The Local Historian Volume 40, Number 3 August 2010

By James Bowen

Carriers were an integral and crucial element in the life of every community from the sixteenth century to the early twentieth. They provided a vital service, transporting a wide range of goods, packages, livestock and people, and forming a web of routes and linkages which connected every town with its hinterland, towns to each other, and many towns and cities to the metropolis. At the same time, they disseminated news and information and were an essential part of the social and economic structure which tied town to country and place to place. Carriers are also familiar figures in literature, precisely because of these attributes. Yet they have rarely been analysed in depth and their role, perhaps because it was unglamorous, has been often overlooked. In this article James Bowen provides a case-study of Lancaster, highlighting the importance of the trade directories of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a key source. His analysis of the role of the carriers, the way in which they adapted to the arrival of the railways and reorientated their routes to serve stations and railheads, and the role of inns and family networks, draws attention to the rich potential for further local research on this topic.

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By Patricia Newton

This article was the winner of the 2010 British Association for Local History Publications Awards, and is an edited version of one which originally appeared in the Transactions of the Isle of Man Natural History and Antiquarian Society. Patricia Newton presents the results of her extensive survey of the farming landscapes of the Laxey Valley in the parish of Lonan on the east side of the Isle of Man. Her work involved documentary sources, secondary descriptions (particularly valuable for the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries), maps and plans, and detailed fieldwork among the fields and active and ruined farmsteads of the valley. She outlines its agricultural and economic history, including the impact of lead-mining in the Victorian period, and discusses the social and political influences (such as moves towards disafforestation of the uplands) which helped to shape the present day landscape. The chronological span is very great—from the thirteenth century to the present day—and the result is an exemplary synthesis drawn from many different sources but always focused on the beautiful and historically-rich landscape itself. The local history of the Island is not well-known beyond its shores, and this article, a worthy winner, opens our eyes to its remarkable fascination.

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By Clive D Field

This is the second part of Clive Field’s major work on the English Nonconformists, using a wealth of statistical evidence to portray the social, economic and personal characteristics of congregations, particularly in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The first part dealt with gender, age and ethnicity, defining key personal characteristics of the Nonconformist communities. In this part Field considers the crucial question of occupation, which can be used to build up a reliable profile of the social class and status of congregations. Using a range of surveys and statistical analyses compiled by researchers over the decades, or constructed by the Churches themselves, the paper identifies the distinguishing identities of Quakers (clearly definable as from the upper ranks of society throughout the period), Baptists and Congregationalists. There are many local examples, and a total of seventeen statistical tables, as well as a very comprehensive set of bibliographical notes on sources. For those undertaking local investigations into faith, this article, together with parts 1 and 3, will be an invaluable comparative reference tool.

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By Joanna Loxton

This paper is a detailed case-study of the experience of one Lincolnshire farmer between the end of the First World War and the outbreak of the Second. Walter Henry Owen lived and farmed first at Bridge End and then at North End, tenanted properties about eight miles south-east of Sleaford. Using the exceptionally detailed records which he kept, and which are now deposited at the Museum of English Rural Life, Reading, Joanna Loxton traces the precarious financial viability of the exercise, showing how profit and loss fluctuated (often alarmingly so) but that Owen was able to adapt at surprisingly short notice to changing circumstances. By doing so, he avoided the bankruptcy which was the fate of many small farmers in the period. Her paper is exemplary in its linking of decision-making with the financial evidence of account books, and provides a very full local example set firmly within the context of the broad trends of English agriculture in a troubled and often turbulent time. There is a valuable assessment of the quality of the records themselves, and the unfulfilled potential of the resources of the Museum of English Rural Life’s archives is highlighted.
 

By Anne Rowe

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By Roger Ottewill

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By Ian Hinton

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By Spencer Thomas

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By Hilary Walker

PARKS IN MEDIEVAL ENGLAND by S.A. Mileson(Oxford University Press 2009 229pp ISBN 978-0-19-956567-2) £60
Interest in medieval parks shows little sign of abating and this latest addition to the literature is a welcome and significant step forward, providing a much-needed national overview of the subject. Based on research undertaken for his doctoral thesis, Stephen Mileson takes a fresh look at the evidence and reviews and challenges some long-accepted theories on various aspects of early park history, including the very reasons for their creation.
For many years historians have questioned the importance of hunting as a leisure activity for medieval kings and the aristocracy. Many parks appear to have been too small to accommodate a satisfactory hunting expedition and the few records which exist seem to imply that most hunting was undertaken by servants tasked with providing venison for the lord’s table. Besides their function as ‘venison farms’ the practical and economic uses of parks, as private reserves of pasture, timber and wood, have also been stressed in recent years and their use as hunting spaces by the social elite has been downplayed by many writers (including me). Hunting has been considered even less important in late medieval parks, when park landscapes were more frequently associated with grand houses and when economic conditions favoured ‘mixed use’, such as stock fattening and wood production.
Drawing on a range of evidence, Mileson seeks to re-establish hunting at the heart of medieval aristocratic life and posits the theory that the primary purpose of parks of all sizes and throughout the medieval period was to provide a space for recreational hunting. Building on this assertion, he examines the other potentially important purposes of a park, with chapters on economy, landscape and status. Establishing and maintaining a deer park required substantial financial resources: while it was possible to derive income from a park, Mileson finds that this was generally incidental to the main purpose of creating a hunting preserve. In the chapter on landscape the evidence for deliberate arrangement of features in the park for aesthetic effect is examined and found to be relevant to only a minority of cases. Part I of the book concludes with a critical assessment of the role of parks as status symbols.
The second part comprises a groundbreaking study of the effects which park-making had on different sections of society, from the king and aristocracy to peasants and townsmen. Park creation was often of far greater concern to the neighbouring aristocracy than it was to the king, potentially restricting their hunting rights or access to wood and waste. Bitter disputes sometimes ensued but perhaps were as much concerned with conflicts over perceived social status as with loss of resources. Emparking also had a direct, practical and economic effect on the lives of ordinary people, when it resulted in a loss or restriction of access to land (arable or meadow) or resources (pasture and wood on manorial waste). A stated aim of the book is to stimulate further debate and I have no doubt that this will be the case. Access to that debate will, regrettably, be limited by the high price of the book. Its appearance in paperback will be keenly anticipated.
ANNE ROWE
 

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By Jo Mattingly

CATHOLIC GENTRY IN ENGLISH SOCIETY The Throckmortons of Coughton from Reformation to Emancipation edited by Peter Marshall and Geoffrey Scott (Ashgate 2009 xiv+282pp ISBN 978 0 7546 6432 1) price not known
This edited collection of essays is family history writ large. As the title indicates, the lives of various members of the Coughton branch of the Throckmorton family are interwoven with one grand, and one perhaps lesser known, narratives of British ecclesiastical history. Put another way, family members, both male and female, serve as prisms through which to view the vicissitudes and religious sensibilities of those who remained steadfast adherents of the ‘old faith’.
In the opening chapter the editors provide an extremely helpful overview of the various scholarly contributions to the book and the manner in which the Catholic Throckmortons exemplified ‘the impulse to be at once thoroughly English and loyally Roman’. Thereafter, the contributions are arranged chronologically. This facilitates engagement with particular periods and events, such as the regime of Henry VIII, the Gunpowder Plot, the Civil War, the Restoration, the long eighteenth-century and the early Victorian era. What they clearly illustrate is the skill and guile, combined with a degree of luck, which enabled the Throckmortons not only to maintain their standing in society, alongside other Catholic gentry families and their Protestant neighbours, but also to thwart those who might have weakened their Roman Catholic faith.
They also highlight the attributes and achievements of some of the key members of the dynasty, including Sir George Throckmorton (c.1489-1552), who had the challenging task of staunchly defending the ‘old faith’ while demonstrating loyalty to his almost exact contemporary, Henry VIII; Agnes Throckmorton ( c.1570-c.1648), who epitomised the resilience of a Jacobean recusant widow; and Sir John Courteney Throckmorton (1753-1819), ‘moderniser, anti-clerical, reformer’, who was closely associated with the progressive Catholicism of Cisalpinism and undertook two continental tours, which serve as the focus for one of the chapters. As the saga unfolds there are many opportunities for reflecting upon the changing nature of the challenges the family faced, from a time when to remain loyal to the ‘old faith’ was literally a matter of life and death to a period in the nineteenth century when, although its ‘social and political standing … was enhanced [its] status and influence in the English Catholic Church lessened’.
While the book affords many important insights into the recusant way of life and the political, social and cultural milieu that the Catholic gentry had to negotiate, it is more a work for specialists than generalists. Most of the contributors assume a considerable amount of prior knowledge on the part of the reader and without this some of the chapters are difficult to follow. The one on Coughton and the Gunpowder Plot is a case in point. It is labyrinthine in its complexity and contains multiple references to an overwhelming number of different individuals and families, with a view to establishing links and the existence of both formal and informal networks. As a result, it is sometimes extremely difficult to see the wood for the trees. Nevertheless, for those with the necessary expertise, this book can be thoroughly recommended not only as a fascinating read but also as an inspiration to local historians interested in undertaking their own research, into other recusant families and localities associated with Roman Catholicism in England between the Reformation and Catholic Emancipation in 1829.
ROGER OTTEWILL
 

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By Margaret Shepherd

AN ANALYSIS OF THE HISTORIC FABRIC OF FIFTY BUILDINGS IN THE CENTRAL AREA OF BROMYARD, HEREFORDSHIRE by Duncan James (Bromyard & District Local History Society 2009 152pp no ISBN) available from Bromyard Local History Centre
This report was prepared for the Bromyard Local History Society with lottery funding, and is the seventeenth in a series of studies of aspects of the town’s history. It analyses the structure and siting of fifty buildings in the centre of the town. The report is well produced, the analysis sound and thorough, and the book well illustrated by copious photographs, floorplans and sketches (although with a rather idiosyncratic layout). The explanation of the history of building layouts, which is often such a difficult exercise when so much is disguised by later changes, is well managed and presented, and fulfils the original brief effectively. Problems of access to some buildings have prevented a complete analysis, but this limitation has been overcome in providing an overall picture of the historic town centre.
At times the relationship between buildings is unclear because they are presented in numerical order, rather than in street order, meaning that the reader has to ‘keep crossing the street’. This was probably a difficult choice for the author, since the buildings have been renumbered from their original sequence. Another minor gripe is that there is only one map (which identifies all the buildings surveyed); mapping the buildings with surviving elements from earlier centuries would have been useful.
The main problem, though, is with the brief itself. The report has fulfilled its purpose as a local history study, but this research deserves a wider audience than just the local history society. To achieve this would require some contextual setting: where does Bromyard sit in its surroundings? What made Bromyard develop as it did? How does it relate to neighbouring towns? Since market towns achieve their character and prosperity from their surroundings and industries, each of these questions might help to explain why the buildings of Bromyard developed as they did. An introductory chapter which answered these questions would enable this valuable research to be compared with that for other towns and other counties. The author, it is true, places some of the buildings in the context of other buildings in local towns, but the true value of research of this sort is that it should provide the chance to add to, and reassess, similar work elsewhere.
IAN HINTON
 

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By Andy Gritt

RYE A history of a Sussex Cinque Port to 1660 byGillian Draper with David Martin, Barbara Martin and Alan Tyler (Phillimore 2009 270pp ISBN 978 1 86077 607 6) £25; RYE REBUILT Regeneration and decline within a Sussex Port town 1350-1660 by David and Barbara Martin with Jane Chubb and Gillian Draper(The Romney Marsh Research Trust 2009 306pp ISBN 978 1 906070 11 3) price from the Trust; THE SEA AND THE MARSH The medieval Cinque Port of New Romney by Gillian Draper and Frank Meadows (Pre-Construct Archaeology Ltd monograph 1:, Dorset Press 2009 143pp ISBN 0 9549238 9 5) price from Dorset Press
The first of these three volumes is the impressive product of an integrated research project on Rye and its hinterlands funded, co-ordinated and managed by the Romney Marsh Research Trust. It is a considered, convincing and scholarly account of the town from its origins circa 1000 to 1660, expanding on previous studies, drawing on additional documentary material, and aligning it with archaeological and architectural evidence unavailable to previous authors. It traces the fluctuating fortunes of Rye over this period, attributing boom and bust, expansion and contraction, to location, royal and religious patronage, wars, licensed and unlicensed piracy, the discontinuity of the Black Death and the replacement of the previous elite by emergent families, Huguenot immigration and repatriation, inundations and silting. These factors are set in the context of its membership of the confederation of Cinque Ports and its economic hinterland inland, coastwise and cross-Channel. Capitalising on the vulnerability of its nearest rivals to silting and storms, Rye became established as the pre-eminent port along this stretch of the south coast.
The town exhibited an enviable ability to reinvent itself, promoting a very wide range of crafts and trades that left an indelible mark on the townscape. Thus, ship-service for the Crown was augmented by transporting pilgrims and when this function was abrogated by the western ports it was superseded by the timber trade, for construction, shipbuilding and firewood. Irrespective of the significance of any particular trade, the fundamental raison d’etrethroughout was maritime activity. When Tudor affluence evaporated Rye reverted to fishing and a role as a local market. Trade with London on one hand and Calais on the other was ephemeral whereas the more immediate hinterland afforded a more secure long-term future. Restricted within its ‘island fortress’, Rye’s commendable versatility and adaptability facilitated its adjustment to prosperity and adversity, displaying vacant plots when it stagnated and sub-division, plot-size division, infilling and extensions, including attics and garrets, at the height of its prominence
Understandably there are areas of uncertainty, conjecture and speculation, but the debates and conclusions are justified by analogy with a wigwam, where individual poles might fall but together they support each other and stand up to scrutiny. Some of the maps are over-reduced but this is a minor caveat in a lavishly and pertinently illustrated book. Evoking a continental hill town suspended in time and space, and crowned with St Mary’s church, the seductive attraction of Rye is attributed to the vicissitudes it has experienced. The authors have expertly persuaded the buildings to relinquish their secrets and expose the lives of their inhabitants. This book will be the authoritative work on the history of the town for the foreseeable future.
The companion volume, Rye Rebuilt, analyses the historic built environment of Rye over 300 years. Investigations began on this over thirty years ago, and the book forms part of a wider survey of vernacular buildings in the Rape of Hastings, embracing 36 parishes and four towns in the High Weald which form a nationally significant collection with a distinctive character which could be called apays.
Part 1 discusses the development of Rye between 1350 and 1660 with chapters devoted to the infrastructure, defences, institutional buildings and medieval housing. It charts fluctuations in growth and the emergence of distinctive zones—religious, administrative and commercial—within the compact area of 36 acres on the island site. Part 2 is a gazetteer and inventory of 111 individual historic houses, one-tenth of them pre-1540, illustrated by the authors. In 1565 Rye possessed 530 households, and was among the largest towns in south-east England. The authors debate a number of issues including the origins and rectilinear configuration of the town, but stop short of defining it as a ‘planned new town’, preferring an ‘evolutionary’ explanation. It might be anticipated that a book covering 350 years and over thirty years in the making, and with contributions by numerous collaborators, would be ‘patchy’, but the firm guiding hands of the authors ensure that it is textually tight and of a uniformly high standard.
Eleven miles from Rye is New Romney, which now lies two miles inland but in common with other places along this stretch of the coast was once a thriving port. The Sea and The Marsh explores the relationship between the town and the sea in a broad historical context, involving its role as a Cinque Port, its development from its eighth-century origins, governance, and its connection with skumerie(licensed piracy). Using extensive contemporary sources, building evidence and the results of a succession of archaeological excavations—culminating in a dig in 2002 at Southlands School, on what was once the medieval foreshore—the book furnishes a definitive interpretation of the peak of prosperity and subsequent decline of a Cinque Port from the end of the thirteenth-century, when natural disasters (including storms and silting) and the increasing draught of merchants vessels meant increasing isolation.
The authors challenge assumptions such as Beresford’s proposition that New Romney was an Anglo-Saxon planted town, advancing a convincing alternative that the burgage plots represent a thirteenth-century replanning. They confront the implications of overlordship by the archbishops of Canterbury, and consider the association between Old and New Romney. Medieval parishes are reconstructed, quarters are identified, welfare provision assessed, and demographic shifts considered. Persistent efforts to keep the watercourses and harbour open ultimately failed and before the end of the seventeenth century New Romney had forfeited its status, privileges and influence as a Cinque Port, abandoning the sea and turning inwards to the marsh for its income, largely from sheep grazing.
The small and once important port of New Romney is fortunate to be the subject of such a thorough forensic examination of its topography, medieval structure and economy and the physical and environmental factors which shaped it. Written by well-informed and sympathetic scholars, this copiously illustrated monograph bears the hallmark of authority.
SPENCER THOMAS
 

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By Christopher Barringer

LAND, AGRICULTURE AND INDUSTRY IN NORTH-WEST ESSEX Spotlights on land remembered by Geoffrey Ball (Saffron Walden Historical Society 2009 85pp ISBN 978-1-873669-02-0) £7.50
This book consists of a series of articles, previously published in the Saffron Walden Historical Journal, on various aspects of the land, agriculture and industry of north-west Essex. Each chapter deals with a different topic, giving a flavour of the area around the town at different points in the past. Geoffrey Ball’s background is agriculture, although as an advisor and later in marketing rather than as a practising farmer; and this helps him to provide informed commentary on many of the aspects of topic. The seven chapters provide an eclectic mix of information about the agriculture in the district between 1086 and the early-twentieth century. Ball begins with an overview of how local farming was conducted, considering the manorial and open field systems. Subsequent chapters include case studies of three farms: the Victorian Home Farm at Audley End, Horham Hall Farm near Thaxted in 1807, and Mitchells Farm at Little Walden. Each provides fascinating information not just on the farm described, but also about the source materials employed and the role of each farm in the wider community.
Two chapters deal with the major industries of north-west Essex—wool and malting. The former traces the wool trade from Domesday until its major decline in the late-eighteenth century, referring particularly to the town of Saffron Walden. As well as setting the history of sheep husbandry and the woollen industry in its wider context, it gives much interesting detail about the way it was carried out in the area, including the mechanics of cloth production. Illustrations of some of the implements employed help to bring this once-crucial industry to life. Social history is not ignored, with references to the Woolstaplers’ Hall in Saffron Walden and the annual Bishop Blaize procession, the last of which was held in 1778. The chapter on the malting trade of north-west Essex and east Hertfordshire up to c.1914 refers particularly to floor malting. The operation of the industry and its importance to the region are clearly explained and, again, a variety of illustrations help to recall this vanished trade.
Another chapter deals with a canal that never was. It would have linked the Stort Navigation to the Brandon River in Suffolk, providing a route north-east to the Great Ouse and The Wash. Various plans were suggested in the later-eighteenth century, including one from 1789 which would have brought the canal to Saffron Walden. None came to fruition, because of the opposition of the owners of the Audley End estate through whose land it would have run. This chapter provides a fascinating vignette, does not fit particularly well with the subject matter of the rest of the book.
Geoffrey Ball’s research is of a high standard and a full list of references is included so the interested reader can follow up any points of particular interest. However, the chapters do show their origins as a series of separate articles rather than a book written on the theme of the title. There is little attempt to provide links between them, which is unfortunate—the material is of considerable interest but remains a series of unconnected topics. I recommend this book to anyone wanting to find out more about agriculture and associated industries in this part of the country, as it provides an excellent starting point for further research as well as being an interesting read in itself.
HILARY WALKER
 

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