publication of this nature.

The Tugby & Keythorpe book consists of mostly very short pieces arranged by subject, including lords of the manor; sales of the estate and other agricultural topics; roads; church and chapel; poor laws, and so on. Like a lot of local history books, this consists of snippets of information with no footnotes or list of sources, although the latter can be assumed. The black and white photographs are generally poor, although the reproductions of documents are better.  The convention on numbers is not followed, neither is it consistent; on page 55, for example, we have ‘3’ and ‘three’ on the same page.  Like the Countesthorpe book, this was probably only intended for a local audience.

Pam Aucott’s book has more ambitions but as it appears not to have an ISBN is unlikely to be read outside the immediate area.  Her research was undertaken at the request of the trustees of the Market Harborough and Bowden’s Charity. The book has eleven endnotes, most of them merely a glossary of terms used. There is a list of sources, but they are not linked to the text.  The author is a former colleague of mine and it is somewhat surprising that it is not more scholarly.

The Market Harborough Town Estate and Bowden’s Charity was created in 1994 from existing charities. Rowland Rouse and the Reverend Thomas Reynolds had gathered together documents and papers relating to the Harborough and Little Bowden charities at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries; the records for Great Bowden are not so extensive, with minutes only from the 1860s. All three charities appear to have been created in the sixteenth or early seventeenth centuries. Rouse produced a book in 1767, A Collection of Harborough Charities and Donations; one quibble here, the title is given in the book in single speech marks, not the (far preferable) italics which with modern word processing is very straightforward. 

Sadly, there are a number of inconsistencies and errors.  Pam Aucott makes the same mistake in writing numbers: there are far too many examples to cite, but often numbers are written as figures and as words on the same page. The 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act is wrongly referred to as the Poor Law Reform Act. Only a couple of typographical ones were spotted, both on page 83:  ‘co-optative’ (presumably ‘co-opted’) and ‘councilors’.  In the review copy the printing had bled on pages 78 to 83 and although the text was still readable, it spoilt the otherwise good look of the book.  Surprisingly, it is A4 size, which is unusual.

KATE THOMPSON

Kate Thompson was county archivist of Leicestershire and Hertfordshire, and is a vice-president of the British Association for Local History. She is specialist on the nineteenth-century Poor Law, and with Paul Carter wrote Sources for Local Historians (2005).

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By Edward Royle

Reviewed by Jean Wilson

QUEEN STREET CHAPEL AND MISSION HUDDERSFIELD by Edward Royle (Huddersfield Local History Society, published 1994 and reprinted with revisions 2011 40pp ISBN 0 9509134 2 1) £4

A photograph of the underground burial vaults which had previously contained 84 sealed lead coffins is printed on page 13 of this booklet and it reminded me I had toured this Grade 2* listed Wesleyan Chapel in Queen Street Huddersfield some six years ago, with members of the Wesley Historical Society (Yorkshire branch).  Such photographs, together with maps and comprehensive endnotes, complement this attractive reprint of Professor Royle’s extensively researched booklet. Huddersfield was one of the first centres of Methodism in Britain.  John Wesley made several visits to the town, although the first unfavourable impression during his visit in 1757 was that ‘A wilder people I never saw in England’. A programme of chapel building followed and in 1819 an elegant late Georgian chapel, with ancillary buildings and stables was erected in Queen Street.  The building had a gabled west front, courtyard with iron gates and accommodation for a congregation of up to 3000. It was described as the largest Methodist chapel in the kingdom, and was contrary to contemporary advice from the Methodist Conference against building expensive chapels. 
The fabric of the building has survived during the past two centuries through adaptation and modernisation, involving major repairs and renovation, as successive generations have dealt with natural wear and tear and issues such as schisms, secessions, changes in leadership, fluctuating congregational numbers, as well as social and demographic changes. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the leadership adopted a new strategy and reinvented the chapel as a mission church, with outreach and evangelism to the local poor, and it thus became the last surviving Methodist chapel in the town centre, surviving while many other late Georgian and Victorian buildings met their demise in the civic and commercial redevelopment of the town.  
The latest change, at the end of the twentieth century, was the conversion of the building, which had ceased to be used for worship in 1970, into a new theatre and place of entertainment. Funding from Kirklees Council and a large donation from Lawrence Batley, a local business man, provided Queen Street chapel with a new role and saved it from being dismissed as a ‘redundant masterpiece from a bygone age’. This regeneration has enabled the building to retain its function as a meeting place for the people of Huddersfield and surrounding area, albeit in a secular rather than a sacred way. Paradoxically, in 1870 the chapel trustees had considered the request for a performance of Handel’s ‘Messiah’ in the chapel to be inappropriate.  Sermons reputedly lasted between sixty to ninety minutes and sometimes required a steward to use a long rod to prod members of the congregation who snored too loudly! A more relaxed attitude now prevails.

JEAN WILSON

Jean Wilson lives in Northamptonshire and has a Diploma in Combined Historical Studies from Cambridge University. She enjoys visiting West Yorkshire as often as she can to discover more about her ancestors who lived there, and their involvement in Methodism and education in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

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By Michael Tedd

Reviewed by David Hey

NAMING IN ANSTEY Michael Tedd (Friends of the Centre for English Local History: Friends’ Paper no.10 2012 78pp ISBN 978 0 9549088 2 9)  no price available; The Friends of the Centre for English Local History,  Marc Fitch Historical Institute, University of Leicester, 5 Salisbury Road, Leicester LE1 7QR

This entertaining study of nicknames used in the industrial village of Anstey, Leicestershire, since about 1850 is based on forty years of personal interviews with residents. The techniques of the oral historian have had to be used for there is little archival material available. Convincing explanations for the tenacity of nicknames are often elusive, but some were attached to families over three generations. An amusing example is the persistence of Frog North and Mouse Moore after the performance at school of a comic song ‘The Frog and Mouse A Wooing Went’. This example demonstrates how nicknames often arose almost by chance, but others continued down the family line.

Nicknames were often acquired at school for trivial reasons, and against the wishes of the persons on which they were bestowed. A general feeling (especially among girls) was that nicknames were not quite proper, if not downright rude and vulgar. My next-door neighbour when I was young was a sturdy coal miner known to everyone (although never addressed as such) as ‘Pinky’ Sanders because of the pink shirt he wore on his first day at school. Michael Tedd has many stories along these lines. He shows that the home and family (especially large families) were the most common birthplaces of nicknames and that a significant number of people were given nicknames in the form of personal names which were not their own, especially short forms. He highlights the difficulty that we have in trying to understand how some nicknames that were used in the Middle Ages gave rise to hereditary surnames. His short book deals with a fascinating subject to which we can all relate, but one that is not easy to pin down.

DAVID HEY                     

David Hey, the president of the British Association for Local History, is Emeritus Professor of Local and Family History at the University of Sheffield, where he taught in the Division of Adult Continuing Education. Among his many publications is the best-selling Oxford Companion to Family and Local History. 

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By Trevor Yorke

Reviewed by Mac Dowdy
THE ENGLISH COUNTRY HOUSE EXPLAINED Trevor Yorke (Countryside Books 2012 122pp ISBN 978 1 84674 301 6) £6.95; BRITISH INTERIOR HOUSE STYLES An easy reference guide Trevor Yorke (Countryside Books 2012 76pp ISBN 978 1 84674 300 9) £6.95

British Interior House Styles is, frankly, not as easy a reference guide as its sub-title suggests. It is not written as a guide, but as a book which gives the styles in chronological order. There is an index of the names of architects, style titles, and in alphabetical order the parts of a house, and the decorative features and materials used. All very straightforward, it would seem, so let us refer to Robert Adam (the first name in the index, cross-referencing to pp.27-29). On p.27, in a paragraph describing the general acceptance of the use of sham materials, Robert Adam and, presumably his younger brother James are noted in the sentence ‘Even the Adam brothers were happy to paint furniture and fittings’. The name appears once again on p.28, this time in the caption to an illustration, ‘This room could be lavishly decorated as in the Adams’ style example which has their distinctive shallow mouldings defining the wall panels and delicate ornamental designs within them’. And on p.29 another caption ‘Fireplaces: Adam-style surrounds’. This is the sole contribution in this book to Robert Adam, considered one of the greatest British architects of the late eighteenth century. In the text the author describes changes in house styles during this same period, but two of the most influential architects responsible for these innovations, Nicholas Barbon and Colen Campbell, do not get a mention. Neither do Raymond Unwin and his mentor Ebenezer Howard. No matter when or where your house was built, if you have a front garden, it is thanks to them.

The author obviously has a great interest in the subject of houses and their interiors, and no doubt he has read a lot about them, but it is also obvious that he has never studied them, analysed their plans and elevations, considered their ratios, or even worked out why they are situated precisely where they are. There are chapters in this book but little form to their content. The very last sentence in the text would hopefully end on a high note of encouragement or satisfactory conclusion. Here it is: ‘This is a period (1920-1960) when gardening spread to the masses and the rear of middle-class houses was opened up with bay windows and French doors making a garden a part of the home.’

The English Country House Explained has an attractive cover and is of a comfortable size suitable for convenient reading at home or while travelling. It is clearly organised into two sections covering external and interior views, which themselves are broken into chapters covering periods chosen by the author. The book has a nice feel to it and is designed by Peter Davies of Nautilus Designs. At this point the praise tends to dry up, for an increasing number of reasons.

The very first sentence of the introduction uses the word aristocratic in a sense quite out of place with the subject, as there is no architectural style, nor country house, that uses that title. Yorke goes on from here, throughout the book, to reveal little ability at historical analysis of the social and economic development of the country house, or the slightest understanding of its influences on national growth. It quickly becomes apparent that he does not recognise the seeds for the development of the manorial pattern. There is no mention of the Great Migration of the sixth century, which introduced forms of settlement that were well established by the tenth, and influenced spatial form from then on. The additive traditions of English architecture receive hardly any of the explanation suggested by the book’s sub-title, which abounds with factoids, half-truths, with no supporting alternative interpretations. For example, having referred to the functional requirements of the late medieval and Tudor halls, he omits the salient point that progresses required accommodation according to status, which was the principal factor behind the expansion of houses from the twelfth to the early seventeenth century.

It is not a straightforward read because the lay-out of the text is not clearly defined among the notes to the illustrations. However, once the probable confusion has been identified, then the continuity can be more quickly followed. There are too many omissions and part errors throughout both parts of this book to offer it to serious students of the English country house. The illustrations are so good that I see the author as a first-class graphic artist with a tremendous enthusiasm for his subject. I would prefer the title to be The English Country House – a personal view.

MAC DOWDY

Mac Dowdy is an architectural historian. He studied the History of Fine Art and Architecture at Leicester, Loughborough and London universities. He has an emeritus fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge, where for 10 years he directed the Architecture Research Group.

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By Jonathan Oates

Reviewed by Wendy Anderson

TRACING YOUR ANCESTORS FROM 1066 to 1837: a guide for family historiansJonathan Oates (Pen & Sword Books Ltd.  2012 162pp ISBN 978 84884 609 8) £12.99

This is one of the most recent offerings from a company which specialises in publishing books of interest to family historians. As the title suggests the topic is potentially enormous and in order to confine it to a reasonable size, the author must have made difficult decisions when considering the design and format of the finished product. Dr Oates introduces the book with a short but informative chapter containing a general outline of the main events from 1066 to 1837, as they would be of interest to a family historian. In it he considers the attitudes of people to religion, the monarchy, the government of the country as well as changes in the everyday lives of the population at large. 

The following eleven chapters cover many of the topics family historians would expect to examine once they had a need to use older and, in some cases, more difficult records, those written in Latin or with difficult handwriting, or uncatalogued or in out-of-the-way places. Dr Oates has collected many of these items into subject categories and indicates the usefulness and interest they might provide for researchers. The examples he uses encourage new readers to explore further into the past than many might have thought possible. He includes some essential information about the whereabouts of important depositories, of which there are over a thousand spread over the country, and the final chapter gives information about the record offices and libraries he has mentioned. Finally there is some advice about reading old and difficult handwriting, a list of published official documents, and a useful index.                         

The study of a family’s historical roots can require many and varied examinations of documentation produced by local and governmental offices, as well as the personal records of individuals. One record automatically suggests the use of further, possibly more difficult, material and Dr Oates has endeavoured to smooth the path of an inexperienced researcher in order that new finds may bring success. That is surely what any book of this kind should do. But however good the final result and however thorough the proof reading, there may be small errors in production which affect the finished article. The list of previous publications, the page headings for chapters six and seven, some missing capital letters, one in the list of publications, all have errors which affect the overall impression of the book. That is a pity, because the book has real value for the family historian.

WENDY ANDERSON

Wendy Anderson taught family and local history for the University of Cambridge Institute of Continuing Education, and now teaches for the Bedford Retirement Centre, and is involved in genealogical research.

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By Frank Dawson

Reviewed by Geoff Saul

JOHN WILKINSON King of the Ironmasters Frank Dawson (The History Press 2012 192pp ISBN 978 0 7524 6481 7) £14.99

First Isaac Wilkinson and then his elder son John form the body of this monograph from the Broseley Local History Society. The last chapters concern their mixed bag of descendants, the whole petering out as an eighteenth century model for Bleak House. The family and business activities and relationships of the two main subjects are considered in considerable detail with unresolved matters flagged primarily by the word ‘speculative’. The author is to be congratulated on the depth and coherence of the family history which he has elucidated. There are reproductions of portraits of many of the characters mentioned, all in black and white. Considering the geographical spread of the works and family dwellings a map of the country south of the Scottish border would have been valuable, and the map of Morecambe Bay is not easy to read. The chapter on the castings necessary for the steam engine cylinders of Boulton & Watt reveals much business detail of interest to students of these key figures and their products, and there is more intimate family history here too.

The paucity of detail about the metallurgy which lies at the real heart of the story is unfortunate: indeed, this reviewer finds it surprising for a local history society publication from such a noted and noteworthy locality. Just what were the improvements which were made in the various processes? Indeed what was the basic process in the industry? It is difficult to deduce the nature of the furnaces used, although the change in the reducing agent used comes across clearly. The woods were being decimated and the widespread occurrence of coal as an outcropping and shallow mined fuel was well known, but it is not clear whether the original documents reveal this kind of information. Were Wilkinson’s experiments recorded, and how systematic was he? The invention of the iron bellows is a case in point—there is no diagram or description of it and how it worked. The book is well referenced throughout, although the contents page could with advantage have included a listing of the illustrations.

<p class="\&quot;MainText\&quot;" right;\"="">GEOFF SAUL

Geoff Saul is a retired engineering lecturer from Brunel University and is the editor of the Rickmansworth Local History Society Newsletter, which won the first BALH newsletter award.