October 2022 Reviews

compiled and with an introduction by the Halifax Probate Group (WEA Halifax 2021 lxxii + 272pp ISBN 978-0-9932204-3-2) £10 + p&p from Amazon or contact halifaxprobate@gmail.com

Probate records provide social historians with a unique window into the past for those groups in early-modern England who lived well enough to bequeath property and personal effects through the making of wills, but were not so wealthy as to generate lasting conventional archives of personal documents. They are particularly significant in giving direct insight into areas where widespread but modest technological and organisational changes were providing the foundations of a commitment to manufacturing which played a key part in revolutionising the economy during the eighteenth century. A century ago, understanding that process seemed relatively straightforward, but the more general research that has been done, the more obscure the details of the transition to modernity has become, and it is now accepted that what historians call proto-industry not only took many different forms across Europe, but also mostly did not provide a bridge to true mass production.

Scrutinising actual wills, and also the inventories of artefacts and livestock which were created by those who implemented the provisions made by the deceased, allows realistic discovery and analysis of cultural norms, as well as simple identification of what they owned and how they lived. This is particularly valuable in the area of the Pennines between Leeds and Manchester, which was on the way from almost total obscurity to becoming the greatest textile-producing district on earth. In the late-seventeenth century it was rarely visited by journal-writing travellers, and was never identified by contemporaries as a significant driver of national manufacturing.

At this stage the 23 large townships of the monster parish of Halifax (nearly as big as the county of Rutland) were particularly important, even though its inhabitants themselves had described it in 1550, accurately, as being ‘planted in the great waste and moores, the fertility of the ground is not apt to bring forth any corn nor good grass, only by exceeding and great industry of the inhabitants. The same do live by cloth making’. The unchartered town consisted only of a few streets which provided a cluster of food and cloth markets, almost all of whose users, including the merchants, operated on a small scale and lived in scattered hamlets. This allowed most of them to remain involved in farming, and prevented the emergence of a resident bourgeoisie, yet Daniel Defoe’s comments show amazement about the success already being achieved within this unorthodox framework. Occasionally an individual family may have been significant enough to be worth focusing on, but given the lack of big enterprises which this study shows, they tell us far more when analysed in groups.

However, we have no idea what percentage of families created the probate documents which survive, or how representative they were, and obscure legal processes of inheritance have to be understood to make sense of those we have. This weighty but very clearly-written book (containing over 350 pages) is therefore invaluable in laying out the contents of all surviving documents from the three key multi-centred townships identified in the title, and this takes up most of the book. The photographic reproductions of relevant sections of a detailed map published in 1835 provide excellent support. The legal processes by which the documents were created are systematically made clear, with an impressive glossary of terminology. The social context of the whole system is also explored well.

The WEA group who undertook this mammoth task analyse the mass of evidence in nine short and very clear studies of key aspects of local life, all well indexed for maximum accessibility. They cover agriculture and textiles plus the residual other activities, before looking at wealth and finance and then turning to literacy, women and religion. A section on houses and homes is bolstered by the fact that the distinctive settlement pattern, and the solid stone from which most structures were built, mean that a surprising percentage of the homes discussed can still be seen after so many years. Not only were dwellings and outbuildings the most substantial artefact inherited, but the designs were distinctively local as well as functional, again showing that local business culture was going its own way.

The one apparent great weakness is, inevitably, the mirror-image of these strengths: its tight focus on just these three townships. Many researchers and potential readers may therefore suppose that it is irrelevant to them, but they should dismiss this assumption. At £10 it is a bargain anyway, and as a practical guide to working on similar documents in other places it could hardly be bettered, except possibly through more illustrations. All those involved in its production must be unreservedly praised for their determination to see it through and maintain such standards.

Stephen Caunce was formerly senior lecturer in history at the University of Central Lancashire. He is a native of south Lancashire and retired in 2014. After PhD research into the lives of farm horsemen in Yorkshire, based largely on taped oral testimony, his career started in museums. This maintained his interest in both material culture and the lives of ordinary people and led ultimately to the creation of an innovative BA in History, Museums and Heritage. Later research explored several key aspects of the transformation of the north of England between 1600 and 1939. He has published two books and numerous other publications on farming, the woollen industry, northern identity, and northern urbanisation, and is currently working on a short book on re-asserting the Industrial Revolution’s roots in the Pennines.

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by Michael Chisholm (Shaun Tyas 2021 x+150pp ISBN 978-1-9077309-1-7) £14.95 + p&p contact shaun@shauntyas.myzen.co.uk

Michael Chisholm begins his masterful assessment of Anglo-Saxon hydraulic engineering in the fens by defining the fens geographically and summarising previous work on their early history in relation to the Anglo-Saxons. There is (or was) little known evidence of their presence in the fens other than some abbeys, so the assumption was that channels and banks existing at the time of Norman Conquest were natural or Roman in origin—in particular the ‘Roman Bank’ around the Wash, to protect the area from incursions by the sea. This book ‘is an attempt to take matters forward by asking what hydraulic engineering can be properly attributed to the Anglo-Saxons and exploring the closely associated questions of when the works were carried out, by whom and why’. Chisholm’s aim is to compile a reasonably complete waterway map to see what it tells us about the role of the Anglo-Saxons in modifying the Fens.

The title of chapter 2, ‘A major waterway mistakenly thought to be natural’, says it all. Here Chisholm discusses what was thought to be a ‘natural distributary’ of the river Nene running for about 24 miles from Peterborough to the sea north of Wisbech, which comprises three separate channels: Cat’s Water, South Ea (now Old South Eau) and Shire Drain. These channels mark the boundary of Cambridgeshire with part of pre-1974 Northamptonshire and Lincolnshire, and so must have existed by about 1000, by which time England south of the Tees was divided into shires. Waterways were commonly chosen as county boundaries and so scholars thought this was a natural river, perhaps the original course of the Nene. Chisholm considers separately the three components of this supposedly natural waterway to establish reasons for declaring them artificial, and then to examine their inter-relationships. There is, for example, no evidence to show that the Nene ever flowed down Cat’s Water to Shire Drain as a natural waterway. The whole of Shire Drain was created artificially: the fact that it cuts across ancient channels is categorical proof that it was artificial. He concludes that, given the interdependence of these and other artificial channels, ‘it is difficult to resist the thought that together they amounted to some form of project, in the sense that, from a transport perspective, digging one channel would have made little sense if there were no expectation that the others would be created’ soon after. This leads to the questions: who undertook this work, and when?

The obvious conclusion is that the impetus was from the Benedictines. Cyril Hart had previously noted that in the third quarter of the tenth century landownership in Cambridgeshire underwent a profound and lasting change as a result of Benedictine monastic reform. There were numerous purchases of estates, especially in the fens, for the endowment of the great monastery at Ely, and also of the abbeys of Ramsey, Thorney, Crowland and Peterborough. The monasteries would have wanted to know the limits of their possessions and also to have efficient means of transport and removal of unwanted water. Plate 11 shows the artificial waterways, which were constructed to enable transport, leading to/from the abbeys. The Liber Eliensis is a history of Ely Abbey compiled by an unnamed twelfth-century monk who had access to documents no longer extant. He recorded that during the tenure of Brihtnoth, first abbot of Ely (970-991), a monk named Leo had major responsibilities: he made ‘in the inaccessible and watery middle of the marshes, a cut marking the boundary of the possession of the church, which in the English vernacular is called to this day Abbotesdelf’. This equated to the Shire Drain. It is known that Wisbech Hundred, bounded by Shire Drain, was administered by Ely Abbey from the tenth century: persuasive evidence that the Shire Drain was dug between 970 and 991 and the work carried out by Ely Abbey.

In Chapters 5 and 6 Chisholm considers more hydraulic engineering in the peat fens and silt fens. He then focuses on a very important local natural product: Barnack stone, which was widely used for church building in Anglo-Saxon and early Norman East Anglia. The village of Barnack, and its associated quarries, is situated between the rivers Nene and Welland. The quarry products were widely distributed. So, the basic question is, as Chisholm notes, ‘whether the stone was taken overland south to the Nene for onward shipment or north to the Welland, or to both rivers’? Chapter 7 considers movement between the quarries and river loading points using, among other evidence, LIDAR imagery, to locate a loading site on each river, neither of which is obvious in the landscape today. Chapter 8 considers the destinations to which Barnack stone was taken before the Norman Conquest, and routes for transporting stone across the fens. Chisholm concludes that Barnack stone played a significant role in the reshaping of waterways in the peat fens.

Plate 11 shows the waterway network resulting from Anglo-Saxon hydraulic engineering in the fens, although Chisholm cautions that is must be regarded as work in progress as it is likely that other channels will be added in the future. He has identified 85 miles of main artificial waterways (canalised natural and wholly artificial) and about 80 miles of lesser channels. He argues that this network came about because England under Edgar was united and at peace; Benedictine reform was an important part of state building; two of the king’s close advisers (Aethelwold and Oswald) played an important part in the affairs of all five fenland abbeys; and all male Benedictine monasteries in England answered to the king. Thus, as he says, ‘it is difficult to imagine more propitious circumstances for large-scale and essentially co-operative action to modify the waterway network to facilitate the religious and secular roles of the abbeys’.

Chisholm’s aim was to correct a number of misconceptions. To do so he has mobilised deductions that have resulted from reading the work of numerous historians writing on the fens, documentary evidence, archaeological reports and findings, from observing the modern fenland landscape and early modern maps, and from interpreting LIDAR images. His conclusions, to which he leads the reader step by step, seem blindingly obvious, but only because he has drawn together and sifted through so much evidence to arrive at them. His arguments provide a new story of water management in both the silt and peat fens. In his final pages he raises further questions to be addressed, such as how the works were carried out in terms of surveying and measuring techniques, and of labour supply. Whether such questions can be answered is, in a way, neither here nor there: the fact remains that the waterways were constructed in the Anglo-Saxon period. This is a compelling, well-argued book, with excellent accompanying maps and illustrations.

Heather Falvey is Reviews Editor for The Local Historian. Her PhD thesis included an examination of early modern enclosure riots in the fens at Whittlesey.

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edited by Sheila O’Connell (London Topographical Society no.184 2021 ix+379pp ISBN 978-0-902087-71-2) £30+p&p

The landscape of London history would be incomplete without the invaluable work done by the London Topographical Society over nearly a century and a half since 1880. The Society regularly publishes all manner of useful works on London’s topography and history, which makes it a key organisation for the London local historian. Their Record is one example: it is published every few years, and each edition is a collection of articles by a range of contributors covering a wide variety of detailed academic research.

In keeping with previous editions, London Topographical Record XXXII is a superb collection, considering London history from the Middle Ages to the twenty-first century and looking at a myriad of topographical features of the city including bridges, stairs, wharfs and schools and the social world around them. The focus of this particular volume is, broadly speaking, the seventeenth century, with essays that touch upon the momentous events of that tumultuous era such as the civil wars and Great Fire as well as insights into the city in more peaceful times. As is the characteristic of the Record the scope of the articles is wide. There are close studies of ownership at a single point in time, such as ‘Who Owned the City of London in 1666?’ by Ian Doolittle, as well as others charting the changes of one place over a long period such as ‘From the King’s Bridge to Black Rod’s Stairs: The Palace of Westminster and the Thames, 1189–2021’ by Elizabeth Hallam Smith. A collection of such scale takes considerable editorial skill to pull together and Sheila O’Connell must be commended on her effort. The full contents list is available on the Society’s website (https://londontopsoc.org/).

One article is by Vanessa Harding, who is retiring as professor of history at Birkbeck and has just become honorary chair of the Historic Towns Trust. Her current work is on a new map (for the Trust) of London on the eve of the Great Fire in 1666. This is the sequel of the Tudor map published a few years ago. Harding’s essay ties into this research, taking one site in the city and setting out a new interpretation of its disputed history. In characteristic style she approaches the subject with formidable grasp of a huge range of sources and is able to distil a long and complex history of one wharf just to the east of Billingsgate into an intelligible short article. As well as resolving this particular conundrum, the paper explains the development of this area of the Thames foreshore, the changing work of London’s wharves and more broadly the slow transformation of land ownership and work in the City from the Middles Ages to the present day.

The contribution by Malcolm Jones, formerly of Sheffield University’s English department, on Finsbury Fields Archery Marks is also excellent, focusing on the history of a specific area in rich detail. Using William Hole’s map of the Fields to illustrate the history of these marks, Jones reconstructs the use of these posts as a roving form of archery practice by Londoners. We learn the names of these marks: this toponymy reflected varied homages to saints and individuals as well as other identifiers such as ‘Candle’, ‘Cock’ and ‘Cowslip’. Jones works through successive print and manuscript sources of these marks. In doing so he provides an insight into the history of Finsbury Fields as well as the lives of Londoners from across the city who encountered the marks. The immediate local interest in Finsbury is therefore set within the wider social life of the capital in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

In many of the chapters the concern is to illustrate the history of a particular place, but there is always a wider relevance and interest. This is nowhere more apparent than with Rosemary Weinstein’s article ‘Who Hid the Cheapside Hoard? A Goldsmith’s Row Mystery Resolved’ which discusses the famous discovery of a cache of early-seventeenth century jewellery. A regular contributor to the published works of the Society, Weinstein is also a former curator at the Museum of London where the Hoard is held. This research uncovers the occupation of the land on which the Hoard was buried and from this attempts to answer who buried it and why—a careful unpicking process relying heavily on leases and other records held by the Goldsmith’s Company. Weinstein recreates a sense of the buildings on the site and their uses. The intricate personal and business networks of the lessees is especially striking with connections to the royal family, Robert Catesby of Gunpowder Plot infamy and Welsh lead mining. This study brings to life an area of London known for its goldsmiths, as well giving an insight into the workings of the trade in jewellery in the early modern City. It appears to finally solve the mystery of who buried the Hoard and why, though that revelation is for readers to discover for themselves.

No review of this collection can pass without noting a chapter a step out from the others. This is by Ann Saunders, about her experience of working in the library of Lambeth Palace in the early 1950s—a wonderful history based on memories of the mammoth effort undertaken to recover and restore the books of the library after the bomb damage which the Palace and its books sustained during the Second World War. This intimately personal account is very detailed and ends with the transcript of an interview. It is a wonderful description of librarianship in the most trying of circumstances. Through this description of the work of the team we learn about this particular archaeological effort and also achieve a wider view of librarianship and the care of rare books. The explanation of this process is coloured with personal vignettes (ranging from falling cockroaches to overworked bookbinders). It is a thoroughly enthralling tale. Ann was clearly a remarkable person who contributed a great deal to the field of history, going on to an outstanding career as an archivist, editor and scholar. Her obituary(also in this volume) is a testament to her achievements and the bibliography of her works is beyond impressive.

A note must be made about the many obituaries (eight) which comprise the second half of this collection. Such is the Record’s role as the organ of the London Topographical Society. In the years since the last volume we have seen the deaths of many stalwarts whose contributions have greatly advanced our knowledge of London’s topographical history and of the Society. While they are of course fitting tributes to excellent scholars these obituaries are more directly useful to the general reader as introductions to their work. For those of us interested in the historical process they are also excellent biographies from which we can take insight and inspiration, demystifying the research, writing, editorial and organisational work that may be done in the pursuit of the historical craft.

Altogether, this is a book of outstanding quality. The detailed work of each author provides inspiration and information for us all to take forward to our own research. This applies particularly to those of us working on London but it also has relevance to local historians further afield who can take a lead from the approaches here. While nominally ‘topographical’ these are works are concerned not only with geography, place and space but are local histories in the broader sense, contemplating people and their communities. One striking feature of the book is its excellent illustrations. The articles are all richly coloured with maps and depictions including several double page spread images, such as a striking photograph of the Cheapside Hoard. Physically, it is a well-produced and substantial volume. Moreover, being in the same price range as the average popular history hardbacks, this is an affordable addition to the London local historian’s bookshelf. This is especially so for those of us with a particular interest in the seventeenth century metropolis.

Joe Saunders is a PhD researcher at the University of York working on the print trade and the Stationers’ Company in seventeenth century London. He is also vice-chair of the British Association for Local History. As a keen local and family historian descended from Londoners his interests in the city include all manner spatial and social questions across the centuries.

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by Sandra Lawrence (Blink Publishing 2022 ISBN 978-1786581-31-0) £25 hardback

Ellen Ann Willmott (1858-1934), though not well known outside garden history circles, was the pre-eminent horticulturalist in the first two decades of the twentieth century—a time when the field was almost entirely dominated by men. Some 200 cultivars which she raised are named after her, or her house at Great Warley in Essex, but, unlike her contemporary and friend Gertrude Jekyll, she left few designed gardens. Her name is now largely forgotten outside a few specialised groups. Her interests ranged much wider than plant cultivation, and extended into photography, music (both as a performer and an acquirer of antique instruments), rare books and manuscripts, and wood-turning. Though wealthy by any reckoning, in later life she was reduced to genteel poverty, and developed a hearsay reputation as a miserly and intimidating woman. After her death, her Essex garden was stripped of its collection of rare plants, the house demolished, and the whole site—frozen within the post-war metropolitan Green Belt—reverted to secondary woodland. Some four decades later, what was left of the house and garden was leased as a nature reserve, and the process of weeding out invasive sycamores, and revealing something of what was buried in the dense undergrowth, was begun. In 1980, the first serious biography (by Audrey Le Lièvre) was published, based on elderly eye-witness accounts and access to Miss Willmott’s vast but uncatalogued archive, as well as some earlier published material.

The author of this new biography is a journalist who grew up not far from Great Warley and had been fascinated since childhood by the spectral remains of the overgrown garden. The need to update Le Lièvre’s biography had long been hampered by the uncatalogued archive held by a branch of the family in Gloucestershire. A decade or more ago, an archivist was appointed to begin the heroic task of sorting out vast quantities of material which had been gathered up ‘as found’ and stored after Miss Willmott’s death. It was a bewildering mix of a lifetime’s collection of letters, bills and final demands, glass photographic plates, circulars, begging notes from charities, plant and seed catalogues, and artefacts. Much had been damaged by damp, mice, silverfish and mould, and some was in a highly fragmentary state or reduced to pulp. Driven by curiosity, and assisted by the archivist and a small band of dedicated helpers, Sandra Lawrence began the daunting task of assembling and evaluating the evidence. Some of the more fragmentary material that was too decayed to be retained was photographed for deciphering at leisure.

From this incomplete and unsorted collection, supplemented where necessary from other sources, the author has compiled an impressive biography. Though written in a very informal and journalistic style, this is a serious and carefully researched book. It also provides much contemporary context for the events of Miss Willmott’s life gathered from a wide range of other sources, and reveals the vivacious and charming young woman who has been hidden behind the shadow of her later reputation as a mean and intimidating spinster. There is a carefully balanced account of what was clearly a very intense emotional relationship with another woman in the 1890s, and a cautious speculation that it was her heartbreak at its ending that resulted in her unexpected failure to attend the presentation of the gold Victoria Medal of Honour at the Royal Horticultural Society’s AGM in 1897.

Each chapter starts with a brief description of a document or artefact of relevance to the events in her extraordinary life which driven by her passion for plants, and facilitated by the inheritance (and ultimate dissipation) of a considerable fortune. Money was lavished unsparingly on her home at Great Warley, and on the acquisition of two more houses in France and Italy where further noted gardens were created. Her fatal flaw was an inexplicable failure to grasp that her expenditure far exceeded her income, and to accept the need to bridge this gap by economising, or disposing of some of her valuable assets. Who needs to keep two seventeenth century Amati violins when the creditors are hammering at the door? Her financial decline began when her uninsured French house was badly damaged by fire, and subsequently when the one in Italy was allowed to deteriorate seriously in the hands of a negligent tenant. Yet in spite of her disastrous lack of business or financial sense, her harassment by debt collectors, and her embarrassingly begging letters to friends, she could be openly generous to, and supportive of, people and causes that she valued. As any of us would, the author struggles to explain this dichotomy.

This biography, assembled from fragmentary and badly damaged sources, is a triumph. The informal and very readable style conceals the detailed research which lies behind it, and provides a revealing and sympathetic insight into the life of a very remarkable woman. It will be of interest to a wide audience, as well as to garden historians. The book is well indexed and illustrated, and lightly referenced with a mix of foot and end notes.

Michael Leach is very familiar with the ruins of Miss Willmott's house and the remains of her garden at Great Warley, Brentwood, having worked there as a volunteer for over two decades.

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by Linda Ball (Chalybeate Books 2021 reprinted 2022 xii+300pp ISBN 978-1-5272-8592-7) £25+ £5 p&p from htpps://www.stamfordfriars.co.uk/

This detailed and thorough book offers a further contribution to the already complex and controversial topic of the sites of two major medieval friaries in Stamford, a subject well known to students of the town's history. Stamford is one of England's significant historical towns, wealthy enough in the Middle Ages to attract four friaries which benefited from its position on the Great North Road and its economic prosperity as the site of popular fairs and markets. The positions of two of these have not been in question, but the other two have been the source of debate in recent years. Until the 1970s it was generally accepted that the site of the Franciscan or Grey Friars friary was immediately to the east of the town's eastern gate, and that of the Carmelite or White Friars was further to the east at the junction of the roads from Bourne and Deeping.

What happened to change this consensus? As historians in the area know well, in the 1970s the research of John Hartley and Alan Rogers into the religious buildings of mediaeval Stamford turned the previously accepted view upside down. They published The Religious Foundations of Medieval Stamford in 1974. Linda Ball explains that their conclusions placed the Grey Friars to the east, by the site of the modern hospital, and the White Friars immediately to the west of Brasenose Lane, the reverse of the locations generally accepted until then. Their view was that ‘at some point after the Dissolution the names of the two friary sites had become confused, one for the other’. Their conclusions were based on examination of the terminology used in estate leases in the archives of the Cecil family at the neighbouring great house, Burghley House.

Linda Ball's book seeks to re-evaluate the evidence for the relative positions of the two friaries, querying how far the conclusion of Hartley and Rogers is still correct in its assumptions. She does this by careful study of the two sites and the relevant documentation. She grew up in the 1950s in Grey Friars' House in Stamford (discussed in detail in her book) and this awakened her interest in this controversy. She lived close to one of the significant fourteenth-century remains in Stamford—the infirmary gate facing west on to St Paul's Street—and she points out that ‘it is a scheduled monument … and it is remarkable not only for its antiquity and architectural merit but because it is the only surviving building fragment from Stamford's medieval friaries’. It was partly this attractive building that led her to enter the fray. Noting the arms of Edward III on the façade, she links this to the 1337 meeting of the King's Great Council in Stamford White Friars. She voices her concern over the present condition of the 700-year-old gateway, suggesting that in the past such an important site would have been protected: ‘The fragility of Stamford's heritage becomes strikingly apparent’. One of her aims is to offer the widest possible analysis of the relevant historical circumstances ‘to ensure the survival of Stamford's oldest and most vulnerable medieval buildings’.

This book is a very full and precise account of many years of research into the topic. Having established the significance of Stamford as a medieval town, the author explains what she calls ‘the Stamford Friars conundrum’, discussing the establishment of the four friaries in the town and getting into the historical context of the settlement of the orders of friars in medieval England and their destruction at the Dissolution. This is followed by a full account of the evidence used by historians from 1600 onwards to create the accepted locations of the Grey and White Friars prior to the work of Hartley and Rogers in the 1970s. This provides the background to her own re-statement of the earlier view and the reasons behind it. She concludes that the traditional historical locations were, in fact, correct, placing the Grey Friars on the St Paul's Street site and the White Friars on the Infirmary site with its medieval gateway. The author is in little doubt of the validity of the older understanding of the relative positions of the two friaries.

The book presents a remarkably full and detailed analysis of documentary and physical evidence regarding the relative positions of the two friaries. In support of her argument, she offers 18 large maps and a further 120 maps, plans, images and tables, illustrating the text in a remarkable range of helpful detail. The use of written sources is equally impressive. The footnotes and full bibliography refer to a wide range of relevant printed material; Linda Ball also provides a valuable chronological time-line and appendices which outline the major events relating to the two friaries and list the English houses of Grey and White Friars.

Despite the controversial nature of her argument, the author manages a degree of balance in her discussion of the evidence. She feels that the subject-matter of this historical analysis is worth spending so much time and research to resolve. Like many other historical questions, it has its own interest and for the author it has been a personal quest, based on her long-standing love of the town and its historic buildings.

This is not only a book for Stamford’s people. It is also for readers who enjoy clearly explained historical argument, supported by thorough research. The evidence as it stands is open to a range of interpretations, so her firmly stated argument may not convince all her readers, as is always the case in discussion of controversial historical topics. Perhaps a further in-depth archaeological investigation of both sites could offer conclusive evidence? In the meantime, Linda Ball's book makes a thought-provoking and welcome contribution to the ongoing debate over the relative positions of two of Stamford's significant medieval friaries

Michael Honeybone is a local historian with a particular interest in the learned societies of eighteenth-century Lincolnshire. His most recent book is an edition of the Stamford papers of the antiquarian William Stukeley, published as Stukeley and Stamford, Part 1: Cakes and Curiosity.

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(Brown Dog Books & the Self-Publishing Partnership Ltd 2022 744pp ISBN 978-1-83952-495-0) £29.99+p&p from pjflower@btinternet.com

This substantial book is the third biographical volume of Dr Reginald Grove. The previous two covered its subject’s life through childhood and school, and this volume covers his undergraduate life at Cambridge, his medical training at Guy’s Hospital, and his establishment and working life as a general practitioner in the Huntingdonshire market town of St Ives, initially in partnership with his father. The author is the grandson of his subject, and this account is based on a very extensive private family archive of artefacts, diaries, letters, and other material—a remarkable resource, but one that is distinctly challenging to use in a constructive and critical fashion. It is clear that the author has done a considerable amount of background research from a wide range of other sources to add further biographical information, as well as to provide contextual detail relating to the period in which Dr Grove lived and practised. It is extensively annotated with over 1600 footnotes and has a useful bibliography, as well as illustrations, maps, family trees, a timeline, and other appendices, and a very adequate index.

A work of this length and detail challenges the general reader, as well as this reviewer who has not seen the previous books in the series. The stated aim of the three volumes is to extend what is essentially a family historian’s biography into ‘a much more comprehensive account of the social history of the last three decades of the nineteenth century’. The author has attempted to do this by providing much incidental information culled from his research, some of which is undoubtedly useful, but some of questionable value. One small example of this ‘curate’s egg’ problem is found in the discussion of the difficulties facing a rural GP of that period. Much of his work was visiting patients in their own homes, some of whom were very ill or seriously injured, and this often required travelling for an hour or more on bad roads at all times of day and night in all weathers, with no backup from the services now taken entirely for granted. Who would now appreciate that a rural GP had to keep three horses for this 24-hour a day cover, as well as a full-time employee to care for them and to maintain and drive the trap needed to carry him, plus whatever equipment or medication might be needed? But the account becomes unnecessarily cluttered with speculation about the details of his first car which he may, or may not, have acquired in 1900, as well as a needlessly lengthy digression into the history of early motoring. There are numerous other examples of unnecessary or irrelevant detail.

A number of minor mistakes show lack of editorial scrutiny, one example (among many) being the inclusion of identical quotations from the same letter facing each other across pages 428 and 429. Another irritation is the repeated but inappropriate use of the phrases ‘sadly, he died’ and ‘happily, he recovered’: such events are, of course, invariably ‘sad’ or ‘happy’, and do not need to be described as such. Other sections which should have been edited out at an early stage include a detailed description of Dr Grove’s childhood illnesses, together with those of his wife, neither of which seem to have been any relevance to their subsequent lives, or to his medical practice.

The fatal flaw of this work has been to attempt to achieve its stated social history aim by gathering up a great deal of unfiltered detail, and failing to evaluate and use it in a critical way. That said, there is still much of interest to be mined by the patient reader, particularly one interested in the history of medical practice. The discovery that this nineteenth-century GP was influenced by Thomas Browne, the seventeenth century physician and author of Religio Medici, is of considerable interest and might have been explored further, though few might be cheered by the latter’s observation that ‘we all labour against our own cure, for death is the cure of all diseases’! Few readers will know that GPs at that period were expected to perform post mortems on the victims of violent or unexplained death (without mortuary facilities, or any assistance with this arduous task) and then to provide a professional opinion at the subsequent coroner’s inquest. The book includes the lengthy verbatim reports from contemporary newspapers and, though such detail may be of interest to some historians, they probably far exceed what is useful for the general reader.

In spite of these criticisms, a good picture emerges of the life and work of a conscientious and thoughtful rural GP of the period. It is a shame that it is buried in so much unexceptional family history material which has been included, even extending to accounts of Dr Grove’s wife’s family, and the future careers of their children. There is good and useful material in this book, but it does illustrate the need for careful and thorough editing, and the importance of resisting the temptation to include every incidental detail unearthed during the preliminary research.

Michael Leach is a long retired rural GP, lucky enough to have seen and practised medicine not too dissimilar to Dr Grove’s work

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edited by Len Holden assisted by Pam Aucutt (Market Harborough Historical Society 2022 256pp ISBN: 978-1-7398747-0-4) £15 + £3.50 p&p from www.marketharboroughhistoricalsociety.org

Until the seventeenth century, Harborough ceded first place to Great Bowden. The latter had grown up as a rural community, on the main route from Northampton to Leicester. Unlike Bowden, Harborough is not mentioned in Domesday Book. It was a small part of the royal manor of Great Bowden and was established as a ‘new town’ in the twelfth century, the result of a concerted and deliberate action to increase trade. The first reference to Harborough occurs in 1153, where it is recorded as Hauerberg (meaning Oat Hill). Evidence of a market is found in the Pipe Rolls of 1203, while the 1381 tax returns suggest a population of at least 270 with a poll tax of £7 14s, compared with over 330 and £10 7s for Great Bowden. By that time, though, it was apparent that Great Bowden remained a farming community while Harborough was developing trade and commercial occupations.

Some seventy pages and ten chapters deal with Harborough in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It only overtook Great Bowden as the main settlement in the Tudor period. Reference is made to the effect of John Wycliffe and the later Reformation; to the muted continuance of Roman Catholicism in the area; to the emergence of Harborough parish and the local administrators, such as churchwardens, constables and overseers of the highways and the poor; to the effects of enclosure, such as rioting in protest; and to other agricultural changes. Meanwhile trade steadily increased, encouraged by markets and fairs. Cutlers, fishmongers, ironmongers, grocers, haberdashers, flaxmen and shoemakers are all recorded as having attended. The Civil War affected the town, particularly in the prelude to the Battle of Naseby, when a temporary Royalist headquarters was established at the King’s Head inn. After the battle, Cromwell stayed a night at the Bell inn.

Chapter 14 rightly pinpoints the mid-eighteenth century as a key turning point for the town: ‘The story of Harborough particularly from the middle of the eighteenth century is the story of a road … the improvements to this road (the old A6) by means of turnpikes … enabled Harborough to grow from a small provincial community into a thriving coaching town with its attendant trades’. The following chapter details those vital improvements—the rebuilding of bridges; the lucrative mail service; the importance of the coaching inns in the town, such as the Angel, Three Swans, King’s Head and others. From an estimated population of 720 in 1670, the first national census in 1801 recorded a population of 1716. A further stimulus occurred in 1810, with the coming of the canal, even if that was merely an arm of the Grand Union. Increasing affluence saw brick, stone and slate gradually replacing the old wooden edifices. Fine Georgian buildings were erected, such as the Manor House, Welland House and Brooke House. The Old Town Hall, built by the lord of the manor, dates from 1788. The eighteenth century also saw the nonconformist churches joining the mainstream of town life, particularly the Baptists and Wesleyan Methodists. John Wesley visited Harborough on several occasions.

A major key to the success of this publication can surely be seen in the list of contributors. This contains individuals who are keen local historians and researchers who not only know the immediate area but are able to place it in the context of the county of Leicestershire and beyond. This has led to a collection of fascinating and well-researched chapters on subjects such as the archaeology of the area, where field walking and excavation continues to inform understanding: there is plenty of evidence of both Iron Age and Roman settlement, but minimal Anglo-Saxon. There is little archaeological evidence from the centre of Harborough itself. The chapter on the later medieval period gives useful information on shires and their personnel and manors. There are some individualistic chapters (Agnes Bowker’s Cat and Witchcraft; Anthony Jenkinson, Tudor merchant Explorer; prominent people in the eighteenth century, such as the Moore and Allen families, Samuel and Rowland Rouse and Stephen Addington) which add to the narrative. A particularly interesting account is given of the Old Grammar School which, as Bob Hakewill writes, has come to symbolise Harborough’s heritage and history.

Each chapter is well supported by a list of sources for those wishing for further study. A very useful timeline and detailed bibliography are found at the end of the book. There are some excellent colour and black and white photographs, clear plans and maps which are all enhanced by a clean, very readable text (in 11pt Palatino font). The printing and binding by Biddles of King’s Lynn is first-rate. A considerable part of the research was carried out during the Covid 19 pandemic, which either denied, or severely restricted, access to archives held at the various county record offices and even to Harborough’s own museum. Thus, the Market Harborough Historical Society should be rightly proud of their achievement; the town should be equally proud of their Historical Society. It is important to note the funding support of the Howard Watson Symington Memorial Charity and the Market Harborough and the Bowdens Charity. Local publications depend on such largesse. I have only visited Market Harborough twice. Reading this book has made me want to go there again. I also look forward to the second volume.

Kenneth Hillier is a local historian in Leicestershire, with a particular interest in its market towns. He has written several books on Ashby de la Zouch and its neighbourhood, and articles for The Leicestershire Historian.

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by Ron Dawson (Brewin Books 2022 96pp ISBN 978-1-85858-746-2) £9.95

This is a very individual book. The author is an experienced and distinguished teacher (initially of history) and educationalist, and this book, one of many by him, is wholly different from his other work and writing. I was at first seduced by the title, and by Birmingham’s huge influence on the developing industrial economy of England, into approaching the book as a purely historical work. That was a mistake: the author describes the genesis of it, and its roots in his early studies in 1968, with some care, and it is, in fact, a local story—about a big subject, to be sure, but local and personal nonetheless. So, I reconsidered and approached it in that way.

The story covers only the first ten years of the canal’s 1760s genesis. Starting with general descriptions of the mid-eighteenth century, of Birmingham and of the start of the canal age, short chapters outline the canal’s conception, the selection of the route, the parliamentary steps and various aspects of building the canal and some of the disputes around that. There are images of a number of contemporary (but mainly unattributed) prints and some of the author’s own photographs. The maps are on too small a scale and have not reproduced clearly enough to be helpful. So, while there is little new here, Birmingham’s first canal has a place on a local history shelf, although whose shelf might be something of a surprise to the publisher.

The publisher’s blurb describes the account as ‘highly referenced’. It isn’t. One reason emerges from its roots in 1968. The research draws on a small number of secondary sources, but only two published after 1973, so little of the more recent work of (for example) the Railway and Canal Historical Society (RCHS) and the Birmingham Canal Navigation Society (BCNS) has been used. The primary sources are dominated by Aris’s Birmingham Gazette and by the early minutes of the Birmingham Canal Company, established in 1766. These are referred to only as ‘Company Minute Books’ held by the British Transport Historical Department: but they have been in the National Archives as RAIL810 for many years, and the references should have been updated. Generally, the referencing is weak.

The book would have benefited from good copy editing: there are some sentences arcane in their phrasing and a number of collation errors. It includes a great deal of verbatim text from minute books, newspaper and letters, and this rather obscure eighteenth century language does not help the reader. Better maps of Birmingham and its canal would have been useful. This book does, however, have value. It was not written for those knowledgeable about Birmingham or its hugely important canal. Rather, it provides an interesting, if slightly flawed, introduction to both subjects, addressing as it does only the first years of the story. But in highlighting some of the sharp practices of the early committee, for example, Dr Dawson certainly added to my own knowledge and the opening chapters provide a very succinct outline of the development of both canal navigation and Birmingham.

It is, perhaps, in this respect that the author’s background comes through most strongly. As a modern (and not at all patronising) version of the historical primers produced for young people in the past it will have an appeal, and a value, to those who might otherwise lack access to local history, and could introduce ‘research’ to an audience unfamiliar with it. And while ‘extras’ like the third Appendix, an account of how the author came by his own boat in the 1960s, may belong in the pages of a waterways magazine, they add to the charm of a decidedly idiosyncratic story.

Fabian Hiscock, a canal boater, has researched and written about the story of south-west Hertfordshire and its canal, published by Hertfordshire University Press as Passing through: the Grand Junction Canal in West Hertfordshire, 1791–1841.

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