The Changing Face of English Local History
The Changing Face of English Local History
edited by
R.C. Richardson
First published 2000 by Ashgate Publishing
Reissued 2018 by Routledge
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Copyright 2000 R.C. Richardson
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A Library of Congress record exists under LC control number: 00034852
ISBN 13: 978-1-138-74000-6 (hbk)
ISBN 13: 978-1-315-18392-3 (ebk)
Contents
R.C. Richardson
Stuart Piggott
M.J. Power
M.W. Barley and K.S.S. Train
Joan Thirsk
R.C. Richardson
A.J. Kidd
H.P.R. Finberg
W.G. Hoskins
Alan Everitt
Pat Hudson
Kevin Schurer
R.C. Richardson
Guide
originally appeared in the Proceedings of the British Academy, xxxvii (1957) and is reprinted by kind permission of the author's executors, Stewart and Alison Sanderson.
was first published in the Journal of Historical Geography, xi (1965) and is reprinted by kind permission of the author and of Harcourt Brace and Co. (Publishers).
formed the introduction to the reprint of Thoroton's Antiquities of Nottinghamshire (EP Publishing, Wakefield, 1972) and is reprinted by kind permission of the authors' executors.
formed part of Archaeologia Cantiana, cxi (1993) and is reprinted by kind permission of the author and of the journal.
is from the Local Historian, 26 (1996) and is reprinted by kind permission of the author and of the British Association for Local History.
was first given as an inaugural lecture at University College, Leicester in 1952 and is reprinted by kind permission of the author's executor, Mr A.G, Gostwick.
was Hoskins's inaugural lecture at the University of Leicester in 1966 and is reprinted by kind permission of the author's executor, Susan M. Hewitt.
was first given as an inaugural lecture at the University of Leicester in 1970 and is reprinted here by kind permission of the author.
first appeared in the Local Historian, 25 (1995) and is reprinted here by kind permission of the author and of the British Association for Local History.
is from the Local Historian , 21 (1991) and is reprinted by kind permission of the author and of the British Association for Local History.
MAURICE BARLEY (190991) taught at the University of Nottingham for nearly thirty years from 1946 and was Professor of Archaeology there from 1971 to 1974.
ALAN EVERITT (19262008) was Hatton Professor of English Local History at the University of Leicester from 1968 until 1982.
H.P.R. FINBERG (190074) was Reader and then Professor of English Local History at the University of Leicester from 1952 until 1965.
W.G. HOSKINS (190892) led English Local History at the University of Leicester until 1951 and returned there from Oxford as Professor in the subject from 1965 until his retirement in 1968.
PAT HUDSON is Emeritus Professor of Economic and Social History at the University of Wales, Cardiff.
ALAN J. KIDD IS Emeritus Professor of History at Manchester Metropolitan University.
STUART PIGGOTT (191096) was Abercromby Professor of Prehistoric Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh from 1946 until 1972.
M.J. POWER (19442006) lectured in economic and social history at the University of Liverpool.
R.C. RICHARDSON is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Winchester.
KEVIN SCHURER is Professor of History at the University of Leicester.
JOAN THIRSK (19222013) was Senior Research Fellow in Agrarian History at the University of Leicester (195265) and then Reader in Economic History at the University of Oxford (196583).
K.S.S. TRAIN was Editor of the Transactions of the Thoroton Society.
1
Introduction: The Changing Face of English Local History
R.C. Richardson
I want not arguments to recommend this undertaking to honest and worthy men who wish to see their native country illustrated or to prove that these studies afford the most agreeable and liberal entertainment. If there are any who wish to remain strangers in their own country and city, and children in knowledge, let them enjoy their dream.
William Camden, Britannia, ed. R. Gough (1789), I, ii.
[The] wider purposes of English local history ... I would suggest are essentially concerned with disentangling the ways in which, down to today, the English have related, though the local society or societies with which they have most immediately identified, to a more generalised notion of national belonging.
Charles Phythian-Adams, 'Local History and National History: The Quest for the Peoples of England', Rural History, 2, (1991), 20.
English local history has a long and varied pedigree. The earliest examples of it can be found in the historical writings of the Middle Ages. Bede and William of Malmesbury's histories - to cite just two instances - contain sections at least that deal with the specifics of individual places, though in ways that left no doubt of their authors' over-arching religious and moral purposes. The itineraries of William of Worcester in the late 1470s and of John Leland in the 1530s took the study of local history and topography to new lengths.
The texts of both writings are available in twentieth-century editions: J. Harvey (ed.), The Itineraries of William of Worcester (Oxford, 1969), Lucy Toulmin Smith, (ed.), Leland. The Itinerary (5 volumes, London, 1909-10).
F.S. Fussner, The Historical Revolution. English Historical Writing and Thought 1580-1640 (London, 1962).
Its principal hallmark was an upsurge of interest in English counties, a trend grounded in the prevailing socio-political realities of the day since counties were the miniature worlds dominated by the gentry who provided most of the writers and readers of local history at this time. It was spurred on and facilitated by the Elizabethan Society of Antiquaries and the maps of Christopher Saxton and others.
See May McKisack, Medieval History in the Tudor Age (Oxford, 1971); E.G.R. Taylor, Late Tudor and Early Stuart Geography (Oxford, 1934).
