November 2023 Reviews

Edited by Charlotte Gauthier

(Paul Holberton Publishing 2022 312pp ISBN 978-1-915-40103-8) £45

Although this is the history of a parish, that parish is an extraordinary one, having its roots in a house of Augustinian canons and a hospital, and it fully merits a 300-page history. 900 Years of St Bartholomew the Great is modelled on the cathedral histories that have appeared since the 1980s and, as its title suggests, covers architecture, art and music as well as history. It takes a thematic approach but is organised chronologically. Twelve chapters provide an up to date and scholarly account of the parish and its church from the foundation of the priory and hospital in the twelfth century, through the upheaval of the Reformation, relative decline in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and its revival and restoration from the mid-nineteenth century onwards.

Christine Fox and Euan Roger trace the foundation and development in the Middle Ages of the two medieval institutions—the priory and the hospital—and their sometimes uneasy relationship: both were prestigious institutions that had an important place in the history of London. The priory was one of London’s largest and wealthiest religious houses and the hospital, also wealthy, was sufficiently highly regarded in 1538 to be one of the three hospitals that the civic authorities petitioned the king to be placed in its care. In the fifteenth century the hospital’s precinct, which became the nucleus of the parish, was an exclusive place to live, attracting a group of educated, well-off and influential citizens: lawyers, civic and royal officials and wealthy widows. The founder Rahere is still a strong physical presence thanks to the grand retrospective tomb erected for him c.1400 and he continues to be a spiritual inspiration to more recent generations of worshippers and clergy.

The monuments of St Bartholomew’s are well-served. Christian Steer provides a fine analysis of the medieval burial patterns and the handful of surviving monuments, and Jon Bayliss a thorough survey of an important collection of early modern monuments. In his chapter on the early modern buildings, Nick Holder skilfully delineates the changes to the fabric during Reformation. Over ‘two extraordinary decades (1539–59)’ the priory was dissolved, the hospital temporarily closed and re-founded, a Dominican friary flourished briefly, and finally a new parish was established using the priory’s choir as its church. During these upheavals Sir Richard Rich profited greatly from the dissolution and converted part of the priory into a fashionable Tudor town house.

Jeremy Haselock tackles the difficult but important task of relating the more recent history of the parish through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He takes a broadly ‘regnal’ approach by incumbent, rescuing from obscurity the notable achievements of a succession of redoubtable and often long-serving rectors, especially John Abbiss (1819–84) and Sir Borradaile Savory (1887–1906). During Abbiss’s incumbency St Bartholomew’s was surrounded by the filth and poverty of the slums of Dickensian London. The fabric was encroached on by new building and, in 1830, ravaged by fire. High levels of poverty persisted until Savory’s time, when it was recorded in detail by Charles Booth. St Bartholomew’s was saved from neglectful decay and restored thanks to the interest of the ‘great and the good’ from outside the parish led by successive rectors, the parish vestry and the architect Sir Aston Webb. The account of the twentieth century, relatively tranquil for St Bartholomew’s compared with the events of the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, is more of a chronicle than an analysis, perhaps inevitably so when covering the recent past and events within living memory.

The building itself looms large in this history as such a significant and glorious edifice should. Popularised in the film Four Weddings and a Funeral, St Bartholomew’s is a familiar and much-loved building: the Norman arches of its choir and apse have become iconic. Much of this is the work of Aston Webb, as the before and after images included in Evan McWilliams’s chapter on the ‘Great Restoration’ reveal. Better known for designing grand institutional buildings, Sir Aston devoted half a century to the restoration of St Bartholomew’s. His efforts were little short of heroic but aroused controversy. Critics objected to the degree of reconstruction in the apse accusing him of almost producing a ‘nineteenth-century edifice containing medieval remains’. McWilliams provides a scholarly, well-researched and balanced account.

Ecclesiologists will find much of interest in the later chapters which chart the changes in worship and liturgical furnishings. The Laudianism of Thomas Westfield, rector from 1605 to 1644, and the Georgian remodelling of the eighteenth century – box pews, galleries and a classical east end – are set out with telling illustrations in Steven Brindle’s chapter ‘The Long Decline’. Tractarian influences on worship can be seen in the late nineteenth century when Sir Borradaile Savory described St Bartholomew’s churchmanship as ‘high, although moderate’, though in the 1950s John Betjeman thought it was more ‘Middle Stump’. The arts are given serious treatment in three chapters. St Bartholomew’s has a distinguished musical history, and it continues to make a valued contribution to the English choral tradition. Its music director from 1949 to 1961, Paul Steiniz, was a pioneer of Bach’s music with an international reputation.

The editor, Charlotte Gauthier, archivist of St Bartholomew’s, has overseen a coherent and wide-ranging survey that does justice to this important church which continues to have a wider role in the religious life of London. She also contributes a thoughtful introduction. The publisher, Paul Holberton Publishing, has produced an attractive book that is pleasing to read, not least because it is well and generously illustrated with colour images throughout. Five maps chart the changes to the precinct from 1300 to the 1550s but it lacks a large-scale plan of the church itself. There are useful appendices on the income of the priory and bequests to it that will be quarried by grateful scholars, but they will be less happy to find that there is no bibliography and rather cramped footnotes. There is a good index with a thorough range of subject entries alongside the usual names and places. Unfortunately, the price may put this history beyond the reach of the wider general audience that it deserves. This should not detract from an admirable survey, which though it is a parish history is far from parochial in its horizons.

David Lepine is a historian of the late medieval church with a particular interest in secular cathedrals. He has written on many aspects of the clergy including their origins, status, almsgiving, devotion and commemoration.

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By John Lander

(Tricorn Books 2022 229pp ISBN: 978-1-914615-33-7) £12, contact jandplander@btinternet.com

John Lander is a former banker who has turned into an effective historian. Many of his earlier historical publications have related to religious history but this seems a labour of love—not least as he is a governor at Sparsholt. The title incorporates the word ‘transformation’ and a clear thread through this book is how the college has faced many trials and tribulations in its 125-year history, with frequent threats of closure, but has now a world-wide respected reputation in its field and a seemingly stable future. While publications about educational institutions abound, the role of agricultural colleges is a lesser-known element and yet they existed in many counties and fulfilled useful roles. For a large part of their existence many were part of council educational authorities. Certainly, that was the case with Sparsholt, which was under the auspices of Hampshire County Council until 1993.

The book has a broadly sequential approach, starting with its establishment of the College at Old Basing near Basingstoke in 1899, before its move to Sparsholt in 1914. One clear message is that agriculture for much of the period was not in a healthy state and a fairly continuous decline in the number of rural labourers was just one of many challenges for colleges like Sparsholt. They had to be creative in terms of what they offered, such as leisure classes, and even then often struggled to survive. For much of its history Sparsholt has had to cope with a rural context of urbanisation, easy importation of agricultural products and opposition to its aims and values. It is surprising how long the attitude persisted that education was not a priority for the rural worker. The mainstays of the book are the management, the curriculum, the lecturers and the experiences of students. Not everyone was up to the mark, but a sizeable number were dedicated, experienced and effective. For a number Sparsholt was a good stepping-stone to progress in the further education world.

It would be wrong to say that Sparsholt’s survival is a miracle—it always had prominent supporters—but it could easily have gone under, often facing financial deficits and a shortage of applicants. Sometimes it endured negative inspection reports and criticisms of its resources. Economics, technology and politics have always proved influential in the college’s fortunes. Although courses for females have been prominent in the work of the college, the management has been a largely male preserve although it is pleasing to see that Sparsholt now has its first female principal.

The author argues that the original aims were laudatory—to use modern terminology, an attempt at levelling up by narrowing the gap between the haves and have nots in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. Certainly, in the early days the agricultural worker suffered privations such as poor diet and housing. The story started in 1889 and 1892 with legislation which facilitated local authorities acquiring land for training institutions including agriculture. Hampshire seized the opportunity. Its earlier approach had involved travelling vans which proved relatively successful. Old Basing, though, was an odd choice as the first site as it was nowhere near the heart of the county. Early courses included dairy, poultry, bee keeping and gardening. They were half yearly, with men’s courses in the winter and women’s in summer, the latter operating on the assumption that they would gravitate to be farmers’ wives. The focus there was on cookery, domestic economy, needlework and laundry work. The curriculum soon expanded into areas such as machinery, bookkeeping and botany.

The move to Westley Farm at Sparsholt in 1914 was not without problems. The soil was relatively poor and there were staffing difficulties. There were also marital restrictions on many of the staff. Yet it is clear throughout the book that the college saw the need to adapt to changing circumstances. New courses appeared such as veterinary hygiene and jam-making and, during both world wars, training the Women’s Land Army. The inter-war years were particularly difficult: the state of farming nationally, diseases such as foot and mouth, the inadequacies of the site and the many critics, such as ratepayers and even the NFU, led to at least six serious threats to the college between 1921 and the mid-1930s. There were inevitable criticisms of waste – even electric lights were deemed a luxury.

The topsy-turvy nature of things is well illustrated by the fortunes of Sparsholt in the later twentieth century. The later 1940s witnessed growth, especially after the 1947 Agricultural Act. Ironically, it was the reluctance of workers to return to the land that sparked government concerns about improved farming yields so that rationing could be ended. Other similar colleges were opening and, besides offering courses, took part in experimental work to improve manures, crop and livestock yields as well as more mechanisation. Despite this, Sparsholt struggled with student numbers even though it took in some overseas students and opened up the site more for the local community.

Then came the 1960s and further real problems: a reduction in the number of courses, partly because they were deemed of poor quality; declining numbers of applications; and further budget deficits. Data suggested that its unit costs were relatively high when compared to other similar places. The county council looked long and hard at its future. It survived this crisis and then came the ‘transformation’ of the book’s title. Improved governance and management and active marketing caused numbers to rise, with many coming from beyond the borders of Hampshire and even from abroad. The 1970s and 1980s witnessed real growth. PFI funding helped bring a Management Training Centre for conferences and language schools. More land was added and accommodation increased. Many school pupils visited and there was plenty of outreach. By 1990 Sparsholt was described as the largest county agricultural college in England with 35 full time courses, three farms and many non-vocational adult leisure classes. In 1992 there were over 900 full-time students and many more part-time. Courses ranged widely, including, for example, those related to fisheries, equine studies, flower arranging and golf lawn management. The growth and development did not stop there. In 1993 it gained its independence from Hampshire County Council, improved its governance and developed degree courses with a University Centre. In 2007 it merged with Andover College. New buildings appeared and now some 180 courses are on offer.

It would be easy to see this book simply as a celebration of Sparsholt’s achievements, but it is much more than that. This is no ‘Whig history’ of continuous progress to a glorious present. John Lander devotes plenty of space to the many problems and hiccups. Facts and figures abound but this is also a human story—considerable space is devoted to the many people who made this institution into what it was and is … not just the leaders and success stories but ordinary students and administrative staff. The context is covered: we learn for example of the wider national picture and some comparative data regarding Sparsholt. In places one would welcome a bit more, if only to see how typical Sparsholt was of this type of institution. Overall, this is an attractive, readable and convincing book at a very reasonable price that deserves a readership much beyond those who have been able to call Sparsholt their special institution.

Tim Lomas is a trustee of the BALH and had a lengthy career in education.

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By George Kiloh

(Battle & District Historical Society 2023 xii+202pp ISBN 978-1-903099-07-0) £16.50

Two publications by the Battle and District Historical Society have covered the earlier history of their area in East Sussex (BC to 1066, and Conquest to Dissolution 1067-1538). This latest book focuses in detail on a particular period of rapid change in their small town. George Kiloh is an extremely well-informed and knowledgeable guide to the Battle area in this timeframe and executes his study well by placing it in its relevant national context. This time, however, he has chosen to increase our understanding of changes in the Battle area by comparing and contrasting the district with the similar rural area of Framlingham in Suffolk. A good idea in theory, this does not quite hit the mark as the target market is (presumably) readers of local history, who will find themselves distracted rather than better-educated by this dual approach. It also adds to the overall length of the book, which feels a bit unwieldy at times and could have benefited from a more concise approach. Indeed, the book (unusually for the Society) takes a while to get into its usual default setting of offering greatly readable prose, but once it finds its feet it thankfully becomes a riveting read.

The book covers a range of themes on the Battle area in the Industrial Age; perhaps a better approach might have been to take each theme in turn and devote a book to each one, with a longer timespan. In the final section of the book Kiloh manages to take the reader well past the end date, so it is really about Battle from 1830 to 1914. The selection of themes does not always flow logically from one to another and we jump from work to women, religion, education, transport, medicine and so on. Personally, I would have liked less on religion, and once the book gets past this chapter it provides a more fascinating tour of the area in this age of change.

Like all good authors, Kiloh reveals further sources to explore. In this case mine is the Designs for Schools and School Houses (1847). As an assistant headteacher in the age of school safeguarding, I despaired at the toilet design Kiloh tells about from the National School in Battle, built in 1851. It had rows of ‘dry toilets’ to the rear of the school, rather than flushing WCs and below these was a vault from which ‘the results were removed’. Kiloh makes the reader wince as he regales of how mischievous boys of the school, in the style of Eadric Streona, would creep under the girls’ privies when in use but instead stick bunches of stinging nettles upwards.

National context is woven well into the tapestry of local history, with the reader learning that ‘11.5% of Army recruits were [still] thought to be illiterate’ by the time of the Second World War. There is also thoughtful speculation that increased levels of education in the Prussian armies of Bismarck leading to military success over the Austrians in 1866 helped British politicians push educational reform back home. Battle certainly needed to educate its children well, as the area faced disadvantages in the Industrial Age. Drilling down deeper into the geography of the area, the fact that it was almost ‘devoid of industry’ and with a ‘poor water supply’ helps explain why the industrial revolution avoided the area in the main, with less urbanisation than northern equivalents.

Battle may not have ended up as the next Manchester or Birmingham but it faced similar public health issues. In 1850 all but one house obtained water from rainfall collected from their roofs, as well as pools and wells that were often polluted. Even worse, the effluent from slaughterhouses and piggeries sometimes flowed into houses and noxious fluids from the church’s graveyard flowed into the house of a solicitor. The not-surprisingly since-renamed Shyttebourne Lane (today Western Avenue) also once lived up to its name when waste material ran across it in this period. In a fascinating chapter on medicine in this period we learn that medical knowledge was not always up to the challenge of dealing with these issues. Battle still has a ‘Doctor’s Pond’ from which leeches were once gathered for treating the sick. We realise just how ignorant the medical profession was at this time: ’In 1842 one of Battle’s doctors was called to save a man who had hanged himself’: he failed to do so after deciding to bleed the man for an hour and a half.

England’s Rural Revolution: Battle 1830-1870 may have attempted a different approach from some of the Society’s previous titles but once in its flow, it provides enjoyable education and entertaining detail about this intriguing part of East Sussex. Kiloh is certainly a skilful pair of hands in which to place the telling his area’s history. Purchasing this book is a much wiser decision than any made by a certain Battle doctor in 1842.

Kevin Newman is the author of over a dozen books on Sussex and has co-written GCSE textbooks. His most recent books are Clock Towers of England from Amberley Books and The Little History of Sussex from The History Press. For online or in-person talks he can be contacted on knewman74@sky.com or on 07504 863867

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Edited by Jane Smith

: part 1, 1327-1375 (JS Books 2022 437pp ISBN 978-0-957-350564) £15 from Amazon;

: part 2, 1376-1399 (JS Books 2023 316pp ISBN978-0-957-350571) £15 from Amazon

The medieval court rolls of Worfield were discovered in the church chest by a local antiquary in the late nineteenth century and, after various vicissitudes, were eventually housed with Shropshire Archives. There they were used by a medieval Latin class led by the late Dr Sylvia Watts, after whose death Jane Smith and three colleagues decided to undertake a translation of the complete series of rolls. These two volumes represent the fruits of their labours to date, with a further volume on the fifteenth century to follow.

Worfield was a large parish of some 12,000 acres, situated on the left bank of the Severn in Shropshire, and bordering on Staffordshire to its east. It contained twenty or so individual settlements apart from the main village of Worfield, all of which (with the exception of one partial anomaly) formed the manor. The translation of the court rolls is a monumental achievement, even allowing for the standardised format used by the medieval clerks, and the result provides a fascinatingly detailed insight into the community. The rolls record the business of the Great Court or View of Frankpledge, and the Small Court. The Great Court met at six-monthly intervals, and dealt with infractions of both royal and manorial laws and customs. The Small Court, which met theoretically at three weekly intervals, dealt with civil matters, particularly concerning transfers of tenancies and other matters relating to manorial customs. Readers who are unfamiliar with the complexities of medieval rural society will no doubt be astonished at the range of activities which came within the scope of the courts, all of which required the payment of fees or fines. While penalties for fairly minor infringements were generally multiples of 2d (a labourer’s daily wages), fines for entering into a new tenancy could frequently total several shillings or even a pound. A charge of 12d for permission to marry is typical of what appears to have been an extortionate demand.

The comprehensive nature of the material contained in these two volumes opens the way to a variety of fields of study. The mass of references to individuals and their relationships invites family reconstruction, something normally associated with later periods when parish registers and probate records provide a rich source of material. Similarly, the detailed information relating to property transactions should make tenurial reconstruction a possible study, although it is unlikely that this could be linked to known properties. Studies of the social and economic structure of the parish are also obvious fields which invite investigation.

Although in most respects these volumes are exemplary, they do have one serious shortcoming, namely the introduction. This is very brief (just over four pages in length including a full-page map of the parish) and is repeated in both volumes. The bulk of the text is concerned with the topography of the parish, and with the circumstances of the discovery and later history of the rolls. This is followed by an explanation of the roles of the Great and Small Courts, and comments on the effect of the Black Death. An introduction of some thirty to forty pages in length would not be unreasonable for a work of this sort, and could have avoided a number of problems. The question of the effects of the Black Death provides a good illustration of some of these difficulties. We are told that relations between tenants of the manor deteriorated in the years after the plagues of 1349 and 1369, but the only evidence which is given for this is based on other documents, namely an extent of the manor in 1391 (TNA DL43/14/3 fol.74) and a custumal of 1400 (William Salt Library, Stafford, SMS 352). The editor concludes that ‘It is not just that the tenants are against the lord, the fabric of society itself seems to be increasingly fragile and the peaceful manor prior to the Black Death seems to have become a place at odds with itself’. This may well be true, but it is something which needs considerable elaboration with reference to the text. This could have been done in a number of ways.

It would be useful to compare the financial yields of the courts at intervals during the period, to determine whether there was any significant reduction by the end of the century. Such information could have been presented in table or graph form. A superficial examination by this reviewer suggests that, as might be expected, the proceeds of justice fluctuated wildly from meeting to meeting, and there does not appear to have been a major downturn at the end of the century. The frequency at which the courts met might well show up trends to corroborate or refute the assertion that the manor was in serious decline by the end of the century. It is clear that the interval between sessions of the Small Court varies considerably throughout the period, even in the 1320s, though this may reflect the survival or otherwise of the records. One presumes that the numbering employed by Shropshire Archives refers to complete rolls, and that, for example P314/W/1/1/37 represents an uninterrupted sequence covering the period from March 1354 until August 1355. If this is so, then the Great Court met twice in this 18-month period, and the Small Court met four times, two of which immediately followed the meeting of the superior body. While this might suggest a decline in the frequency of court meetings, twenty years previously, before the onset of plague, the small court apparently met on only three occasions. A lot of interpretation is required before accurate assertions about the decline of the manor can be made.

This mention of the shortcomings of the introduction should not, however, detract greatly from the otherwise excellent work contained in these volumes. The translation of the rolls will be of considerable interest to all who study the medieval rural community, not only in Shropshire. The editor and her colleagues are to be congratulated for using self-publishing to get the work into print at a very reasonable price. The projected volume on the fifteenth century (possibly with an expanded introduction?) is awaited with interest by this reviewer.Martin Speight is Chair of the Shropshire Archaeological and Historical Society. He is currently researching parishes in Shropshire’s lower Corvedale.

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By Rob Collins, Jane Harrison, Ian Kille, Kathryn Murphy and Kerry Shaw

(Oxbow Books 2023 128pp ISBN 978-1-789259-59-9) £12.95

Stretching for 73 miles from Wallsend in the east to Bowness-on-Solway in the west is one of Britain’s best-known monuments: Hadrian’s Wall was built to protect the north-western border of the province of Britannia in about 120 AD. Selected sites along the wall and nearby were the focus of an archaeology project which ran from 2019 to 2022 and this very informative publication resulted from the Heritage Lottery Funded Hadrian’s Wall Community Archaeology Project (WallCAP). This project gave local people the opportunity to work under the guidance and leadership of professionals from Newcastle University, all involved in aspects of archaeology. The research expertise of the project manager/research co-ordinator for WallCAP focuses on Hadrian’s Wall and Roman artefacts so the volunteers, and project, were clearly going to be in good hands. Working with stakeholder organisations and landowners on the site, the project had three key aims: to increase knowledge about the Wall, to understand and reduce any risks posed to various sections of the Wall, and to ensure that local communities and the wider public were more involved in the management and care of the Wall.

A wealth of activities, and resulting discoveries, are outlined in this well-produced book. Investigations of several specific sites were chosen to include the different types of structures which make up the Wall, such as a length of remains which had been exposed by an earlier Edwardian dig, upstanding remains of part of the curtain, and a section known as the Vallum. The concise introduction outlines the complexity of the site. Hadrian’s Wall is revealed to be so much more than ‘a wall’! It also describes the unique landscape and archaeological remains of the monument and the modern landscape through which the Wall passes. Different structures, such as turrets, milecastles, forts, bridges, gates, ditches, curtain, and the vallum and other terms are all explained as they occur throughout the book, in the main body of the text, so the reader is not left wondering what is being described.

Arranged across three quite lengthy chapters, plus a concluding chapter, the results of the project are described clearly. Numerous excellent diagrams, maps, drawings and graphs accompany each chapter: all are well placed within the relevant text and add to the understanding of the written content. Not only does each chapter contain reports and summaries from the professionals but also short reports written by volunteers. These volunteer contributions demonstrate how successfully this project engaged local people of all ages and all walks of life, provided inclusive opportunities and fostered a continuing interest among participants to stay involved with the Wall and help safeguard it into the future. Even the emergence of Covid during the project was used as constructively as possible by organising and implementing ‘virtual’ events and on-line project activities. A graph, which indicates ways in which volunteers viewed their participation in the project, shows beyond doubt that the aim of achieving local community involvement was a huge success.

Chapter 3 covers, in considerable depth, work undertaken to identify sites on the Wall considered to be at risk of further damage or destruction. ‘Before’, ‘during’ and ‘after’ photographs show how careful, sympathetic repair work reduces the possibility of a collapse in some sites in the future. Fig.3.8 is a terrific illustration showing stages of the ruination of the Wall over the centuries: it is very clear, easy to understand and gets to the point. The fascinating section about the excavations on the Vallum has clear LiDAR images and helpful explanations. There is much debate about the Vallum’s purpose: it is a poorly understood feature of the Wall complex. No definitive conclusion was reached, but the results of surveys and excavations on this particular element of the Wall’s structure go a long way to inform the reader about the challenges the team faced in respect of this extraordinary feature.

Chapter 4 outlines how the project examined the local geology of the various types of rock which were quarried and shaped into the stones required to construct the Wall. Investigations were carried out into quarrying locations and how stone was shaped and dressed. Also examined were stones which have been ‘re-purposed’ from the Wall in later buildings and structures. A variety of tectonic, palaeographic and geological maps are used to good effect to show the location of the Wall in its surrounding geology. The chapter is detailed and requires some persistence by a non-geologist, like me, but the concluding paragraphs superbly pull together the why, wherefore and need to understand the interaction between archaeology and geology in this project.

The concluding chapter succinctly evaluates the project’s outcomes and successes. As well as being a good read about the archaeology which was carried out, the book demonstrates how the aims were reached, if not surpassed, and the results as a whole are an excellent example of the value of this type of community endeavour. This was a vibrant, ‘feel-good’ joy to read and should appeal to anyone with an interest in both archaeology and local history. The reader is left in no doubt as to the importance of the Wall and why we should preserve it.

Carol Dougherty lives in Cumbria, about forty miles from the Wall, and has participated in numerous community archaeology projects. She has recently contributed to a study and survey of a deserted farmstead in her local area, and completed some walk-over surveys of field archaeology in the Yorkshire Dales.

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By Daniel J. Hayes

(the author 2022 358pp ISNB 979-8-836541-29-3) £9.99 pbk, also £14.99 hbk, £4.99 Kindle

Recent decades have seen a growing interest in the sources, methods, and approaches to the local history of sport. Given football’s primacy, it is unsurprising that an ever-growing number of club histories have been published, encouraged by enthusiastic supporters with an interest in history, the growth in self-publishing, and the wider growth of interest and publishing of family, local and sports history. Through the 1980s and beyond Breedon books published ‘A Complete History’ of many leading clubs, competently blending statistical and written material, and this influenced later work. The National Football Museum in Manchester has provided a useful starting point for researchers. Its associated research centre possesses several hundred club histories, alongside a wide range of potentially rich sources for those studying football’s history, from memorabilia to the FA’s material on club transfers, attendances and so on.

Daniel Hayes’s book focuses not on a particular club, but on the rugby and association football clubs in Southport in the years from 1872 to 1880, taking their detailed history back to the early origins of the town’s clubs, before the period studied by Geoff Wilde and Michael Braham, The Sandgrounders: A Complete League History of Southport F.C. (Palatine, 1995). Relatively few local studies focus on both codes, and so this one offers opportunities for comparisons. Its approach is chronological, covering early origins, then soccer and rugby separately, season by season. Local historians have begun exploring the lives of individual players and officials in more detail, and Hayes researched pen portraits of eighteen leading figures. As elsewhere there are detailed statistics, the listings of fixtures and teams and results over time for leading Southport rugby and football clubs. The main sources used are newspapers, largely the local press.

The study sheds light on Southport’s relative lack of club continuity, and the struggles clubs faced to survive. Not all clubs prospered. The original Southport Club, the Southport Gymnasium and Football Club (1872) switched from rugby to soccer. Players switched codes or teams. Clubs split. Others amalgamated. New clubs emerged. Pages 209-214 helpfully list the origins and links between Southport’s various clubs. As elsewhere, the early amateur fixtures faced problems: players failing to turn up, arriving late, transport problems, regular disputes in an era before the emergence of professional referees, and sometimes teams leaving the field. Increased numbers might mean a ‘Swifts’, ‘Junior’, ‘Second’, or even the ‘Pippins’ team, all needing friendly fixtures. For the amateur sides, finance was constantly a struggle, despite attempts to raise money through athletic sports or balls.

The focus is far more on the players, games, and results than the wider context, so there is limited indication of the clubs’ involvement in wider sporting debates, and the town’s attitudes to these. One unhelpful misprint on p.198 told readers that ‘following the move made by the Football Association in the previous year, professionalisation was now to be made legal in the rugby game’. In fact, it was made illegal. Nationally, many clubs were fearful that rugby might become dominated by working-class professional players. Rugby union in Lancashire was even opposed to cup matches, lest they encourage concealed part-time professionalism, but Southport entered the West Lancashire and Border Towns Challenge cup, a competition against the wishes of the Lancashire rugby union authorities, on its founding in 1886. By 1889 the later rounds were attracting five-figure crowds for teams such as Wigan. But unable to compete at that level, the club had broken up by October 1889. More analysis of local rugby socio-cultural attitudes to these debates would have been interesting. Similarly in soccer, elsewhere, the 1880s moves to create a representative top local side led to tensions between those supporting amateurism, those wanting the best local players and those prepared to see payment for imported professionals. Was this the case in Southport? The new Southport Central club initially had seven imported players, mainly from the Blackburn area, on its formation in 1888, though early gates were small. Some comparative figures for gate income and attendances for Lancashire clubs in towns of similar size to get a sense of where Southport stood regionally would be helpful.

While the book is largely of interest to fans of Southport’s rugby and soccer clubs, and its local historians, it sheds useful light on the early years of rugby and soccer there.

Mike Huggins is Emeritus Professor of Cultural History at the University of Cumbria, and has published well over one hundred books, chapters, and peer-reviewed articles on the history of British sport across the past three centuries. His book The Victorians and Sport (2004) provides a useful overview of themes such as amateurism, professionalism, sporting stars and sporting local loyalties.

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By Buckland Brewer History Group

(Blue Poppy Publishing 2022 xvi+199pp ISBN 978-1-911438-96-0) £15.99

The intriguingly named parish of Buckland Brewer is located just under five miles south-east of Bideford in Devon. For the past few years members of the local history group have been researching and writing about aspects of the area’s history and this publication is the fruit of, and a testament to, their collective endeavour. It demonstrates what can be achieved from a pooling of resources. Their aim has been ‘to provide a flavour of life in a rural north Devon parish’ during the nineteenth and much of the twentieth century. Given the location of the parish there is, as might be expected, a very heavy emphasis on many familiar aspects of agriculture from land ownership to land use, from crops to livestock and from dairy farming to gardening. There is even a recipe for making clotted cream. Other topics which do not always receive the attention they deserve—such as parish apprenticeships, farm accidents, the emigration of families to Canada and elsewhere, and the Young Farmer’s Club, established in the late 1920s—are also covered.

The text incorporates a considerable amount of personal material, including revealing diary entries, transcribed memories, correspondence, a farm inventory and extracts from a farm ledger, which should appeal to family historians who have connections with the parish. In addition, there are micro-histories of many of the farms in the neighbourhood and their proprietors and occupiers. Apart from local knowledge, use has been made of the tithe survey of 1837-1845; data from the 1851 and 1921 censuses; reports from local newspapers, such as the Hartland Chronicle; and the National Farm Survey of 1941-1943. There are also many evocative photographs of individuals, families and buildings. To assist those who might want to follow up topics, there is some referencing and a very detailed index, which includes many named individuals.

One particularly appealing feature is a perambulation of the parish based on data from the 1851 census. From the narrative some helpful insights into the geographical configuration of the village and the socio-economic composition of its population can be gained. That said, for anyone unfamiliar with Buckland Brewer a map would have been useful.

Apart from the agricultural material, there are sections devoted to certain other features of parish life. For example, attention is given to the impact of the two World Wars on the village. This covers not only those who lost their lives and are recorded on the war memorial but also those who fought, survived and returned to resume their careers in the community. Nor is education neglected, with the provision of schools the village being dealt with in some detail.

However, the coverage of village affairs is by no means comprehensive. For example, there is very little, if anything, about the political and administrative history of the parish. The parish council is only mentioned to the extent that it assisted with a grant to cover some of the expense involved in producing the book and on a couple of other occasions. Although, as reported in the Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, the first parish council election in 1894 was uncontested, this was because of the thirteen valid nominations for the nine seats on the council, four were persuaded to withdraw. One wonders why this was the case. In occupational terms, the first council consisted of three farmers (one retired), a shoemaker, butcher, mason, tailor, and two labourers, all of whom would be worthy of further research. Likewise, the issues with which the council had to grapple between 1894 and 1970, and whether anything of a particularly controversial nature arose during this period, would make interesting reading. By contrast with the parish council, there was a contest in 1894 for the two seats on Bideford Rural District Council (RDC), with the successful candidates both being farmers. Their opponents were a retired policeman and another farmer. The impact of the decisions of the RDC on the parish would have been worthy of exploration. Moreover, the section dealing with the religious history is a little disappointing since there is nothing about the backgrounds and personalities of the incumbents of the parish church of St Mary and St Benedict. Nor does one get much sense of the life of the four Nonconformist chapels (two Bible Christian, one Wesleyan Methodist and the other Baptist) which almost certainly would have met not only the spiritual, but also many of the social, needs of members.

Although the book is primarily targeted at those familiar with Buckland Brewer and surrounding areas, for others with an interest in local history who might be considering, for example, holidaying in the area an introductory chapter would have been helpful. This could have provided details of the location of the parish, in relation to the towns of Bideford and Great Torrington and to other villages in the neighbourhood. In addition, the extent to which, and the ways in which, Buckland Brewer interacted with them would have been useful.

Limitations aside, this publication can be strongly recommended for anyone who is keen to explore the history of Buckland Brewer. It might also provide some ideas for research in other parishes and for presenting the findings.

Roger Ottewill’s research covers a wide range of aspects of local history, including religious history, and political and administrative history.

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By Chris Jones

(privately published 2023 121pp ISBN 979-8-376-921-395) £7 + p&p via Amazon

Far more than just a recollection of what his time at St. Kevin’s Catholic school in Kirkby was like, this book by Chris Jones provides a vivid insight into what life was like for a child growing up in post-war Kirkby on the border between Merseyside and Lancashire.

Kirkby acted as an overspill town for Liverpool, housing families who had been moved out of the city as part of the clearances of damaged or dilapidated housing stock in the aftermath of the Second World War. Chris writes, in his informal style, about his earliest memories of playing in Kirkby among the carcasses of old planes from the war and the modern factories on the booming industrial estate where he would sometimes ‘acquire’ fresh peas heading for the frozen food factory and be awestruck by the arrival of a helicopter! Chris acknowledges that some his memories may have been affected by his memory ‘dimming’ and the ‘rosy glow of nostalgia’, but nevertheless they give an important insight into the social history of an area that inadvertently became a social experiment as the influx of city dwellers mixed with the local, or, as the author terms them, ‘aboriginal’ people of West Lancashire. Chris notes both the positive results of this such, as the pride his father took in their new council estate home and more negative aspects, such as how Kirkby gained a reputation for crime and anti-social behaviour, with the Observer reporting it as a ‘New Jerusalem gone wrong’: all important first hand insights for social historians studying the impacts of the ‘New Town’ movement from the 50s and 60s. Chris even makes the link about how Kirkby inspired the Newtown location of Z-Cars.

However, the majority of the book, as the title suggests, focuses on his time at St Kevin’s school, and again this gives us some important information about not only the standard of the new educational facilities that were built in Kirkby but also the experiences of the pupils and staff inside them. In fact, as Chris acknowledges, the modern facilities that the new schools possessed was a key reason why his father wanted the family to move to Kirkby, especially the laboratory equipment in the science classrooms. As St. Kevin’s no longer exists, being demolished in the 1980s, the descriptions and pictures of the school’s layout are important for a site now covered by a housing estate. Chris gives the full tour of the building, from the impressive but underused tennis courts to the obligatory ‘active tobacco den’, as Chris describes it, behind the school’s bike shelter.

Aside from the many funny stories associated with his and others’ antics at school, and the amusing, and hopefully not libellous, nicknames and anecdotes about some of the staff, for readers there are several valuable aspects for local historians to take away. Chris’s growing interest in the trade union movement gives an insight into the politics at both a local and national level. Also, the information about the teaching styles and curriculum content allows us to examine the curriculum that was available to pupils at this time.

Overall, Chris Jones goes beyond just the everyday life of a school boy at St Kevin’s and provides us with an invaluable glimpse of what life was like for residents of Kirkby in the 1960s and 1970s, which will no doubt stir the memories of many readers from that local area but also perhaps inspire others to delve deeper into the history of a much neglected and maligned area in order to test whether their perceptions of it are true. Furthermore, for anyone interested in the life of residents of the new towns that were built in this period, Chris gives a firsthand account which could give some important anecdotal evidence to support wider research into this topic.

Phil Duckworth’s historical interests are the local history of Wigan and surrounding areas such as Skelmersdale, Liverpool and Manchester from ancient times all the way through to today.

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By Arthur G. Credland

(East Yorkshire Local History Society series no.66 2023 72pp ISBN 978-0-900349-66-9) £7+£2 p&p from EYLHS, 825 Anlaby Road, Hull HU4 6DJ

Arthur Credland and the East Yorkshire Local History Society are to be congratulated on producing such a fine study of the Great War. I found it really interesting (especially as I’m a born and bred Yorkshireman), informative and highly readable. In fact I first picked it up to glance through it, but found myself reading it from cover to cover. Having read Credland’s earlier full-scale interpretative work on the Zeppelin attacks on Hull, it was clear to me that this study is a survey of the many different materials that it was based on: newspaper reports, diary entries, relics of the war, a cartoon, illustrations and photographs. At the same time, it provides a clear chronological account of the eight Zeppelin raids with all their consequences. It should be an inspiration to anyone from towns and cities with a similar depth of archive, to investigate just exactly what they have on their doorstop regarding this topic.

The documentation is accompanied by a suitable amount of explanation and interpretation which sets the evidence in context. The book is superbly illustrated, covering all aspects of the topic. The colour photographs at the end of the book are particularly impressive. It was a delight to see endnotes being used. They are both thorough and enlightening. In an age where some publishers are only too happy to eliminate the use of such ‘scholarly apparatus’ as too highbrow, the East Yorkshire Local History Society are to be congratulated on maintaining their independence on such matters and on retaining them in a purely local study.

The material used provides a salutary reminder that the destructive power of Zeppelin raids, often downplayed by some modern historians in view of the results of air warfare in the Second World War, were in fact a terrible reality to those who were alive at the time. In this the book contributes to setting the historical record straight. The newspaper reports reproducing the coroner’s inquests which list the deaths of Hull’s residents, are terrible indeed even now, as they most certainly were then. The photographs show the dreadful damage done. The picture on the front cover of the little boy sitting on the bed of his damaged room, although undoubtedly posed, is a mute reminder of the horror of these raids. All the photographs are very well chosen to convey this effect.

My only criticism of the book is that the map is not adequate for its purpose. Superimposing shading on to Ordnance survey maps to indicate areas of the damage done by air raids rarely does them justice. A home-produced map would have been more effective, perhaps even a coloured map. Nevertheless, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book about my home county. It should appeal to anyone interested in the history of Hull and to the story of the Home Front in Britain during the Great War. It is a worthy contribution to the historiography of the latter.

Paul Rusiecki is the author of The Impact of Catastrophe: The People of Essex and the First World War (2009) and Under Fire: Essex and the Second World War (2015). He is currently working on a study of Essex in the inter-war years.

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By Susan Orlik

(Shaun Tyas 2022 xiii+370pp ISBN 978-1-915774-03-3) £35

‘Why doe you hold it unnecessary to beautifie the temple of the Lord’, asked Abraham Forrester, vicar of Folke in Dorset, in reply to an objecting parishioner who claimed his new church and its furnishings were ‘a dumb shew’. The year was 1628 and the dispute between the two was heard in the court of the dean of Salisbury. Those furnishings are in one of over a hundred churches in the three counties of Dorset, Wiltshire and Somerset (in the dioceses of Bristol, Salisbury and Bath & Wells) which are studied in detail (and almost as many across the country get a mention) in this magnificently-illustrated volume. The author sadly did not live to see its publication; the photographer and the publisher are to be commended.

‘Beautifying’ might perhaps have been a more accurate (if old-fashioned) word in the title: ‘decorating’ seems rather too superficial a concept for what was a very serious matter. This is no less than a study of the distinctive furnishings introduced into those churches in the early years of the seventeenth century; and studied with the aim of testing again whether they might be ascribed to individuals of particular theological views. The author divides her examination between seating; pulpits; screens and doorways; fonts, rails and altars; and ornamentation of walls. Such divisions necessarily involve a good deal of repetition, but the purpose of each chapter is set out clearly, as demanded by a thesis that this still is, complete with rather too much academic jargon. It is more than amply supported by both contemporary sources and references to current scholarship. General conclusions are that ‘Laudian’ can hardly be valid before Laud himself went to Canterbury in 1633 (his strong adherent, William Piers, came to Wells only in the previous year); but, more importantly, that those with views of a more Protestant kind quite evidently were not opposed to beauty. And in between were men, clearly lay as well as clerical, who were keen to display themselves in their parish churches, irrespective of any theological beliefs.

A general reader may need some context. By the end of the Middle Ages the congregations of many churches had become fragmented, becoming separate groups hearing mass before subsidiary, chantry, guild or brotherhood altars, and praying before favourite shrines, sometimes resulting in a scandalous liturgical cacophony. The Protestant prayer books assumed a single, listening, praying gathering of parishioners, with more attention on the pulpit and reading desk than upon the communion table; and church accounts from the reigns of Edward VI and Mary reveal the financial struggles of parishes to deal with the conflicting demands of changing governments for or against altars, ornaments, service books and the rest. In its early years the church under Elizabeth had no guarantee of survival, and spending might have been deliberately limited to the minimum prescribed by law.

But the new furnishings described in this book seem to declare a church, however diverse in its theology, comfortable with itself; its parishioners more nuanced in their religious opinions than historians expect and eager to adopt the style to be found in secular buildings. Indeed, the introduction of some of the furniture studied, not just the gallery at Lyme Regis, but the many pieces with the initials of churchwardens, seem to be inspired not by personal religion but by personal advertisement. Churchwardens’ accounts offer costs, the names of craftsmen and rare hints at inspiration. They have also, occasionally, not been entirely understood: ‘whiteliming’ at Cameley would have been for external as well as internal walls. Just as two scholars using different primary sources for Bath & Wells came to quite different conclusions as to the success of Laudianism; so, the interpretation of coats of arms on the magnificent pulpit at Croscombe might reflect the reverence of a new rector (who had recently been given preferment) for his famously-preaching bishop rather than for unwonted and surely unlikely episcopal show. It is surprising that there is no reference to the church at Beckington, where there is a ‘Jacobean’ screen and where the popular ‘Puritan’ churchwardens found themselves gaoled for their refusal to rail in their communion table against the east wall of their chancel as ordered by their ‘Laudian’ Bishop Piers in 1637. This is, still, a significant step on a parochial level towards understanding a church too often studied as a house divided against itself.

Robert Dunning was the editor of the Victoria County History of Somerset from 1967 to 2005.

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By Joy Beresford Frye

(Poppyland Publishing 2023 viii+318pp ISBN 978 1 909796 95 9)

This well-researched and impressively wide-ranging biography of John Hobart, 2nd Earl of Buckinghamshire, is set against the calm background of the family’s magnificent house, Blickling Hall, just west of Aylsham in Norfolk, and its great and historically-important surrounding estate. The real action, however, takes place in many other locations, including (as well as London) Moscow and St Petersburg (Hobart was British representative at the court of Catherine the Great for over two years) and Ireland (he was subsequently viceroy in Dublin). As this is a very detailed biographical study of one man who moved at the centre of interlocking political and social circles, there is a great deal about the elite worlds of Georgian Britain, seen within the context of the Hobart family (including a hefty dose of sexual scandal and severe marital disharmony as befits the class and the period). This is juxtaposed with the deeply human dimension of tragedies such as the all-too-frequent deaths of babies and small children, the no less tragic early deaths of women in childbirth, and the tender and heartening attitude of Hobart to his children as a loving and doting father.

The biography draws extensively on primary sources (especially letters and journals) and these are quoted at length … in some cases, I felt, at excessive length, since some of the quoted passages extend to two pages. Rather more editorial rigour could have been helpful in streamlining the quoted material, which is sometimes at such length that the purpose of the quotation is lost. A more serious issue is that although the book is very well-illustrated, there is only one family tree (almost at the end). The genealogical dimensions to the story of John Hobart and his family might have been expressed more clearly, and been easier to follow, with a few modest pedigree charts. The somewhat eccentric title, incidentally, is a quote from a letter sent to the inveterate gossip and socialite Horace Walpole, by the scarcely less extraordinary Sir Horace Mann, British representative in Tuscany from 1738 to 1786. It relates to Hobart’s stay in Florence in 1746, on his Grand Tour. It is a great quotation, but I am never very sure that ‘novelty’ book titles like this are really wise—they tend to distract from the substantive content of the book.

In Georgian England, as in any other period, there were many John Hobarts—people who at the time were significant players in society and politics, but who were subsequently largely forgotten. They were more important, individually and especially collectively, than their subsequent obscurity might imply. Joy Beresford Frye has done an excellent job in researching John Hobart’s life in its public and private dimensions, and in telling his complex and genuinely interesting story. When we consider, and visit and admire, a house such as Blickling, it is easy to forget that it was there because of people like John Hobart—knowing more about those people, the men and women who walked the corridors, slept or made love in the bedrooms, strolled in the gardens, and ate vast meals in the dining room, is rewarding and fully justifies a book such as this.

Alan Crosby is the editor of The Local Historian. He was the editor of A History of Norfolk by Chris Barringer, published in 2019, for which he also provided the photographs.

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