The Local Historian Volume 28, Number 4 November 1998

By Derek Brumhead

This article first explores the social structure of a district in the gritstone 'dark peak' of north-west Derbyshire, formerly part of the royal forest of Peak, looking at the period 1650-1775. Two series of hearth tax assessments from 1662 and 1670 are analysed statistically to investigate social structure, as represented by the distribution of hearths. There was a moderately wealthy independent class of yeomen and husbandmen who lived in distinctive hall-farms and farms across the district. The characteristic settlement patterns of the 'dark peak', with its dispersed farms, contrast with the nucleated villages and strip fields of the adjacent 'white peak'. The analysis concludes that the 'dark peak', although historically part of High Peak, had an affinity with the dual rural economy of the western gritstone fringes of the Pennines, rather than with the rest of the Peak district. Probate documents are used to examine locally-understood levels of social status, concentrating particularly on the difference between gentlemen, yeomen and husbandmen and on the importance of owning, rather than renting, land. The article concludes by considering the structure of local credit and debt systems, as recorded in inventories, and identifies a system of loans as an important element in rural society.

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By Richard Muir and Joanne Amos

The study of Nidd (North Yorkshire) provides an exploration of the power of the lord in the landscape, firstly as a destroyer of rural homes but then as the source of patronage, providing the survivors and their descendants with a variety of public services. The village of Nidd was an unusually late victim of emparking, disappearing in stages in the course of the creation of a landscape park from about 1820 onwards. The techniques of landscape history are used to explore the details of the process, including the way in which the former village high street was deepened to render travellers less visible from the hall. After the destruction of Nidd the lady of the manor rebuilt the village church on a much grander scale, beginning a tradition of patronage that gave the locality a generous endowment of public buildings. The original, coherent village had disappeared and the settlement that inherited its name was a rather formless scatter of almshouses, farmsteads and other estate buildings located at mainly roadside sites which had escaped the staged expansion of the park.

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By Tony Fairman

Techniques developed by modern linguists to analyse syntax and vocabulary for overt and covert meaning are explained and applied to five Kentish texts handwritten or printed in different styles by different writers on different occasions and in different places. The analysis shows firstly how the syntactic structures of the texts reflect the social structure of the time; secondly, that the five writers agreed that landholders thought of their labourers as completely powerless and achieving nothing of consequence in the world (they merely laboured and were paid only for their labour); and thirdly, how the landholders, by their choice of words to refer to themselves and their labourers, conceptually linked land exclusively with themselves and separated it from the labourers. A poem found stuck inside a farmer's account book is presented as evidence that the landholders hoped their labourers would see the world in the same terms, though an extract from a pauper's letter shows that paupers perhaps thought otherwise - they assumed that they were able to make at least some difference to the world.

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By Elizabeth Roberts

The article, based on Elizabeth Roberts' 1998 BALH Phillimore Lecture, analyses oral evidence from working-class families in three Lancashire towns (Barrow, Lancaster and Preston) for the years 1950-1970. Some 98 people were interviewed, with a balance between the sexes. Respondents were born between 1920 and 1950, with approximately equal numbers from each decade. The material demonstrates parallel patterns of behaviour and attitudes within family life, which were in some cases contradictory. There were some fundamental assumptions about the nuclear family, forming a clear continuity from the earlier part of the century - in the role of mothers, for example, or the rarity of divorce. But there were forces producing change, as individuals were able to make more choices about lifestyles. The article concentrates on the theme of child-rearing and education, from the perspective of the family's attitudes, beliefs and expectations. Parents believed in the importance of giving more materially to their children, and wanted to be less strict than their parents had been. There was a greater interest in the individual right of the child, producing families which were more child-centred. More fathers took an active role in their children's upbringing. Choice in education was increased as grammar school places and the possibility of higher education were opened up to working-class children for the first time. Some parents became very ambitious for their children, but others felt that education was not so important as it was very easy to get work. It becomes increasingly difficult to write with any coherence about working-class attitudes or behaviour during the period 1950-1970 as society became more complex and lifestyles diverged. There was more change than continuity in parental attitudes to the care, upbringing and education of children, and yet the evidence helps us to identify the existence of some constants.

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By Joseph Seliga

The arrival of immigrants from former British colonies changed the social composition of many British towns and cities in the late 20th century. Neighbourhoods in these places have been transformed by immigrants who have established their own economies, social networks and cultural and religious organisations. One such transformation occurred in the Belgrave area of Leicester. Between 1965 and 1995 Belgrave changed from a white working-class neighbourhood to a predominantly Indian neighbourhood, composed of migrants from South Asia and refugees from former British colonies in East Africa. The article examines the dynamics of the transformation, describing the process of Indian migration to Britain and to Leicester in particular. Census and other data are used to analyse the settlement of Indians within Leicester, and the revitalisation of the local economy, the development of Indian home ownership, and the creation of social networks are examined. Finally, a study of the institutionalisation of ethnicity and religion demonstrates that Belgrave is not simply an Indian neighbourhood, but one composed of a majority Gujarati Hindu community in a multi-ethnic area with other Asian religious and ethnic groups as well as white British residents. Local historians, it is suggested, should undertake studies of other British neighbourhoods to which migration has taken place, in order to further an understanding of the dimensions of colonial migration and its effect on urban neighbourhoods and communities.

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By Peter T. Walker

The word 'melgress' which appears in the 1734 records of the manor court of Caldy on Wirral appears to be derived from the Old Norse melr, a sand dune. The article discusses its provenance and the use of grass for sand dune conservation over the centuries.