Name: A History of the County of Cambridge and the Isle of Ely
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A. P. M. Wright

A History of the County of Cambridge and the Isle of Ely

$115.00

This volume contains the histories of 24 parishes in south-east Cambridgeshire, forming the hundreds of Chilford, Radfield, and Whittlesford. Traversed, and in part bounded, by the Icknield Way and the ancient Wool Street, they stretch from the neighbourhood of Cambridge to the Suffolk border. In the valley of the Cam or Granta the arable was cultivated in open fields until the early- rgth-century inclosures. On the south-eastern upland the medieval clearance of ancient woodland in the heavy clays produced much early inclosure, while the heathland lying along the Icknield Way encouraged sheep-farming, and nearer Newmarket is used for stud-farms. Babraham was notable for 17th-century irrigated meadows, and as the home of the Victorian sheep-breeder, Jones Webb. The villages in the river valleys are mostly nucleated; in the less populous eastern part settlement has been more scattered. The former market townof Linton, near the centre of the area, had once two small religious houses, and Castle Camps a motte-and-bailey castle, held by the Veres. Among later mansions, the Tudor Babraham Hall, and Horseheath Hall, a grand classical house, destroyed through its owner's extravagance, have gone. Sawston Hall, the seat of the Catholic Huddlestons during four centuries, survives. The village of Sawston and its neighbours have grown since the 19th-century through the presence of such industries as tanning, paper-making, and the production of fertilizers, and more recently of adhesives, besides light engineering. Further east the land is still devoted mainly to farming.

J. P. C. Roach

A History of the County of Cambridge and the Isle of Ely

$145.00

This volume contains the history of the City of Cambridge, the University of Cambridge and the Colleges and Halls of the University. Also included are Cambridge University and Borough Hearth Tax Assessments.

Andrew Wareham

A History of the County of Cambridge and the Isle of Ely

$140.00

400 articles on the history of East Cambridgeshire, the four hundreds of Cheveley, Flendish, Staine and Staploe.

The contributions of ordinary men and women, as well as gentry, clergy, farming dynasties, merchants and manufacturers, to the history of the towns, village, hamlets and streets of East Cambridgeshire, and to theworking of fens, fields and farms, are clearly revealed in the histories of the twenty-three parishes which make up the four hundreds of Staploe, Staine, Flendish and Cheveley. The region is diverse in character: fenland dominates the north of theregion; to the south lies open field arable and heathland, and in Cheveley hundred in the south-west there are hills, a continuation of the East Anglian heights. Major themes include the economy and drainage of the fens, the development of horse breeding around Newmarket, and the growth of industry and communications around Cambridge. The comprehensive history of each parish is fully referenced, illustrated with at least one map, which is complemented by four hundredal articles and an introduction setting out general themes and issues.

B. E. Harris

A History of the County of Chester

$115.00

This volume contains the administrative and parliamentary history of the county, a chapter on its forests, and a table of population. As a County Palatine in the later middle ages Cheshire developed institutions which differed from those of other English counties. No justices of the peace were appointed there until the 16th century, and the palatine courts were abolished only in 1830. The first part of the volume describes Cheshire's government in the middle ages and its gradual assimilation to `normal' counties, the work of the justices of the peace from the 16th to the 19th century, and that of the County Council until local government reorganization in 1974. Cheshire was also unusual in its failure to achieve parliamentary representation until the 16th century. The story of Cheshire's representation, including that of the city of Chester, is carried from that time to the second general election of 1974.It reveals the influence of many of the leading county families, and particularly that of the Grosvenors in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. Much of Cheshire lay within the forests of Delamere and Mondrem, Macclesfield, and Wirral, whose administration is described in this volume. A table sets out the population of the county, and of all boroughs, urban and rural districts, ancient parishes with their constituent townships, and civil parishes, at everycensus between 1801 and 1971; the table therefore serves also as a key to the administrative geography and economic expansion of the county in the 19th and 20th centuries.

B. E. Harris

A History of the County of Chester

$115.00

VOLUME III contains the history of eccle-siastical organization in Cheshire, both before and after the Reformation, medi-eval religious houses, Chester cathedral, education before 1903, and the more historically important endowedgrammar schools in the county. In the Middle Ages the organization of the church in Cheshire was based on parishes which in the east of the county were exceptionally large, while those of the west resembled more closely the nor-mal English parish. Between 1075 and 1102 Chester was the seat of a bishop; for the rest of the Middle Ages the county lay in the diocese of Coventry and Lichfield. In 15411 the vast but poorly endowed diocese of Chester was formed, extending into Westmorland and the North Riding of Yorkshire. In the 19th century it was reduced in size until it included little more than the county of Cheshire. The county produced both protestant and Catholic martyrs, and the nonconformist sects were well represented. The largest and most important of the religious houses were St. Werburgh's abbey at Chester, which became the cathedral church of the new diocese in 1541, and Vale Royal, a Cistercianhouse founded by Edward I. Recent archaeological work has revealed much about some of the smaller houses, especially Norton. The city of Chester contained, in addition to St Werburgh's, a nunnery, friaries, and hospitals. Like thediocese, Chester cathedral suffered from an inadequate endowment, but its standing among English cathedrals improved under ener-getic deans in the late 19th and the 20th century. The rapid growth of industrial towns, especiallyin north-east Cheshire, created a pressing need for schools, bur the institution of school boards, the late 19th-century solution favoured by central government, failed to make headway. Grammar schools were endowed in many of thetowns and villages in the 16th cen-tury and later, and the histories of seven-teen of them are described in the volume.

B. E. Harris

A History of the County of Chester

$115.00

This volume deals with aspects of the very early history of Cheshire. Successive chapters on Physique, Prehistory, the Roman Period, Anglo-Saxon Cheshire, and the Cheshire Domesday (an introduction and a translation of thetext) provide an outline of events up to the late 11th century. The deposition and evolution of the rocks and soils of the county provided the physical framework for human activity and the raw materials for man's exploitation.A notable instance is the beds of salt which have been worked at least from the Roman period and have caused subsidence in modern times; another is the Mid-Cheshire Ridge which has been a feature as much of the history asof the landscape of the county, with the dramatic site of Beeston castle showing evidence of significant occupation in successive ages. From cairns, barrows, and hillforts to arrowheads and beads, the evi-dence of prehistoric activity is comprehensively surveyed. In the Roman period the legionary fortress at Chester dominates the scene, but systematic consideration is also given to the evidence of civil settlement at Chester and elsewhere, of com-munications, and of industry. For the Anglo-Saxon period, archaeological, documentary, and place-name evidence is brought together to show the origins, associations, and organization of early English society in the county. That chapter leads naturally into the discussion of what can be learned from the Cheshire Domesday, which is evaluated within a wider context to which it brings new insights. Gazetteers supplement the discussion of archaeological sites andfinds, and an abundance of line drawings illustrates the text.

C P Lewis

A History of the County of Chester

$140.00

First of two volumes covers general history and topography.

This is the first of two volumes providing an authoritative and detailed treatment of Chester's history, meticulously researched from the original sources. It provides an account of the city from its Roman foundation to the year 2000, arranged by chronological chapters and covering economic, social, political, administrative, military, religious, and cultural history. Special attention is given to topographical development. Six chronological chapters coverthe history of Chester by period: Roman, Early Medieval (400-1230), Later Medieval (1230-1550), Early Modern (1550-1762), Late Georgian and Victorian (1762-1914), and Twentieth-Century (1914-2000). The topographies of Roman and 20th-century Chester form integral parts of the first and last chapters. A separate chapter deals with Topography 900-1914. The illustrations, many of which have rarely been seen before, are arranged as a pictorial essay.CheshireV.ii: Chester covers individual buildings, institutions, and aspects of Chester's history. There is a full index to the whole volume, including subjects. V.i. contains an index only of persons, places, and buildings mentioned in this part.

Nicholas Orme

A History of the County of Cornwall

$140.00

First survey of the religious history of Cornwall, from the county's Romano-British origins to the sixteenth century.

Highly Commended in Class 6 - Non-Fiction: History and Creative Arts of the Holyer an Gof Awards 2011.

Religious history is the focus of this volume, which covers the development of Christianity in the county from its Romano-British origins up to the Elizabethan Church Settlement of 1559; it provides the first ever in-depth study of the county's religious history during the Middle Ages and the Reformation. The story it tells is a highly distinctive one, full of interest, covering the uniquely numerous local saints and founders, their legends and the parish churches, chapels, holy wells and religious sites associated with them, as well as the larger religious communities. The Cornish clergy are placed in a national context and the impact of their scholarship on the wider word is emphasised.

Five general chapters are followed by detailed histories of the 35 monasteries, friaries, collegiate churches, and hospitals in the county. The book is well-illustrated throughout, with numerous maps, plans,and photographs.

NICHOLAS ORME is Emeritus Professor of History at Exeter University and an honorary canon of Truro Cathedral. He has written some twenty books on English religious, cultural, and social history, including Medieval Children, Medieval Schools, and The Saints of Cornwall.

Philip Riden, Dudley Fowkes

A History of the County of Derby

$140.00

The history of the town of Bolsover and neighbouring parishes, from prehistory to the present day.

The history and topography of the small market town of Bolsover in north-east Derbyshire and four parishes immediately to its north (Barlborough, Clowne, Elmton - including Creswell - and Whitwell) are covered in this volume. Alllie mainly on a magnesian limestone ridge, rather than the exposed coalfield, and therefore only became mining communities late in the nineteenth century. Since the end of deep mining in Derbyshire all have faced a difficult period of economic and social adjustment. As well as the general development of the five parishes, the book includes detailed accounts of the medieval castle at Bolsover, the mansion built on the site of the castle by the Cavendish family of Welbeck in the seventeenth century, and Barlborough Hall, a late sixteenth-century prodigy house built by a successful Elizabethan lawyer.

Philip Riden teaches in the Department of History at the University of Nottingham; he has been the editor of the Victoria County History of Derbyshire since 1996, when he re-established the VCH in the county.

R. B. Pugh

A History of the County of Dorset

$115.00

THIS volume contains a translation of the Dorset section of Domesday Book with a commentary and index. The Exchequer and Exeter texts of the Survey are printed side by side for purposes of comparison. The text of the Dorset section of the Geld Rolls with translation and commentary is appended.

Gillian Cookson

A History of the County of Durham

$140.00

Full and authoritative history of Sunderland, from its origins to the present day.

Famed across Europe during Bede's time and the heyday of Wearmouth monastery, Sunderland found a less celebrated renown in the twentieth century with the distress of its heavy industries between the wars, and their final extinction in the 1980s. Between those very contrasting eras, its story is one of re-invention and of a growing industrial and commercial might. The coal trade transformed the town during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; shipbuilding came to the fore in the nineteenth, and Wearside became the nation's, and the world's, greatest shipbuilder. Though it lacked formal local government before 1835, this was a wealthy and relatively sophisticated town, with a great and spectacular early iron bridge (1796).
This volume covers the history of Sunderland from the earliest times and into the twenty-first century, including its landscape and buildings, government, trade and industry, politics and social institutions.

Gillian Cookson

A History of the County of Durham

$140.00

Tracing the history of Darlington from its beginnings as a small Anglo-Saxon settlement right up to the present, this volume marks the rebirth of the Victoria County History of Durham.

This latest volume in the Victoria Country History of Durham (the first for over eighty years) presents a study of the township of Darlington, part of the parish of the same name. It traces the history of Darlington from the earliest times: a small Anglo-Saxon settlement becoming a flourishing bishop's borough in the middle ages; its growth as an important staging post on the Great North Road during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; and the town'sprosperity during the nineteenth century, reinforced by its situation on the railway network. The story is taken up to the present time, with accounts of Darlington's social, political, topographical and economic history. The latter includes thorough accounts of major industries, including iron and engineering, leather, and the little-known but highly significant worsted and linen manufacturing industries.
GILLIAN COOKSON is County Editor, VictoriaCounty History of Durham.

W. R. Powell

A History of the County of Essex

$115.00

This volume completes Becontree hundred by providing histories of East Ham, West Ham, Little Ilford, Leyton, Walthamstow, Wanstead, and Woodford. The region, rural until the 19th century, is now part of Greater London. Though mainly residen-tial it includes, at Silvertown, Canning Town, and Stratford, one of the largest manufacturing centres in southern England, as well as the Royal Docks. Until 1965 the region remained outside London for admin-istrative purposes. This strongly influenced urban development, especially in East Ham and West Ham, which, as county boroughs, had sole responsibility for local government services and planning in a period of remark-able growth. West Ham, in 1898, was one of the first English towns to come under socialist control. Throughout the region the expanding population demanded the pro-vision of many new schools and churches, each of which is briefly treated in the vol-ume.In dealing with churches an attempt is made to assess the relative strength of the various denominations. Urbanization has swept away most of the visible remains of earlier history. Until the 19th century the region was fashionable with the gentry, and this is reflected in the size of some of the older parish churches, notably at Walthamstow and West Ham. At Little Ilford, by contrast, is one of the smallest churches in Essex. Wanstead House, the palladian mansion designed by Colen Campbell, was demolished in 1823, though much of its park has survived. The northern part of the region, bordering on Epping Forest, retains some attractive wood-land, especially at Walthamstow, Wanstead, and Woodford, where several 18th-century houses also survive. Notable modern build-ings include Wanstead hospital, built as an orphanage (1861), Sir Joseph Bazalgette's metropolitan sewage pumping station at Stratford (1868),and the town halls at East Ham (1903) and Walthamstow (1941). During the Second World War the south part of the region was heavily bombed, and since 1945 there has been large-scale redevelopment, especially at Canning Town, wherethe sky-line is increasingly dominated by tower blocks of council flats.

W. R. Powell, Beryl A. Board, Norma Knight

A History of the County of Essex

$115.00

This volume completes Chafford hundred and covers Harlow hundred. The part of Chafford hundred, now in Brentwood District and Thur-rock borough, includes Aveley, Stifford, Grays Thurrock and West Thurrock beside the Thames and, further north, Childerditch, Brentwood, and South Weald. Grays Thurrock, formerly a small port with a brickworks and a brewery, is now the main centre of the borough. The coastal marshes west of Grays were used mainly as sheep pastures until the 18th century, when large-scale chalk quarrying and lime burning began. The West Thurrock cement industry, which grew up in the 19th century, became one of the largest in Europe. It has since declined and the area isnow used mainly for the storage of oil and petroleum and the manufacture of soap, detergents, and marga-rine. Brentwood, now a large dormitory suburb of London, owed its early growth to its position on the main London-Colchester road, and per-haps also to the cult of St. Thomas the Martyr. The mansions of Belhus, at Aveley, and Weald Hall, South Weald, both dating from the 16th century, were demolished after the Second World War. South Weald park remains as a country park, and so does Thorndon park, including part of Childerditch, but some land in Belhus park was used after 1950 for a housing estate of the London county council. At Purfleet, in West Thurrock, a smaller housing estate occupies the site of powder magazines built by the government in the 1760s. Harlow hundred contained 11 parishes in west Essex, including the ancient market towns of Hatfield Broad Oak and Harlow. Hatfield, with its Benedictine priory, was one of the principal places in Essex in the Middle Ages, but it de-clined after the 16th century, and the hundred remained largely rural until after the Second World War, when five of its parishes became the new townof Harlow, built to rehouse 80,000 Londoners. Hatfield forest, belonging to the National Trust, comprises over 400 ha. There have been extensive maltings at Sheering and Harlow, breweries at Harlow and Hatfield Heath, and a silkmill at Little Hallingbury. Among great houses the 16th-century Hallingbury Place has disappeared, but Barrington Hall and Down Hall, both rebuilt in the mid 19th century, survive. At Netherhall, Roydon, are the remains of a 15th-century gatehouse.

W. R. Powell

A History of the County of Essex

$115.00

This volume is a supplement to the Bibliography published in 1959. It lists printed books, pamphlets, and sale cata-logues located in public libraries, local newspapers and periodicals, and articles published in a range of journals; it is mostly concerned with material published since the compilation of the original biblio-graphy in the mid fifties, but it also includes earlier material which has since come to light; the section on newspapers is a completerevision and updating. Like the Bibliography of 1959 the Bibliography Supplement is divided into three parts: works on the county generally, on bio-graphy and family history, and on individual places and regions.

W. R. Powell

A History of the County of Essex

$115.00

This volume is the first of two containing the history of all the places in Waltham hundred and some of those in Becontree hundred. This region, most of which is now in Greater London, extends eastwards from the River Lea and northwards from the Thames. Until the mid-19th century it was rich farm land, and was also fashionable with the gentry as a place of residence. Its northern fringe is still rural, but the remainder has since 1850 been the scene of a most remarkable example of sustained inflow and settlement of population. This transformation, starting in West Ham, is described for the region as a whole in a special introductory article. The parish histories include Barking andDagenham, which now contain the Becontree housing estate; the residential suburbs of Chingford and Ilford; and the market towns of Epping and Waltham Abbey.

Janet Cooper

A History of the County of Essex

$115.00

The volume, the first full-scale, comprehensive and scholarly history of the ancient borough of Colchester to be published, describes the life of the oldest and for long the largest town in Essex from the Iron Age to 1990. It tells how the stronghold of Cunobelin was replaced by a Roman fortress, later a colonia sacked by Boudica and rebuilt within walls which survived to encompass first a 10th-century burh and later an important medieval town and were tobe severely battered be the Royalist siege of 1648. Colchester's Norman castle continued to serve as the sheriff's seat, housing the county gaol until the 17th century. Nevertheless it failed to become the county town, though chosen in 1962 as the site of the University of Essex, and its functions as an administrative centre were overshadowed by the industrial and mercantile activities described in the volume. Colchester became an important trading centrelinked particularly with the Low Countries, and from the 12th century was noted as a centre of the textile industry, a speciality that encouraged a remarkable growth of population in the later 14th century and that was stimulatedbe the arrival of Dutch refugee clothmakers in Elizabeth I's reign. The decline of the bay industry in the 18th century was compensated for by growing diversity in overseas trade and services. Colchester was notable from the 17thcentury to the 19th as a hive of Protestant nonconformity. It became a garrison town in 1855, a centre of engineering in the late 19th century, and a retail and tourist centre in the 20th. The account is divided into three parts.The first, arranged chronologically, treats the economy, social and cultural life, gov-ernment and politics, and topography. The second deals with particular features and institutions of the town, topic by topic. The third describes topographically the parishes of Greenstead, Lexden, Mile End, and West Donyland, which formed the outlying parts of the liberty.

Beryl A. Board, Pamela Studd

A History of the County of Essex

$140.00

THIS volume is a second supplement to the Bibliography published in 1959. It lists printed books, pamphlets and sale catalogues located in public libraries, local newspapers and periodicals and articles published in a range of journals. It is mostly concerned with material published since the compilation of the previous volumes in 1959 and 1987, but it also includes earlier material which has since come to light. For the first time printed Acts of Parliamenthave been included. Like the Bibliography of 1959 and the Bibliography Supplement of 1987, it is divided into three parts: works on the county generally, on biography and family history, and on individual places and regions.

W. R. Powell

A History of the County of Essex

$115.00

Roman Essex (whole county).

Christopher C. Thornton

A History of the County of Essex

$140.00

An important contribution to the social, cultural and economic history of seaside resorts.

From the 1820s the Essex seaside towns of Walton, and later Clacton and Frinton, were promoted as high-class residential and holiday resorts. After a slow start, hampered by poor communications and low demand, growth was stimulated by steam-ship companies which landed visitors on newly built piers in Walton and Clacton and by the railways that reached Walton in 1867, Clacton in 1882 and Frinton in 1888. The contemporary emphasis upon the health advantagesof the seaside also led to the establishment of many convalescent homes. However, working-class excursionists newly attracted to Clacton, and to a lesser extent Walton, then irrevocably changed the social tone of the resorts.
By the 1920s and 1930s Clacton was a commercialized holiday destination and the funfair-style facilities of its pier rivalled those of any other resort. Nearby Jaywick was established as a cheap and cheerful chalet development. While Walton remained popular with families, Frinton continued as a "select" resort, with building development and commerce strictly controlled. The town remains famous for its wide unspoilt greensward facing the sea and its resistance to any threats to its exclusive character.
Camping, caravanning and holiday camps replaced the traditional seaside holiday after 1945, but from the later 1960s the increase in overseas holidays led to a steep decline ofthe seaside resorts. The economy has, however, since diversified with large dormitory-style housing developments, light industry and new shopping centres, and the coast becoming increasingly popular for retirement homes.
Thisvolume presents an authoritative account of the growth and development of these towns on the so-called "Sunshine Coast".

Edited by Christopher C. Thornton and Herbert Eiden

A History of the County of Essex

$140.00

The book comprises the history of a major part of the Essex coastline in Tendring Hundred before the development of seaside resorts from the mid 19th century onwards (the resorts were covered in VCH Essex Volume XI, to which this is the second part of a companion volume).

It includes analyses of how the economy of the coastal communities from agriculture through fishing to smuggling was moulded by proximity to the sea.
It includes a major exploration of the history of the Soken, a significant area of special legal jurisdiction (a liberty or soke) and of administrative and social organization. The Soken was owned in the Middle Ages by the Dean and Chapter of St Paul's Cathedral, London, and later passed to lay owners, notably the Catholic-leaning Darcy family of St Osyth priory, the Savage family, and the Earls of Rochford (Nassau de Zuylestein) and their descendants.
Additionally, it includes the first full modern accounts of the large parishes of Kirby-le-Soken, Thorpe-le-Soken and Walton-le-Soken (later the site of the seaside resort of Walton on the Naze). Before the Norman Conquest these had once formed a large 'multiple' estate owned by St Paul's Cathedral, and only gradually developed into separate parishes and manors over the course of the Middle Ages. All had coastlines to Hamford Water or the North Sea, and contain many important marshland nature reserves and SSSI. The London Clay cliffs on the open coast at Walton, especially the large promontory known as the Naze with its cap of Red Crag, form a unique coastal landscape of international geological and biological importance. It served as an important coastal landmark for sailors and a Trinity House navigation tower built in 1720 still stands.

Christopher C. Thornton

A History of the County of Essex

$140.00

An important contribution to the social, cultural and economic history of seaside resorts and their hinterland in Essex.

The nine Essex parishes lying in a coastal district between St Osyth and the Naze headland at Walton encompass a number of distinct landscapes, from sandy cliffs to saltmarshes, recognised as environmentally significant. The landscape has constantly changed in response to changing sea levels, flooding, draining and investment in sea defences. Inland, there was an agriculturally fertile plateau based on London Clay, but with large areas of Kesgrave sands and gravels, loams and brickearths. Parts were once heavily wooded, especially at St Osyth.
The district was strongly influenced by the pattern of estate ownership, largely held by St Paul's Cathedral from the mid-10th century.About 1118-19 a bishop of London founded a house of Augustinian canons at St Osyth, which became one of the wealthiest abbeys in Essex. Most other manors and their demesnes in the district were small and their demesne tenants were of little more than local significance. After the Reformation all of the former church lands in the district were granted to the royal servant Thomas Darcy, 1st baron Darcy of Chiche (d. 1558). Darcy built a great mansion, St Osyth Priory, on the site of the former abbey, which became the centre of his new estate.
The area's economy was strongly affected by the coast and its many valuable natural resources, including the extraction or manufacture ofsand, gravel, septaria, copperas and salt, and activities such as fishing, tide milling, wrecking and smuggling. However, it remained a largely rural district and its wealth ultimately depended upon the state of farming. Until the eighteenth century it specialised in dairying from both sheep and cattle, but afterwards production shifted towards grain.
The coastal area has produced significant evidence of early man and was heavily exploited and settled in prehistory. The medieval settlement pattern largely conformed to a typical Essex model, with a complex pattern of small villages, hamlets and dispersed farms, many located around greens or commons. The largest settlement wasthe nucleated village or small town at St Osyth, located outside the abbey gates, which had a formal market and wool fair in the Middle Ages.In the 19th and 20th centuries the coast witnessed the development of seaside resorts atWalton, Clacton and Frinton. Some overspill affected the surrounding more rural parishes, and from the 1920s new types of resort developed in the form of seaside camps, chalets and caravan parks.

C. R. Elrington

A History of the County of Gloucester

$115.00

The volume describes the history of Tewkesbury and 22 other parishes lying mainly between the Severn and Bredon and Cleeve Hills. Tewkesbury itself was once an important centre for communications, manufacture, trade, and administration; its great abbey church remains, and the many timber-framed houses recall its past prosperity. Bishop's Cleeve had a monastery in the 8th century and later became a demesne manor of the Bishop of Worcester. There was an early minster church at Beckford, and at Deerhurst a Saxon monastery with a remarkable church that is still in use. At Forthampton part of the Abbot of Tewkesbury's manor-house survives. There were also substantial lay estates, not only the great manor of Tewkesbury, long owned by the Earls of Gloucester, but also those of lesser baronial families, like the Beauchamps, Pauncefoots, and Cardiffs. The land, once densely wooded, has mostly long been agricultural,though in Corse and Tirley parts of the former chase were not inclosed until 1797, and there were large sheep-pastures in the hills. Prestbury was becoming residential by the late 18th century and later on engineering works stimulated the growth of other places in the area.

N. M. Herbert

A History of the County of Gloucester

$115.00

This volume contains the histories of the 22 parishes in the hundreds of Brightwells Barrow and Rapsgate, extending from the Cotswold escarpment above Gloucester to the Thames at Lechlade and including much of the Churn, Coln, andLeach valleys. Although Cranham and Chedworth parishes had extensive ancient beechwoods and Kempsford and Lechlade wide meadows bordering the Thames, most of the area was formerly one of traditional Cotswold agriculture based onlarge open fields and downland sheep-pastures. After enclosure large sheep-farms grew turnips and grass leys, but the late- 19th-century depression caused many to be taken in hand and converted to new uses like dairying. Pocketsof industry included cloth-mills in Bibury and elsewhere, a paper-mill at Quenington, and potteries at Cranham. The towns of Fairford and Lechlade did not develop industrially, serving mainly as markets and as stages on the Londonroad. At Lechlade goods, particularly cheese, were consigned by river to London. The manors, mainly monastic in the Middle Ages, passed later to families which ranged from aristocrats like the Thynnes and Cravens to local gentrylike the Partridges, Sheppards, and Kebles. In the 19th century new owners from com-merce included a Jewish financier, the founder of the Horlicks firm, and Lanca-shire cotton-manufacturers. Much of the area, particularly the large estates based on Williamstrip Park and Hatherop Castle and the villages along the Churn valley, shows the influence of 19th-century owners. Less typical parishes include Brimpsfield and Cranham, where early settlement was scattered, and Chedworth, with an influx in the late 17th century and the 18th of independent craftsmen.

C.R. Elrington

A History of the County of Gloucester

$115.00

This volume gives the history of the six parishes in Westbury hundred and the sixteen in Whitstone hundred. Both hundreds abut the River Severn. Westbury hundred, on the right bank, adjoins the Forest of Dean: the landscape is relatively wild and large areas of woodland survive. The hundred lies in two parts, including at its north-eastern end the crossing of the Severn at Over Bridge and at its south-western end the crossing of the Wye at Chepstow Bridge.The new Severn Bridge, replacing the ancient ferry from Beachley to Aust, crosses the south--western extremity. Most of the parishes are large, and settlement within them tends to be scattered. Highnam Court (in Churcham parish)and the former Westbury Court, from which the unusual water-garden survives, were two of the county's more notable country houses. The small town of Newnham, squeezed between river and forest, had a Norman castle and was the placefrom which Henry II left England for his conquest of Ireland. The history of Lancaut, the remote little parish lying on the Wye outside Offa's Dyke, is included in this volume under Tidenham. Whitstone hundred, on the left bank of the Severn, is mainly flat agricultural land, but the eastern parishes climb the Cotswold escarp-ment and were part of the Stroud Valley clothing district. The area is one of varied settlement and economy, including riverside hamlets as in Longney and Saul, former weaving hamlets like Randwick, and scattered moated sites, such as those of Haresfield, Moreton Valence, and Quedgeley. Among buildings that recall monas-tic connexions are the fine 12th-century church of Leonard Stanley, the great tithe-barn at Frocester, and the manor-house at Standish; secular buildings include among country houses Hardwicke Court, Frampton Court, Whit-minster House, and the demolished 19th-century mansion at Fretherne, and large clothing mills at Eastington, King's Stanley, and Stonehouse.

N. M. Herbert

A History of the County of Gloucester

$115.00

The volume describes thirteen hundred years in the life of the city of Gloucester from the late 7th century A.D. to the mid 1980s. William the Conqueror's order for the Domesday survey at his Christmas council at Gloucester in 1085, the spectacu-lar architectural achievements of the monks and their masons at St. Peter's abbey in the 14th century, and the city's resistance to the siege which turned the course of the Civil War in 1643 are events of nationalsignificance familiar to students of English history. Less well known is the complex story of development in which those events are landmarks. The volume describes how the Saxon borough, formed in the shell of Roman colonia at a crossing of the river Severn, became in the early Middle Ages a royal administrative centre, military base, and seat of religious foundations; it exam-ines the variety of economic functions which sustained the city throughout the medieval and early modern periods, with at different times ironworking, clothmaking, the trade on the river, pinmaking, market trade, and banking coming to the fore; and it traces the efforts of the townspeople to gain control of their own affairs and recounts how the system of government which they secured from the Crown in 1483 hardened into oligarchy in the 16th century, fuelled politi-cal dissension in the 17th, and proved surprisingly effective as a force for city improvement in the 18th. It tells how in the 19th century railways and the trade brought by the Gloucester and Berkeley ship canal gave a new direction to the Georgian cathedral city, bringing new industries and rapidgrowth, and how an array of public bodies grappled with the consequent need for better public services, new churches, and schools. The story of Gloucester is continued into the later 20th century when changing patterns of employment and major redevelopment removed many familiar landmarks, leaving the ornate Perpendicular cathedral and the extensive Victorian docks as the most substantial reminders of a rich and varied history. The account of Gloucester'shistory is divided into three parts. The first is a sequence of five chapters, divided chrono-logically. The second deals with particular features and institutions of the city, topic by topic. The third describes topographicallythe outlying hamlets and parishes that have been taken into the modern city.

A.R.J. Jurica

A History of the County of Gloucester

$140.00

Describes the area's varied agrarian history and industrial activity.

This volume of the county history covers the part of north-west Gloucestershire extending from the foothills of the Malverns in the north to the distinctive feature of May Hill in the south. Centred on the parish and former markettown of Newent, it also covers the ancient parishes of Bromesberrow, Dymock, Huntley, Kempley, Longhope, Oxenhall, Pauntley, Preston, and Taynton.
Over much of the area a pattern of scattered farmsteads and small fields emerged from the clearance of ancient woodland. That process continued after the Norman Conquest but with the consolidation of farms from the later middle ages the story became one of the abandonment of numerous farmhouses and farmsteads. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries road improvements facilitated the growth of outlying villages and squatter settlement on common and waste land created a number of hamlets, as on May Hill and on the Herefordshire border at Gorsley.
The volume also describes the area's varied agrarian history, from sheep, dairy and arable farming to its orchards, and, more recently, viniculture. Industrial activity has included glassworks and ironworks,and charcoal production. Newent, the chief trading centre from the thirteenth century on, saw both a short-lived coalfield, one of the principal objects for the construction of Herefordshire and Gloucestershire canal, and a spa.

J.H. Chandler

A History of the County of Gloucester

$140.00

Describes the area's varied agrarian history and industrial activity.

This volume provides authoritative accounts of thirteen ancient parishes alongside the River Severn near Gloucester or its tributary, the Leadon. Ten form a contiguous block north and west of Gloucester, extending from Upleadon toSandhurst; two more, Minsterworth and Elmore, lie on opposite banks of the Severn below Gloucester. The volume also includes Twyning, a parish near Tewkesbury bordering Worcestershire.
It is a countryside of extensive meadows vulnerable to periodic flooding, of rich farmland between prominent, formerly wooded ridges, and of dispersed small settlements. Arable farming, which was widespread under its medieval monastic owners, eventually gave way to dairying, but cider and perry orchards, quarrying and fishing have also been important. River trade and settlement, and crossings by bridge and ferry, have influenced the area's economy and communications pattern, and its proximity to Gloucester attracted prominent citizens to build country houses and acquire estates there. Most parishes retain medieval work in their churches, and timber-framed domestic buildings are widespread. More recently, at Hartpury, the largest and most populous parish included in the volume, a large college campus has developed. .

John Jurica worked until his retirement in 2010 for the Gloucestershire VCH as assistant editor from 1973, and from 2007 as county editor: John Chandler, who had previously worked for the VCH project in Wiltshire and Herefordshire, was contracted in 2011 by the Gloucestershire County History Trust as editor to complete this volume and bring it topublication.

R. A. McKinley

A History of the County of Leicester

$115.00

Published by Boydell & Brewer Inc.

J. S. Cockburn, H. P. F. King, K. G. T. Mc Donnell

A History of the County of Middlesex

$115.00

This volume completes the 'general' history of the county which was begun in 1911 in Middlesex II. It contains illustrated articles on the physique and pre-history of Middlesex, from Palaeolithic to Pagan Saxon times, on its religious houses and ecclesiastical organization, and on education within the county. It also includes a translation of the Middlesex section of Domesday Book with map, commentary, and index. The sequence of articles on education includes histories of working-class and private education, accounts of endowed schools, and a history of the University of London and its constituent colleges and schools.

J. S. Cockburn

A History of the County of Middlesex

$115.00

This contains histories of ten ancient parishes in north-west Middlesex. Wealthy Lon-doners began to buy property here during the Middle Ages and later settled in fine houses, exemplified by the Jacobean mansion of Swake-leys. Thearea in return supplied the capital with corn, livestock, and, increasingly, with hay and garden produce. In Uxbridge it possessed a medieval market town, whose prosperity grew with the coach trade, and in Harrow, from the 18th century, it boasted a fashionable school. Until the 19th century, however, the parishes were mainly rural and even backward, since agriculture was hampered by the heavy London Clay. The countryside receded only gradually, with thecutting of canals and the digging of brickearth, followed by the penetration of rail-ways and the spread of housing around the railway stations. In 1920 the hay-fields of Perivale, a parish centred around five farms, still contrasted with the factories of Southall, al-though the sale of private estates for development was soon to leave only some carefully preserved open spaces. Contrasts persist today: between the slopes along the Hertfordshire border, with their trees and large residences, and the housing estates which stretch away to the south; between the high streets of Harrow-on-the-Hill and Pinner, scarcely changed in the 20th century, and the M 1 and M 4 motorways; between the village greens at the heart of Norwood and Northolt and the shopping centre under con-struction at Uxbridge; between churches, alms-houses, moats, and barns on one hand, and on the other the stadium and Empire Pool and Arena atWembley, and London Airport, which has obliterated the hamlet of Heathrow and covered most of the parish of Harmondsworth. The volume contains 19 pages of illustrations, two street-plans, and nine maps.

T. F. T. Baker

A History of the County of Middlesex

$115.00

The volume relates the history of Ossul-stone hundred and of the parishes of Friern Barnet, Finchley, and Hornsey, which form the outer part of the hundred's Finsbury division. The article on Hornsey covers Highgate village, including the half which lay within the county of London from 1889 until 1965, and a peninsular part of the parish, south-east of Seven Sisters Road, transferred to London in 1899. Before their inclusion in Greater London in 1965, Friern Barnet was an urban district, with 29,000 inhabitants, and Finchley and Hornsey were municipal boroughs, with populations of 69,000 and 98,000. The parishes stretch from Whetstone, on the old Hertfordshire boundary at the northern tip of Friern Barnet and Finchley, to Finsbury Park, little more than 3 miles from the city of London. Finchley and Hornsey manors belonged to the bishop of London, while Brownswood in south--eastern Hornsey was a prebendal estate of St Paul's cathedral, whose chapter also acquired Friern Barnet manor. There was much woodland, in addition to Finchley Common and the bishop's park in Hornsey, and settlements before the 19th century were small, except along the Great North Road. Highgate, on a hill top where the road entered Hornsey park, has had wealthy residents since Tudor times and retains many 17th- and 18th-century houses. Elsewhere the scene is mainly residential, including large subdivided villas of the 1860s around Finsbury Park, millionaires' homes where Finchley parish borders Hampstead, and, besides 20th-century infilling, avenues and shopping parades of the 1890s where builders created homo-geneous suburbs out of the villages at Crouch End and Muswell Hill. Friern Hospital formerly occupied 165 a. in Friern garnet, when it was well known as Colney Hatch Asylum.

T. F. T. Baker

A History of the County of Middlesex

$115.00

The volume relates the history of four parishes in Gore hundred and of the five which form Edmonton hundred. The first group contains Hendon, Kingsbury, and Little Stanmore, all bordering Edgware Road, and Great Stanmore. A northward projection of Ossulstone hundred separates it from the second, consisting of Edmonton, Enfield, and Tottenham, along the Essex boundary following the river Lea, and of South Mimms, finally transferred to Hertfordshire in 1965,and Monken Hadley, transferred in 1889 but now part of Greater London. In size the parishes range from Monken Hadley, with 695 a., to Enfield, among the largest in England with more than 12,000 a.; the most populous, Totten-ham with Wood Green, had well over 200,000 inhabitants by 1931. The story is of the rise of roadside settle-ment, of the purchase of land by Lon-doners, of suburban growth around railway stations and along new avenues, and, most recently, of rebuilding. Today's residents include a large Jewish community at Golders Green and coloured immigrants in working-class Tottenham and Edmonton. The scene is mainly suburban, although varying from the villas of late Victorian and Edwardian Southgate to ferry-built terraces farther east, and from Hampstead Garden Suburb to municipal housing estates and tower blocks. Many houses in Enfield, Mill Hill, Monken Hadley, South Mimms, and Stanmore are leftfrom the genteel villages of 18th- and early- 19th-century Middlesex. Park-land and farms survive in the north, notably in South Mimms, where Wrotham and Dyrham parks stand in their grounds, and around the former royal forest ofEnfield Chase. Canons, the area's most famous mansion, is recalled by the remnants of its park, close to the church where the princely duke of Chandos lies buried. Industry is confined mainly to the Lea valley, where the Royal Small Arms factory produced the first Enfield rifle in the 1850s, and to sites near Edgware Road, where Hendon Aerodrome lay. Other landmarks include the Alexandra Palace, whence the earliest television service was relayed, HarringayStadium and Arena, and the White Hart Lane ground of Tottenham Hotspurs football club.

T. F. T. Baker

A History of the County of Middlesex

$115.00

The volume is the first to cover parts of Middlesex which lay from 1889 until 1965 within the administrative county of London, with histories of the parishes of Islington and Stoke Newington. Before their inclusion in Greater London the parishes embraced the metropolitan boroughs of Islington and Stoke Newington, with a total population of over 250,000. Detached parts of Hornsey parish are included in the account of Stoke Newington. Islington, stretchingnorth from where two routes from the City met at the Angel, was built up early with roadside settlements along Upper Street and High Street, forming Islington town, and farther north at bower and Upper Holloway. Canonbury, Highbury, and Barnsbury, which had been medieval manors, were built up as middle-class suburbs in the 19th century. The south-west corner of the parish, near King's Cross, was given over to industry, working-class housing, and institutions, which included the royal Caledonian asylum, the Metropolitan cattle market, and Holloway and Pentonville prisons. Islington was noted in the 19th century for its evangelical churchmanship and in the 20th for local political issues. Stoke Newington lay on the north-east side of Islington and was a much smaller parish. Settlement grew up along High Street, which was a stretch of Ermine Street forming the eastern boundary with Hackney, and along Church Street, which joined it at right angles. Stoke Newington was favoured by wealthy City men, many of whom from the late 17th century had marked nonconformist leanings. From the 19th century successive waves of immi-grants from Londonand its east end gradually changed the character of the parish, although they did not reach the north-western part until the building of the large Woodberry Down estate after the Second World War. The area today contains littleopen space, apart from Highbury Fields in Islington and Clissold Park and Abney Park Cemetery in Stoke Newington. Most of the housing consists of 19th-century terraces and villas. Large-scale refurbishment from the 1960s has helped to promote conservation but, by leading to the 'gentrification' of parts of Islington, to produce controversy and social divisions.

T. F. T. Baker

A History of the County of Middlesex

$115.00

The volume is the second to cover parts of Middlesex which lay from 1889 until 1965 within the administrative county of London, and contains histories of the parishes of Hampstead and Paddington. Before their inclusion in GreaterLondon the parishes embraced the metropolitan borough of Hampstead and most of that of Paddington, with a total population of over 200,000. Queen's Park, built in a detached part of Chelsea parish, is included in the account of Paddington. Hampstead rose northward from Chalk Farm to the heath and Finchley and, less steeply, north-eastward from Kilburn High Road. Hampstead town encroached upon the heath, which was waste of the medieval manor. There was roadside settlement at Kilburn and piecemeal building elsewhere on the heath. The town's healthy elevation attracted rich Londoners before and after its spell as a fashionable spa in the early 18th century. Narrow and hilly streetshelped to preserve it in the 19th, as fields and parkland were covered by mainly middle- and upper middle-class suburbs, including Belsize Park and Swiss Cottage. The heath, protected by influential residents, became a playgroundfor Londoners. In the 20th century Hampstead was also noted for its artistic and intellectual life. Paddington, smaller but more populous, lay between Edgware Road and Bayswater Road, which converged at Tyburn gallows near MarbleArch. Early settlements were Paddington Green, Westbourne Green, and Bayswater. Northern and southern halves became separated by lines of road, canal, and railway. Systematic house-building began soon after 1800 in Tyburnia and Bayswater, before spreading beyond the industrial belt to form Maida Vale and a humbler district towards Queen's Park. Parts of southern Paddington, near Hyde Park, rivalled Belgravia, while Whiteley's stores made Westbourne Grovea busy shopping centre. Institutions included the G.W.R. termi-nus, St. Mary's hospital, and the Metropolitan music hall. By 1900 lodging houses and small hotels had multiplied, as had canalside slums, which were cleared only after war damage and further decay. Both parishes today contain residential areas that have remained expensive and others where redevelopment has given way to refurbishment. Hampstead retains a compact centre including 18th-century buildings, with large later houses in the avenues to the south and west. Paddington, urbanized and with more municipal housing, retains its ambitious layout of streets and squares, where many stuccoed terraces s

T. F. T. Baker

A History of the County of Middlesex

$115.00

This volume is the third to cover parts of Middlesex which lay from 1889 until 1965 within the county of London. It treats the history of Hackney, the largest parish transferred in 1889, which became a metropolitan borough with over 220,000 inhabitants before giving its name to a Greater London borough. The volume traces the origin of Hackney within the bishop of London's extensive Stepney manor, with medieval settlement round the church and at Dalston by the 13th century, and at Clapton and Homerton by the 14th. Hackney Wick and Shacklewell also had medieval origins. Before 1750 most people lived along Mare Street and its offshoots. London has been decisive, malting Hackney a desirable retreat, healthy but accessible, before turning it into a largely industrial suburb. Aldermen bought property there in the 13th century, as did Bank of England directors in the 18th. Nobles and courtiers abounded in Tudorand early Stuart times, when monarchs visited. Samuel Pepys admired girls at the fashionable schools and Daniel Defoe praised an opulence said in 1756 to sur-pass that of any village in the kingdom. The 18th century brought canals, rail-ways, factories, substantial villas, and jerry-built terraces for workers from the old East End. Britain's first plastics were made at Hackney Wick in the 1860s, and other products became household names. By 1901 south Hackney, with Shoreditch and Bethnal Green, formed the centre of London's clothing and furniture trades. The better off retreated northward. Their houses, if not subdivided, gave place to council estates, often for Londoners and forwhich more room was to be made by bombing. The population has shrunk over seventy years. Since 1945 Much heavy industry has left and immigrants have come mainly from the new Commonwealth, although Jews remain prominent around Stamford Hill. 'Gentrification', delayed by the widespread distribution of council estates and lack of an Underground rail-way, is bringing the refurbishment of older houses, often in the shadow of tower blocks which themselves areunder threat.

T. F. T. Baker

A History of the County of Middlesex

$115.00

The volume completes the coverage of the administrative county of Middlesex as it existed until 1965, with histories of the parishes of Acton, Chiswick, Ealing, West Twyford, and Willesden, together forming the outer part of the Kensington division of Ossulstone hundred. The article on Ealing covers Old Brentford, in Ealing parish, and New Brent-ford, a chapelry which formed the southern part of Hartwell parish, in Elthorne hundred. Before their inclusionin Greater London the parishes embraced the municipal boroughs of Acton, Brentford and Chiswick, and Willes-den, and part of the borough of Ealing, with a total population of some 250,000. The area lies between the river Brent and the Thames, stretching from Edgware Road in the north-east to Brentford High Street. Many estates belonged to the bishop of Lon-don or to prebendaries of St. Paul's cathedral. Brentford, owing its prosperity to the Thames, to roadside inns, and to the market gardens of its hinterland, was the largest centre by the 17th century, when good access to the royal palaces and to London drew prominent resi-dents to Chiswick and Ealing. Most of the land was builtover in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when Ealing claimed to be the queen of upper-middle class suburbs. Mean-while the decline of Brentford was followed by the growth of industry in much of Acton and W illesden. The modern scene is mainly one of sub-urban housing, intersected by railways and busy roads, including the M4 motorway. Contrasts nonetheless abound, with factories at Park Royal and along the Great West Road, shops and offices in Ealing Broadway and Chiswick High Road, tower-blocks and decayed terraces at Kilburn, the early garden suburb of Bedford Park, the riverside 'villages' of Old Chiswick and Strand-on-the-Green, and the landscaped grounds of GunnersburyPark and Chiswick House.

Susan Reynolds

A History of the County of Middlesex

$115.00

CONTAINED in the volume, originally published in 1962, are the histories of fourteen parishes in south-west Middlesex: Shepperton, Staines, Stanwell, Sunbury, and Teddington in Spelthorne hundred; Heston-and-Isleworth and Twickenham in Isleworth hundred; and Cowley, Cranford, West Drayton, Greenford, Hanwell, Harefield, and Harlington in Elthorne hundred. The whole area is now divided between the London Boroughs of Ealing, Hillingdon, Hounslow, and Richmond upon Thames and the District of Spelthorne. Among its extensive modern suburbs are the vestiges of the earlier agricultural villages, and the best known of the surviving large houses are Syon House, Osterley Park, and StrawberryHill. The index covers both Volumes Two and Three.

Patricia E.C. Croot

A History of the County of Middlesex

$140.00

Like so much of Middlesex, Chelsea was swallowed up by Greater London. Here its history restores its lost identity.

Chelsea was a desirable riverside residence for wealthy merchants, lawyers, and courtiers from the fifteenth century, and a pleasure resort for all ranks of society from the eighteenth; it is now one of the most expensive and desirable places to live in London. This new volume relates all this and more, including a re-examination of the location of Sir Thomas More's house, a reassessment of Henry VIII's relationship with the manor house, the history of a major estate not previously identified, and a survey of the farm-gardening which gave prosperity to some local inhabitants. Facets of Chelsea's more recent history covered include the rebuilding of eastern Chelsea, which removed alarge lower middle- and working-class population and replaced their accommodation with houses for the well-off; the artistic community which grew up in the late nineteenth century from which Chelsea derived its bohemian reputation; and the cultural and commercial changes of the Swinging Sixties.

Patricia Croot

A History of the County of Middlesex

$140.00

Authoritative, comprehensive history of the City of Westminster.

The City of Westminster is the seat of the monarchy and government of Great Britain and the centre of many aspects of British economic and cultural life, yet to date there has been no comprehensive history of the city. It is thisgap which this volume will fill.
The book opens with an explanation of what makes Westminster unique and follows with detailed sections on landownership and religious history. The section on landownership treats the history and ownership of the manors, the large medieval inns, and the estates created from the 16th century onwards; that on religious history provides a general chronological introduction to religious life in the city, and detailed accounts of the history and buildings of all the Christian denominations and other Faiths.

PATRICIA CROOT is at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London.

Mark Page

A History of the County of Northampton

$95.00

Comprehensive and authoritative history of Corby and Great Oakley, charting their growth and development from the early medieval period to the present day.

Lying in north Northamptonshire, close to the borders with Leicestershire and Rutland, the neighbouring parishes of Corby and Great Oakley were formerly part of the ancient administrative division of Corby hundred. Both remainedagricultural villages, typical of much of rural Northamptonshire before 1932 when the landscape of the area was dramatically altered by large-scale industrialisation associated with the production of iron and steel following the discovery of rich ironstone deposits to the north and east of Corby village. Corby was most directly affected by these changes, with the parish experiencing a dramatic rise in population after the Stewarts & Lloyds Company chose toconcentrate their entire steel producing operation there. Between 1932 and 1950, the increasing population resulted in the hasty construction, firstly by the Stewarts & Lloyds Company and later by the Corby UDC, of housing estates on former agricultural land adjacent to the steelworks, before Corby was designated a New Town in April 1950 and responsibility for it passed to the Corby Development Corporation. From this point on, Great Oakley was inexorablydrawn into the expanding new town as it spread southwards, eventually being incorporated firstly into Corby urban district in1967 and in 1993 into Corby Borough.
Although Corby is perhaps best known for the social problems or"New Town Blues" that blighted it after the steelworks (the town's principal employer) closed in 1980, this volume documents the lesser known medieval and early modern history of Corby and Great Oakley; it shows how generations of inhabitants utilised the rich natural geology and the abundant woodland to supplement the local agrarian economy, before examining in detail Corby's industrialisation, physical and economic growth, post-industrial decline and 21st-century regeneration.

Mark Page is Assistant Editor, Victoria County History, Oxfordshire; Matthew Bristow is Research Manager, Victoria County History.

Alan Crossley

A History of the County of Oxford

$115.00

This volume contains the history of the four large parishes in north Oxfordshire that formed the hundred of Banbury: Banbury, Charlbury, Cropredy, and Swal-cliffe. The four parishes do not constitute a single, compact area, and are linked together because they belonged in the early Middle Ages to the bishops of Lincoln and probably represent ancient estates exempted from royal dues for the benefit of the bishops' predecessors in the see of Dorchester. Banbury itself contains an early castle and represents the successful estab-lishment of a 'new town' in the 12th century. From 1554 to 1832 it was a parliamentary borough; it was widely known for its Puritanism, and won a place in literature not only for the Banbury Cross of the nursery rhyme but also for its cakes, cheese, and ale. Its character as a market town was changed by industrial growth in the 19th century, the traditional textile industries yieldingto the manufacture of agricultural implements, which was in turn over-shadowed in the 20th century by food-manufacture, light engineering, and alu-minium. By contrast, Charlbury, lying 14 miles south-west of Banbury, is a small and relatively little-known market town which was a centre of the gloving industry. Both Charlbury and the rural parishes of Cropredy and Swalcliffe are unusually well documented because they contained exten-sive estates of abbeys and colleges. Each of the four parishes contains several separate villages, and, in all, the volume covers an area of over 20,000 acres and more than 20 settlements.

Alan Crossley

A History of the County of Oxford

$115.00

This volume contains the histories of 19 parishes in the northern part of Wootton hundred, stretching from Stonesfield, Wootton, and Tackley in the south to Deddington, Barford St. Michael, and South Newington in the north; the other parishes are Glympton, Heythrop, Rousham, Sandford St. Martin, the Astons, the Bartons, the Wortons, and the three Tews. The area, bounded on the east by the river Cherwell and on part of the west by the river Glyme, containsthe small, well documented, market town of Deddington, two outstanding country houses at Heythrop and Rousham, and many other notable secular and ecclesiastical buildings. Probably the best known village is Great Tew, whose development is here reinterpreted in the light of new evidence. The many deserted village sites in the area are treated in detail, and special attention has been given to the arrangement of open fields, of which a local feature was thedevelopment within a single vill of two separate sets of fields, known as ends or sides, as at Deddington, Duns Tew, and South Newington. The complex arrangements for the periodical division of common meadows are well documented in some parishes, particularly North Aston. A feature of religious life in the area was the establishment at Nether and Over Worton in the early 19th century of a strong, locally influential, tradition of evangelical Anglicanism. The volume is illustrated with 20 pages of plates, two church plans, and numerous parish and village maps.

Alan Crossley

A History of the County of Oxford

$115.00

This volume contains the histories of five ancient parishes in the west of Oxfordshire near the river Thames, comprising the small town of Bampton and some 13 villages and hamlets. Though chiefly looking to markets at Witney and Oxford the area was long dominated by Bampton, the centre of a large Anglo-Saxon estate, site of a late Anglo-Saxon minster, and formerly a market town. A detailed account is given of the town's topography, buildings, and economicdevelopments and the organization of the local landscape from an early date is explored. Most villages were nucleated, and despite some controversial early inclosures, notably at Northmoor, open-field farming prevailed until the 19th century. A few scattered hamlets and farmsteads resulted probably from woodland clearance or late colonization, and several settlements were shrunk or deserted in the late Middle Ages. Standlake had a medieval market and fair,and until the late 17th century there was textile and leather working notably at Standlake and Bampton. Important buildings include the former Bampton castle, the 15th-century timber-framed manor house at Yelford, and CokethorpeHouse. Bampton church is of unusual size and quality, and carvings in Ducklington church may be associated with a late medieval cult of the Virgin. Cote was an important centre of religious noncon-formity from the 17th century.

Mary D. Lobel

A History of the County of Oxford

$115.00

Bullingdon Hundred, including Cowley, Cuddesdon, Headington, Iffley, Nuneham, Courtney.

Simon Townley

A History of the County of Oxford

$140.00

Authoritative account of the history of villages in the western parts of Oxfordshire, including Kelmscott, famous for its pre-Raphaelite associations.

Located on Oxfordshire's western fringe between the rivers Leach and Thames, the nine rural settlements covered in this volume are typical Cotswold villages, with their limestone-built farmhouses, their former open fields, and their extensive former sheep pastures. All belonged to a sizeable late Anglo-Saxon estate whose break-up gave rise to the later parish structure: Langford church, with its celebrated late eleventh-century tower, may have begun as a small minster. Excavations at Radcot have revealed much about the settlement's early character, including the discovery of a twelfth-century castle. The area as a whole is predominantly agricultural, though milling, malting and quarrying have all been significant. Woodland at Bradwell Grove was important from the middle ages. In later years the villages developed in diverse ways, displaying contrasting closed and open characteristics.
The most famous village is arguably Kelmscott, where the designer William Morris rented Kelmscott Manor as a summer home from 1871; but Filkins was home to the Labour politician Sir Stafford Cripps, who worked with local craftsmen to build severalCotswold-style houses and community buildings there. Gentry houses include the nineteenth-century Gothic mansion at Bradwell Grove, which became the centre of a substantial estate and later of the Cotswold Wildlife Park.

Simon Townley

A History of the County of Oxford

$140.00

Authoritative account of villages on the edge of the Cotswolds.

Until its partial clearance in the 1850s Wychwood forest, set in an undulating landscape on the edge of the Cotswolds, was one of the great royal forests of England, comparable with Savernake, Rockingham, or Whittlewood. This volume explores the history of the forest itself and of a dozen surrounding villages, of which Shipton-under-Wychwood was the centre of a large Anglo-Saxon royal estate and minster parish stretching across the area. Several villages were shaped by early woodland clearance, and most depended on the forest to varying degrees, supplementing traditional sheep-corn farming and small-scale industries such as pottery-making and quarrying. Neighbouring Cornbury park is well known for its nationally important 17th-century mansion house, and a slightly later country house survives at Bruern near the Gloucestershire border, on the site of a Cistercian abbey founded in 1147. Ascott-under-Wychwood acquired national notoriety in 1873 as home of the "Ascott Martyrs", a group of local women imprisoned for supporting strike action against a prominent Ascott farmer.

Simon Townley

A History of the County of Oxford

$140.00

Authoritative account of the history of Henley-on-Thames and its neighbouring parishes.

Focused on the south-west Chilterns, this volume looks at the riverside market town of Henley-on-Thames, now famous for its annual Royal Regatta, and at the four neighbouring parishes of Bix, Harpsden, Rotherfield Greys and Rotherfield Peppard.
Henley began as a planned town, probably in the late twelfth century, and became a major inland port, funnelling grain, wood and (later) malt into London. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it developed as a coaching centre, and from the nineteenth flourished as a fashionable resort and commuting area, following the belated arrival of the railway and the self-conscious promotion of the Regatta. The adjoining parishes stretch from the river to the Chilterns uplands, comprising a mixed landscape of wood pasture, small hedged closes, and (in the Middle Ages) small open fields. Settlement is characteristically dispersed, and as elsewhere in the Chilterns the balance between crops, grazing and wood exploitation varied over time. The area contains deserted or shrunken settlements, including Bolney and the newly-discovered site of Bix Gibwyn church; its important buildings include Greys Court, established probably in the eleventh century, while Henley itself contains a richness of eighteenth-century brick-built houses alongside medieval timber-framing, several examples of which have recently been dated by dendrochronology.

Simon Townley

A History of the County of Oxford

$140.00

The latest volume for Oxfordshire is devoted to eight parishes between the market towns of Burford and Witney in the west of the county. The area is predominantly rural, the only urban centre being Carterton. Founded in 1900 as acolony of smallholders, it became one of the county's fastest growing towns after World War II due to its proximity to Brize Norton's military airbase. Oxfordshire: Volume XV is a richly detailed history of these parishes, covering everything from Anglo-Saxon settlement to 20th-century urbanisation, agriculture to rural industry, religious influences to famous residents.

Simon Townley

A History of the County of Oxford

$95.00

Authoritative account of villages on the edge of the Chilterns, including the historic settlement of Ewelme.

Occupying a varied landscape in south-east Oxfordshire, the fourteen rural parishes covered in this volume extend from the river valleys of the Thames and Thame up onto the Chiltern hills. Nucleated villages and open fields dominated the vale, while the uplands feature dispersed settlement, early inclosure, and extensive wood-pasture. The two zones were closely linked by economic interdependence and, in the late Anglo-Saxon and early medieval period, by the influence of an important royal estate focused on Benson, which extended across the hills and formed the nucleus of Ewelme (formerly Benson) Hundred. Benson later became a coaching stop on the Oxford-London road, and is now widely known for its neighbouring RAF station.
The area remained predominantly agricultural until recent times, despite some rural crafts and services and an important pottery and brick-making industry around Nettlebed. London and surrounding towns exerted important influences throughout. Notable buildings include the fifteenth-century brick-built almshouse complex at Ewelme, co-founded by Chaucer's granddaughter Alice de la Pole, and the now largely demolished Tudor mansion at Rycote, while more recent additions include Nuffield Place, remodelled in 1933 for the Oxford car manufacturer William Morris.

Mary D. Lobel

A History of the County of Oxfordshire

$130.00

This volume contains the history of Dorchester and Thame Hundreds covering the parishes for Dorchester of: Chislehampton, Clifton Hampden, Culham, Dorchester, Burcot, Drayton St. Leonard, Stadhampton and South Stoke: and for Thame: Great Milton, Tetsworth, Thame and Waterstock. Also included are Tax Assessments for 1306-1523

R.W. Dunning

A History of the County of Somerset

$115.00

The fourth volume of the history of Somerset contains the histories of the parishes in the three ancient hundreds of Crewkerne, Martock, and South Petherton. Lying near the middle of the southern edge of the county, there are, inall, 21 parishes (including Wambrook, transferred to Somerset from Dorset in 1896), and they range in size from Martock, containing nine separate settlements and over 7,000 acres, to Seavington St. Michael, with less than 300 acres. While agriculture predominates, there is considerable variation between the fertile arable of the Yeovil Sands to the north and the woodlands and pastures around Windwhistle ridge to the south; manufacturing industry, moreover,was represented not only by the works in Mar-tock but also by the making of coarse cloth and rope at Lopen. The three market towns of Crewkerne, Martock, and South Petherton, which give their names to the hundreds, probably allhad Saxon minster churches: the name of Misterton parish records its dependence on the minster at Crewkerne. The smaller places also have much historical interest. New interpretations are offered, for example, of the building of Hinton house in Hinton St. George, the seat of the earls Poulett, with a park stretching into neighbouring Dinnington, and of Barrington Court. Other manor-houses featured are Avishays (in Chaffcombe), Cricket St. Thomas, Wayford,and Whitestaunton. Among the many re-markable parish churches not only the larger ones but also the smaller are discussed and illustrated, including those of Chilling-ton, Cudworth, Knowle St. Giles, and Shepton Beauchamp. The people who figure in the parish histories include, besides members of noble families and the landed gentry, humbler people like John Scott the 'orchardist' of Merriott, the followers of Joanna Southcott at Dowlish Wake, and the village carpenter and wheelwright of Seavington St. Mary.

R.W. Dunning

A History of the County of Somerset

$115.00

Andersfield, Cannington, and North Pether-ton hundreds together occupy the Lower Par-rett valley stretching from the Quantock ridge in the west to King's Sedgemoor in the east, and from the Bristol Channel in the north to the river Tone in the south. By the late 11th century the settlement pattern was dense, especially between the Quantocks and the Par-rett, an area crossed by the Saxon 'herpath' in the north and including the 10th-century strongholds of Athelney and Lyng in the south and the Domesday royal manors of Can-nington, North Petherton, and Creech St. Michael. The origin of the medieval royal park at North Petherton can be traced to a pre--Conquest royal forest on the Quantocks, and North Petherton was an extensive minster parish. Bridgwater, a chartered borough from 1200, is the only significant town. By the later Middle Ages its port served central, south, and west Somerset, and until the 19thcentury heavy goods continued to be transported along the Parrett, the Tone, and the Bridgwater and Taunton canal into Dorset and Devon. The pattern of settlement is varied, with a few nucleated villages, roadside villages, and many dispersed hamlets. Interlocking parish boundaries indicate complex economic units and late parochial formation. Arable farming predominated until the 16th century, partly in open arable fields. In the 17th century there was an emphasis on stock rearing and an increase in dairying and orchards, large-ly the result of improved drainage. Cheese was an important product of the area in the 18th century, and in the 19th baskets from locally grown willow. Woollen cloth production con-tinued into the 17th century. From the late 17th century the alluvial clays of the Parrett valley provided material for the bricks and tiles for which Bridgwater became well known in the 19th century. Substantial estates whose houses wholly or partially survive include Fairfield, Gothelney, Gurney Street, West Bower, and Sydenham. Halswell House was from the later 17th century the grandest mansion in the area, and Enmore Castlewas built in the later 18th century.

R.W. Dunning

A History of the County of Somerset

$115.00

The fifth volume of the history of Somerset contains the histories of twenty-two parishes in the eastern part of the hundred of Williton and Freemanors and of one parish, Holford, part of which was in Whitley hundred. The parishesoccupy a roughly triangular area of western Somerset includ-ing the southern and eastern part of the Brendon hills as far as the Devon border, the north-western end of the Quantock ridge, the wide valley between them, and some ofthe coastal strip to the north which faces the Bristol Channel. Extensive grazing on the Hangman Grits of the Quantocks and the slates of the Brendons was an important feature of the economy, and the Quantocks still retain largetracts of uncultivated heath land. Mining for copper on the Quantocks and for iron ore on the Brendons, and quarrying limestone for burning in most parishes, provided an important industrial element in the 18th and 19th centuriesbeside an agrarian system which in the 17th century and earlier had concentrated on sheep and cattle on the higher ground and arable in the valleys and coastal strip. Cloth-making was of significance in many parishes until the earlier 19th century. The nucleated villages in the east of the area contrast with the scattered pattern of Brendon settlement. Stogumber and St. Decumans had Saxon minster churches; boroughs were formed in the Middle Ages at Crowcombe, Nether Stowey, and Watchet. A castle was built at Nether Stowey, a monastery in Old Cleeve parish. Williton emerged as an urban centre in the 19th century. Among the large houses featured are Nettlecombe Court, Orchard Wyndham, St. Audries, and Court House, East Quantoxhead. The Acland-Hoods, the Carews, the Luttrells, the Trevelyans, and the Wyndhams were prominent in land ownership and government; also important in the local economy were the 17th-century country shopkeepers selling figs and canary seed, the seaweed burners and paper-makers of the 18th century, and the shippers of grain, flour, and timber in the 19th.

R.W. Dunning

A History of the County of Somerset

$140.00

THE VOLUME relates the history of the south-east corner of Somerset. The area comprises the outliers of Salisbury Plain on the east and part of a clay vale to the west. It included a natural route followed by the two principal roads from London to Exeter and by the railway. Of the towns, Milborne Port and Wincanton each owed its prosperity to one of those roads. Bruton and Milborne Port were royal urban centres in the late 11th century, both centres of minster parishes. Milborne Port, a borough in 1086, returned members to parliament for some years from 1298; at Wincanton a borough had been created by the mid 14th century. Settlement in nucleated villages was dense in the clay valebut ancient scattered farmsteads were found both south of Wincanton and west of Selwood forest. Quarries in most parishes provided local building stone; millstones from the Upper Greensand at Penselwood were widely distributed inthe 13th and 14th centuries. The area remains chiefly agricultural. Arable farming was at first often in paired open fields, mostly inclosed and consolidated by private agreement before 1800. Acts between 1771 and 1821 inclosed and allotted surviving common meadow and pasture. Dairying, significant by 1600, predominated by 1700. The heart of Selwood forest, still heavily wooded, supported a timber industry in the 18th and 19th centuries. Deer parks preceded two 18th century landscaped parks at Redlynch and Bruton Abbey. Textiles were long made in the countryside as well as in the three towns. Milborne Port, from the 1670s a centre for tanning, was from the early 19th century to the late 20th an important gloving town, employing outworkers in surrounding villages. PARISHES: BLACKFORD, BRATTON SEYMOUR, BREWHAM, BREWHAM LODGE, BRUTON, CHARLTON HORETHORNE, CHARLTON MUSGROVE, NORTH CHERITON, ABBAS AND TEMPLECOMBE, CORTON DENHAM, CUCKLINGTON, EASTRIP, HENSTRIDGE, HOLTON, HORSINGTON, MARSTON MAGNA, MILBORNE PORT, MILTON CLEVEDON, PENSELWOOD, PITCOMBE, RIMPTON, SHEPTON MONTAGUE, STOKE TRISTER, STOWELL, UPTON NOBLE, WINCANTON, YARLINGTON

R.W. Dunning

A History of the County of Somerset

$115.00

This is the first volume of the Victoria History of the County of Somerset to be pub-lished since 1911, and is the result of the revival of the History under the patronage of the County Council. It provides a com-prehensive and detailed account of twenty-one parishes towards the southern boundary of the county and lying in the ancient hundreds of Pitney, Somerton, Tintinhull, and part of Kingsbury (East). The land is partly in the valleys of the Parrett and the Yeo and partly on the hills. The lower ground, still liable to flood on occasions, has gradually over the years been drained and converted into the 'moors' that are a feature of the area and provide unusually rich grazing. From the hills in the south comes the celebrated Ham stone. The volume includes the history of two small towns that can each claim to have served at some time as the county centre: Somerton, whose name is linked with that of the county, and the diminutive Ilchester at the junction of the Foss Way and another Roman road. Lang-port, a commercial centre on the navigable river Parrett, is also an ancient settlement. Other parishes that figure in the volume include Montacute, with its fine Elizabethan mansion, and Muchelney, with the remains of its medieval abbey, and there are National Trust properties at Lytes Cary (in Charlton Mackrell) and Tintinhull. The test is illus-trated with line-drawn maps and with plates that include both photographs, old and new, and reproductions of paintings and drawings.

R. W. Dunning

A History of the County of Somerset

$140.00

Classic VCH account of the famous town of Glastonbury and its environs.

The ancient religious settlement of Glastonbury, with its many legendary associations stretching back into the Dark Ages, and the manufacturing town of Street, the creation of the late 19th century, are curious neighbours. They lie at the centre of the mysteriously-named Twelve Hides Hundred, the core estate of Glastonbury Abbey in the early Middle Ages. Around them, spreading into the low-lying moors of the Somerset Levels, are parishes which produced forthe abbey, after continuous improvement of drainage, most of its economic riches - meat, milk, cheese, fruit, wool, wine, cider, fish, stone, timber, and fuel.
The suppression of Glastonbury under unusually tragic circumstances ended the dominance of a single lord and a coordinated economic system, and the eventual inclosure and drainage of the moors took two more centuries to achieve. Glastonbury, meanwhile, faced a century and more of depression but in the 18th received a charter of incorporation and became a centre of the stocking industry; while the fortunes of Street also rose, both through the shoe industry but also of the role of the Clark family in education and social improvement.

ROBERT DUNNING is County Editor, Victoria County History of Somerset.

M.C. Siraut

A History of the County of Somerset

$140.00

Authoritative and comprehensive account of one of Somerset's leading towns.

Castle Cary is a relatively unspoilt town deep in the Somerset countryside, its narrow streets rich in high-quality late eighteenth and nineteenth-century buildings. Its most famous industry, horsehair weaving, still flourishes.
This volume explores its history from the original castle and its lords to its rebirth as an industrial town. It also covers many villages, among them Ansford, early home of Parson Woodforde; Kingweston, virtually recreated bythe Dickinson family; Keinton Mandeville, once famous for its paving stone quarries and as the birthplace of Henry Irving; tiny Wheathill, almost obliterated by a golf course; and West Lydford, the family home of the early eighteenth-century diarist John Cannon. Other places of note include Barton St David, home of Henry Adams, the reputed ancestor of two American Presidents, and Lovington, whose small primary school traces its origins back to an eighteenth-century charity school.

M.C. Siraut is a historian and archivist; she is the county editor for the Victoria History of Somerset.

M.C. Siraut

A History of the County of Somerset

$140.00

Meticulously-researched and detailed survey of Somerset parishes, from prehistory to the present day.

A comprehensive account of the ten parishes comprising the southern half of the Catsash hundred, an area rich in its archaeology and history, is presented here, in the authoritative detail which is the hallmark of the Victoria County History. To the north, the Barrows, of which Queen Camel, North Cadbury and Sparkford (home of the Haynes Motor Museum) are the largest and most populous, lying in an area rich in archaeology and history. To the south, prominent hills include Cadbury Hill, crowned by Cadbury Castle, an Iron Age hill fort dating from 600-400 BC. In South Cadbury and the surrounding parishes there is much evidence of prehistoric activity such as Bronze-Age finds. From alater period, the manor at Queen Camel is recorded in 1066, though decimated by fire in 1639 and subsequently rebuilt in local Blue Lias stone; and the sites of abandoned medieval homesteads are visible at Sparkford, Weston Bampfylde, Sutton Montis and Maperton. Later still, Compton Castle in Compton Pauncefoot was constructed in 1821 while North Cadbury's medieval manor house still survives today.
M.C. Siraut is a historian and archivist; she is the county editor for the Victoria History of Somerset.

R. W. Dunning

A History of the County of Somerset

$140.00

Somerset's Polden hills divide the county's central marshlands, Sedgemoor to the south and the Brue Valley to the north. Traces of human activity there include wooden trackways built across those marshes six thousand years ago. Most of the written sources tell the story of men from settlements on the nearby hills or isolated 'islands' who looked to those low-lying lands for food and fuel for themselves and food for their stock. Those sources, dating from the late Saxon period and particularly rich in the middle ages, derive largely from the archives of the former abbey of Glastonbury, main landowner in the eighteen parishes of this volume.
Pastoral farming dominated and still dominates, its early progress due to successful drainage and flood-prevention schemes, one of the largest dating from the late twelfth century. Each parish has its own long story: of Glastonbury-planned origins at Shapwick and perhaps also at Catcott, Edington, and Chilton Polden; of trade along the tidal river Parrett at Huntspill and Puriton (Dunball); of the gradual expansion of the 'island' farmers of Westonzoyland, Middlezoy and Othery into the surrounding marsh; of the long-enduring common arable fields at High Ham; of the rise and fall of peat digging.
ROBERT DUNNING is County Editor, Victoria County History of Somerset.
Forthcoming: IX: Glastonbury and Street

Edited by M.C. Siraut with Matthew Bristow and Adam Chapman

A History of the County of Somerset

$140.00

Authoritative and detailed account of the history of important Somerset parishes, from prehistory to the present day.

This volume, the twelfth in the Somerset series, describes the history of the eastern part of Carhampton Hundred. Bounded by the Bristol Channel and Exmoor with steep hills forming a backdrop to a coastal plain, the area is now dominated by the seaside town of Minehead whose port overtook its neighbour, Dunster, from the early 15th century. The picturesque village of Dunster is one of the county's most enduring tourist attractions, with its castle formerly home to the Mohuns and their successors the Luttrells, the area's dominant landowners. Earlier, the royal estate of Carhampton dominated the whole area and in the Iron Age, the uplands were controlled by a grouping of defensive enclosures.

Minehead thrived on trade with Wales, Ireland, Europe and the West Indies and -from the 19th century - tourists, brought to the area first by steamer and from 1871 by the railway. In the early 21st century Minehead, the genteel seaside resort enlarged in 1962 following the construction of its holiday camp, serves as the commercial hub of the area. Carhampton includes the small resort of Blue Anchor and on the higher ground to the south, the parishes of Timberscombe, and most of Rodhuish and Withycombe lie within the boundaries of Exmoor National Park.

M.W. Greenslade

A History of the County of Stafford

$115.00

The ecclesiastical history of Staffordshire provides the content of Volume III. The opening chapter on the Medieval Church traces the early history of Christianity in the area and recounts the struggle for predominance between Lichfield and Coventry. There are separate chapters on the Church of England since the Reformation, Roman Catholicisim, and Protestant Nonconformity; among much else, the last describes the origins in the Potteries of Primitive Methodism. There are also individual accounts of the county 's 40 religious -houses, including Burton Abbey, the College of St. Peter, Wolverhampton, the alien priory of Tutbury, and, most important, Lichfeld cathedral, a house of secular canons where St. Chad was buried.

M.W. Greenslade

A History of the County of Stafford

$115.00

This volume is concerned mainly with the industrial history of Staffordshire. It not only includes a full treatment of pottery and other major industries such as mining, engineering and the various metal trades, but also deals with the textiles of Leek, the boots and shoes of Stafford, the sadd-lery of Walsall, and the beer of Burton. Other industries include quarrying, glass-making, saltworking and brickmaking. An important allied topic is the developmentof communications, and chapters are de-voted to the history of roads, canals and railways. The volume also includes an account of the forests of Staffordshire, notably Cannock, Kinver and Needwood. Finally there are chapters on the major sports of the county-foxhunting, horse-racing, cricket, and football.

M.W. Greenslade

A History of the County of Stafford

$115.00

This volume completes the general articles planned for Staffordshire and also contains the history of the county town. Four articles on agriculture survey a thousand years of farming. Cultivation gradually reduced the extensive woodlands recorded in Domesday Book. The progress of arable farming in the south was paralleled by that of stock-rearing in the north, while from the 17th century dairying became increasingly important. The water meadows of the Dovewere famous. By the 19th century Staffordshire was a county of great estates noted for improving landlords and agents who encouraged new crops and techniques. Today farming still occupies over two-thirds of the county. There arearticles on the more important public schools and endowed grammar schools and on Keele University, the first of the new universities after the Second World War. The story of Stafford Borough, not told before on a comparable scale,begins with a settlement in a loop of the river Sow, existing perhaps by Roman times and later associated with the hermitage of the Saxon St. Bertelin. Stafford, first appearing in written records in 913, became the county town of the new shire which was laid out round it. William the Conqueror built a castle there in 1070; King John recognized the town's borough status with a charter in 1206. By then there were two parish churches, the collegiate churchof St. Mary and the little St. Chad's, a gem of mid-12th-century architecture. Stafford's most famous son is Izaak Walton, born there in 1593. Richard Brinsley Sheridan, who was M.P. for over 20 years from 1780, proposed the toast'May the manu-factures of Stafford be trodden under foot by all the world', a reference to the footwear industry. Although only one shoe factory now remains, many other industries flourish, notably electrical engineering, introduced in 1903. By 1971 Stafford was a borough of over 5,000 acres and 55,000 inhabitants.

M.W. Greenslade

A History of the County of Stafford

$115.00

Historical accounts of three important industrial towns of the Black Country fill the present volume. West Bromwich, Smethwick, and Walsall are all close neighbours and all former county boroughs. West Bromwich had a domes-tic nailing industry in the 16th century but remained a scattered settlement on the heathland of the coal measures until the development of its mining and iron industry in the mid 19th. Smethwick's growth began with the building of the Birmingham canal in the late 18th century and was particularly marked from the 1830s-. Walsall, an early medieval borough with its church standing on a limestone hill at the town's centre, underwent a rapid increase in population from the 1820s. Immigrants to man the indus-tries of the area have included French and Belgians in the early 19th century, and in the mid 20th people from the West Indies and the Indian subcontinent. The pattern of communications feeding the industries is a palimpsest of ancient roads bridging the small streams of the Mid-lands plateau, the successive networks of canals and railways, and the motorways of the 1960s. Household names like Mitchells & Butlers,Chances, G.K.N., and Tube Investments are reminders of the industrial strength and variety of the area, which has also included brick- making, brush-making, chemicals, cloth and clothing, coal-mining, engineering of many types, iron-smelting, ironstone mining, leather trades, limestone-mining, and organ-building. Along with the large factories and numerous small workshops are remarkable buildings of other kinds, such as West Bromwich manor-house, a classicmedieval example, and the former Sand-well Hall, seat of the earls of Dartmouth. Apart from manufacturers many well known people have been connected with the area, including Joseph Chamberlain in politics, Madeleine Carroll and Sidney Barnes in entertainment and sport, and in literature Jerome K. Jerome and Sir Henry Newbolt.

M.W. Greenslade

A History of the County of Stafford

$115.00

The volume covers the south-west corner of Staffordshire, bordering on Shropshire and Worcestershire and including the Tettenhall and Amblecote portions of the new county of West Midlands. The area was part of Seisdon hundred andincludes the village of Seisdon in Trysull parish where the hundred met. Most of it lay in Kinver forest. Stourton Castle in Kinver parish was built in the 1190s as a royal hunting lodge and became the home of the keeper of the forest. The area, watered by the Stour and its tributary Smestow brook, remains largely agricultural, with mixed farming and also market gardening for the nearby Black Country towns. There are three great houses, Enville Hall, Patshull House, and the Wodehouse at Wombourne, all at one time having fine gardens. By the 19th century business men working in Wolverhampton were coming to live in Tettenhall and Codsall, and in the 20th century Kinver, Pattingham,and Wombourne too have rapidly expanded as residential areas. By the late 18th century Tettenhall was the goal of excursions from Wolverhampton, and Kinver Edge has at-tracted visitors from the neighbouring towns for the past century. Rock houses cut into the sandstone of the Edge remained occupied until the mid 20th century. There were several early industries, notably ironworking along the rivers. Kinver had a flourishing iron industry from the 17th tothe 19th century, and clothworking too was important there in the 17th and 18th centuries. There was an iron industry in Wombourne from the 16th century until the closure of Richard Thomas & Baldwin Ltd.'s Swindon works in 1976. At Amblecote glassmaking has been important since the early 17th century when Lorrainer glassmakers were attracted there by cheap coal and excellent fireclay.

M.W. Greenslade

A History of the County of Stafford

$115.00

The volume tells the story of Lichfield and its neighbourhood from Romano-British times to the late 20th century. Lichfield was first mentioned in the mid 7th century and was chosen as a see in 669A.D. with St. Chad as its first bishop. A cathedral has stood there ever since, much rebuilt and restored over the centuries and noted for its three spires, 'the ladies of the vale'. Until the Reforma-tion St. Chad's shrine attracted a stream of pil-grims. The cathedral and its medieval fortified close were garrisoned by both sides during the Civil War and suffered great damage and losses. There are two other early churches, St. Chad's which is associated with the saint's dwelling place,and St. Michael's on the hilltop site where there may once have been a pagan sanctuary. The city itself originated as a new town planted by the bishop in the mid 12th century. In the mid 16th century it was granted city and county status by the Crown. A church dedicated to St. Mary was built in the market place, and other medieval institutions included a Franciscan friary, an almshouse for men and another for women which both survive, and an important religious and social guild. On the eve of the guild's suppression at the Reformation much of its landed property was conveyed in trust for the maintenance of the city's medieval water supply and for other needs. As a result Lichfield has for centuries enjoyed private-enterprise public services, and the Conduit Lands Trust is still active. In the 18th century Lichfield was a centre for polite society with its races attracting many visitors. In the 19th century there was industrial development, notably in the brewing industry. The later 20th century has seen the growth of light industry and also extensive residential development, with a nearly threefold increase in the city's population. Tourism too has been encouraged and is associated particularly with Samuel Johnson, born in the city in 1709. The volume also covers seven former townships lying outside the city but once part of the Lich-field parishes of St. Michael and St. Chad. They include Wall with its Romano-British remains, Fisherwick which once possessed a mansion and park by Capability Brown, and the urban parish of Burntwood containing the former mining village of Chasetown and Chase Terrace; the others are Curborough and Elmhurst, Freeford, Hammer-wich, and Streethay with Fulfen.

L. Margaret Midgley

A History of the County of Stafford

$115.00

East Cuttlestone hundred (towns and villages in the Cannock Chase area).

L.Margaret Midgley

A History of the County of Stafford

$115.00

The Staffordshire section of Domesday Book; West Cuttlestone hundred (villages south-west of Stafford to the Shropshire border).

Nigel J. Tringham

A History of the County of Stafford

$140.00

This volume covers the town of Burton-upon-Trent on the county's eastern boundary, along with its suburbs and satellite villages on either side of the river, including Stapenhill which was formerly in a separate parish in Derbyshire. Best known as a major centre for brewing beer from the earlier nineteenth century, Burton first came to prominence in the early eleventh century as the site of a Benedictine monastery which later promoted the cult of its own saint, the legendary St Modwen. Part of the monastic infirmary survives in the present Abbey inn, and a house called Sinai Park on the high ground to the west of the town was used by the monks as a rest home and hunting lodge. Alabaster carving developed as a specialist industry in the middle ages, and clothworking was important until the nineteenth century, with fulling and then cotton mills on the river Trent. The breweries were concentrated in the historic town centre near the river, and in the later nineteenth century a more respectable centre was created to the west around the imposing St Paul's church and the present town hall, both paid for by members of the Bass family. Other Anglican churches built by leading brewers in the town and its suburbs remain a major feature in the landscape.
NIGEL TRINGHAM is VCH county editor for Staffordshire, and lecturer in history at the University of Keele.

Nigel J. Tringham

A History of the County of Stafford

$140.00

Authoritative and comprehensive history of the town of Tamworth and its environs.

In the centre of a parish with several townships, Tamworth was important for the rulers of pre-Viking Mercia and became a burh in 913 under Æthelflæd, "lady of the Mercians", who may also have installed relics of St Edith in the church there. Although a castle was built after the Norman Conquest, its lords did not control the town, which became a corporation under Elizabeth I and is now the head of a district council. Throughout its history Tamworth has functioned as a market centre, with some cloth-working and paper-making, although cotton mills, opened by Robert Peel (the later Prime Minster's father), just outside the town in the 1790s were soon moved to a canal junction to the south in Fazeley, where tape-making survived (as also in the town) until the late twentieth century.
Deposits of coal and clay exploited from the nineteenth century resulted in mining villages at Glascote and Wilnecote inthe eastern half of the parish, which lay in Warwickshire, as did half the town until transferred to Staffordshire in 1890. The Warwickshire part of the parish was added in 1965 in connection with the decision to take in a Birmingham overspill population, which together with private developments created vast housing estates, the population of "greater Tamworth" more than doubling by the early 21st century. The volume also includes the adjoining parish of Drayton Bassett, which had close links with the town and where Peel built a mansion house, demolished in the earlier twentieth century: its site is now part of a major amusement park.

Nigel J. Tringham

A History of the County of Staffordshire

$140.00

Comprehensive and authoritative history of north-west Staffordshire, including Keele, Trentham and Audley.

Covering the hilly north-west part of the county from the Cheshire border to the valley of the river Trent south of Newcastle-under-Lyme, this volume treats parishes that lie mostly on the North Staffordshire coalfield and where both coal and ironstone mining and iron-making became important, especially in the nineteenth century. A rich archive has been used to illustrate the origins of this industrial activity in the Middle Ages, when the area was characterised by scattered settlements, with an important manorial complex and a grand fourteenth-century church at Audley, a hunting lodge for the Stafford lords at Madeley, a small borough at Betley, and at Keele and Trentham religioushouses which became landed estates with mansion houses after the Dissolution. In the nineteenth century Trentham gained fame for its spectacular gardens created by the immensely rich dukes of Sutherland, and Keele rose to prominence in 1950 as the site of Britain's first campus university. After coalmining ceased in the twentieth century several villages and mining hamlets acquired large housing estates, which in Trentham parish were absorbed into Stoke-on-Trent.

Nigel Tringham is a Senior Lecturer in History at Keele University, with special responsibility for researching and writing the volumes of the Staffordshire Victoria County History.

A History of the County of Staffordshire

William Page

A History of the County of Suffolk

$140.00

Published by Boydell & Brewer Inc.

T.P. Hudson

A History of the County of Sussex

$115.00

This volume describes the southern part of Bramber rape, the easternmost of the three rapes of West Sussex. It tells the history of 19 parishes lying along the coastal strip and over the South Downs. The rape takes its name from the castle at Bramber, which was the centre of the feudal honour and in whose shadow the de Braoses, the lords of the rape, planted a new town. Neighbouring Steyning, once one of the chief towns of the county, was a Saxon foundation with a college of secular canons and a port on the river Adur. The port gradually silted up and was replaced by that at New Shoreham, another Norman town planted in a corner of Old Shoreham parish. New Shoreham, once a major channel port and a centre for shipbuilding, has been much affected by changes in the coastline; the modern harbour lies in Kingston Bowsey and Southwick. The silting and reclamation of the Adur estuary has also changed the face of Lancing, where the college and chapel overlook the new ground. Sompting near by has one of the several noteworthy Romanesque churches is the area. The growth of Worthing was impeded in the 19th century by sanitary problems, but thetown is now the second largest in Sussex. It was also formerly renowned for its glasshouse produce. It has swallowed its parent parish of Broadwater and the parishes of Durrington, Heene, and West Tarring, the last named including two fine medieval secular buildings. The urban sprawl takes in part of Findon, scene of the annual sheep fair, which like Clapham and Patching to the west retains extensive downland. Washington, north of the downs is noted for market gardening and sand quarrying, while at Wiston was one of the most important country houses in Sussex. The tally of parishes is completed by the deserted villages of Botolphs and Coombes.

T.P. Hudson

A History of the County of Sussex

$115.00

The volume gives the history of the ten parishes that form the north-western part of Bramber rape, from Sullington in the south to Warnharn in the north, lying mostly in the Weald. Horsham is the focus of the area, and its historyoccupies more than a third of the volume. It was a borough by 1235 and developed later as one of the chief towns of the county, hav-ing the county gaol from the 16th to the 19th century and being from 1889 to 1916 joint county town of West Sussex with Chichester. Horsham parish also contained an extensive rural area, and West Grin-stead and Shipley were other unusually large parishes. The land was heavily wooded in the Middle Ages and settlement was scattered; many settlements originated as outlying holdings of manors centred in the south end of the rape. Later, some settlements grew as ribbons along main roads, others around the edges of commons. From the mid 19th century there was an influx of wealthy residents: among the new- comers was Hilaire Belloc, and the large houses built or rebuilt included Warnham Court, seat of the Lucases, and Little Thakeham, designed by Lutyens. Humbler houses in considerable numbers were built at Ashington, Barns Green, Partridge Green, Sullington, and Thakeham, and Horsham more than trebled in size between 1891 and 1971. Agriculture was limited by the extensive woodland; open fields were few and small, and there were many parks and commons. To provide for London and the coastal towns stock raising and dairying came to predominate over arable from c.1850, and was accompanied by poultry farming and market gardening. The mainindustrial activities have been ironworking and brickmaking.

T.P. Hudson

A History of the County of Sussex

$115.00

The volume gives the history of the eleven parishes that form the north-eastern part of Bramber rape, from Upper Beeding in the south to Ifield in the north, together with that of Crawley new town, founded in 1947. The area lies mostly on Wealden sands and clays, where settlement was chiefly scattered. Many settlements originated as outlying holdings of manors centred in the south end of the rape; the parish of Beeding lay in two parts, Upper Beeding astride the scarp of the South Downs, and Lower Beeding eleven miles to the north. St. Leonard's Forest in Lower Beeding was roughly divided in the Middle Ages between woodland and heath; its present appearance is the result of 19th- and 20th -century afforestation and reclamation for agriculture, and settlement was later there than elsewhere. The 19th century saw a great influx of wealthy new residents, some of whom built large houses or laid out parks or gardens like those at Sedgewick Park or Leonardslee. In the mid 20th century the villages or hamlets of Upper Beeding, Hen-field, and Mannings Heath in Nuthurst have been much expanded. Crawley, part of whose built-up area lay in Ifield parish, was already a town by the later 19th century; of other places, only Henfield was larger than the average, offering some urban functions. There is little evidence of open-field agriculture except in the south; St. Leonard's Forest was largely used as rabbit warrens in the 17th and 18th centuries; and market gardening and fruit and flower growing were prominent, for instance around Albourne, in the 20th. Industrial activities before the foundationof Crawley new town included medieval saltworking in the Adur valley, ironworking, quarrying, and fishing, together with varied woodland industries, and cement manufacture at Upper Beeding.

Susan M. Keeling, C.P. Lewis

A History of the County of Sussex

$115.00

Six volumes of the Victoria County History of Sussex were published between 1905 and 1953 . Until now they have been without an index, apart from the Domesday index included in Volume I. The present volume is designed to make their contents far more readily accessible, directing the reader to the pages on which places, persons, and the principal subjects are mentioned. An essential key is thus at last provided to the general chapters in Volumes I and II, to the accounts of Romano-British Sussex and of the City of Chichester in Volume III, and to the histories of the towns and villages in the rapes of Chichester (Volume IV), Lewes (Volume VII), and Hastings (Volume IX). Each futurevolume will, like that on the southern part of Bramber rape (Volume VI, part 1) published in 1980, contain its own index.

T. P. Hudson

A History of the County of Sussex

$140.00

Published by Boydell & Brewer Inc.

C. P. Lewis

A History of the County of Sussex V.ii

$140.00

The Littlehampton volume focuses on 12 parishes with particular emphasis on seaside development from the 18th century onwards.

Covers the parishes of Angmering, Burpham, Ferring, Goring, Kingston, Littlehampton, Lyminster, Poling, East Preston, Rustington, North Stoke and Warningcamp, assessing their history from the earliest times to the present day. There is a particular emphasis on seaside coastal development from the eighteenth century onwards.

V.R. Bainbridge

A History of the County of Wiltshire

$160.00

Authoritative account of Cricklade and neighbouring towns, in an area immediately west of Swindon.

Cricklade, the Anglo-Saxon borough fortified by Alfred against the Danes, is the market town at the heart of this volume. As a notorious rotten borough, its corruption influenced the passing of the 1832 Parliamentary Reform Act. The town and the surrounding parishes described here are bordered by Gloucestershire to the north and Swindon to the East. They extend along the upper Thames valley and over the Wiltshire claylands to the limestone ridge in the south. The royal forest of Braydon covered much of the area in the middle ages and provided extensive grazing for livestock. Although disafforestation took place under Charles I, agricultural exploitation was limited by poor soils and parts were later returned to woodland or nature reserve. The settlements of traditional limestone buildings were remote until canal and rail transport increased trade in dairy products and the expansion of employment opportunities in Swindon resulted in their residential development, and an annexation of a small part of the area by the growing town.

K.J. Allison

A History of the County of York East Riding

$115.00

The volume covers a large area in the Vale of York, lying to the south and east of the city. It is concerned with the history of the twelve parishes in Ouse and Derwent wapentake and of eight parishes in the western half of the Wilton Beacon division of Harthill wapentake. Ouse and Derwent wapentake is largely bounded by those two rivers, and the Wilton Beacon division lies immediately east of the river Derwent. The land is low-lying and relatively flat. Its dominant physical features are the two large rivers and two ridges of glacial moraine which traverse the vale. The mor-aines provided early routes across the marshy land and the sites for several villages. Other settlements stand by the Ouse and the Derwent at places where meanders take the rivers close to the firm valley sides. The terrain was once well wooded, and the way in which the wood-land was cleared resulted in a landscape characterized by small open fields and large tracts of early inclosures and common grazing. Particularly in the north-east part of the area the number of large country houses reflects the proximity of York and the interest of its citizens in landed estates; the houses include Escrick Hall, Moreby Hall, and Heslington Hall, in recent years the centre of the University of York. There has been some suburban development, notably in Gate Fulford. Most of the villages consist of brick houses built in the 18th century and later. The most considerable ecclesiastical building is the church of Hemingbrough, made collegiate in 1427 by the prior of Durham. Of many bridges mentioned in the volume that at Stamford Bridge is notable for its part in the battle in which King Harold defeated the Danes before marching to his death at Hastings.

K.J. Allison

A History of the County of York East Riding

$115.00

The volume tells the stories of eighteen parishes in the southern part of Holderness wapentake, the wedge of Yorkshire between the North Sea and the Humber. The low--lying landscape has changed repeatedly during the historical period, with lands along the north bank of the Humber being washed away or growing, lesser watercourses silting up, new drains being made, the steady erosion of the cliff along the sea coast, and the cyclical breaching, destruction,and redeposit of the long spit of land at Spurn Head. The church of Kilnsea and several small settlements have gone with the receding cliff. Sunk Island, which forms part of the Crown Estate, is a parish consisting entirely of newground thrown up by the Humber. In the Middle Ages the land comprised the liberty of Holderness, with a centre at Burstwick manor house, and belonged to the counts of Aumale before passing to the Crown. The counts' extensive privileges in Holderness included the right to exclude the royal sheriff. Within the parish of Preston a medieval borough was established by the count at Hedon, but access for ships from the Humber was difficult and the town later decayed; it is noteworthy for its magnificent church, dubbed 'the king of Holderness'. Another borough and port established by the count was Ravenser Odd, at Spurn head, but that was later destroyed by the sea. There was a haven alsoat Patrington, a large village distinguished by its fine 14th-century church, 'the queen of Holderness'. In the part of the area near Hull, Thorngumbald, in Paull parish, and Keyingham have grown into large dormitory villages. Withernsea, in Hollym and Owthorne parishes, was developed from the 1850s as a seaside resort used mainly by residents of Hull. Other places of which the volume contains accounts are Easington, Halsham, Holmpton, Ottringham, Skeffling, Welwick, and Winestead.

K.J. Allison

A History of the County of York East Riding

$115.00

Beverley stood high among the provincial towns of medieval England, with the great minster church and the college of St. John. Linked with the port of Hull and the Humber by a canalized beck and the navigable river Hull, it had athriving trade in cloth and wool. Around the town lay large common pastures which are still a prominent feature of the landscape, and beyond the borough half a dozen townships were within the liberties of Beverley. The decline oftrade in the 15th century and the suppression of the college in 1548 reduced the town's prosperity, and its role in the 16th and 17th centuries was little more than that of a market town. The 16th century, however, brought freedomfrom the lordship of the archbishop and eventually full self-government with the granting of a charter of incorporation in 1573. From the late 17th century Beverley became the administrative and social centre of the East Riding. A wealth of Georgian buildings still bears witness to its renewed prosperity. Industry expanded and diversified in the 19th century, and ironworks, mills, tanneries, and shipyards provided employment. Beverley was designated asthe county town of the East Riding in 1892, and it became the administrative centre of the county of Humberside created in 1974 and of the district later known as the East Yorkshire Borough of Beverley, albeit with the loss to thetown of its ancient borough status. Industrial decline in the later 20th century was partly balanced by development as a residential area and as a centre for tourism. Meanwhile the appearance of Beverley was being transformed: anouter bypass and inner relief roads changed old patterns, and the building of new houses went on in and around the town.

K.J. Allison

A History of the County of York East Riding

$115.00

The volume covers a large area at the southern end of the Yorkshire Welds, lying west of the city of Hull and the town of Beverley. It is concerned with the history of fourteen parishes which comprise the greater part of the Hunsley Beacon division of Harthill wapentake. Though the rolling chalk hills of the wolds dominate the area, several of the parishes extend into the low- lying ground of the Hull valley to the east and the Vale of York to the west. InSouth Cave parish the reclamation of Broomfleet Island from the river Humber adds further variety to the agricultural history of the area. There are several deserted medieval villages. Much of the countryside described here is still wholly rural in character, but some of the settlements lying on the eastern slopes of the welds, like Cherry Burton and Skidby, have become commuter villages for the near-by towns. The large medieval vil-lage of Cottingham became a popular place of residence for Hull merchants in the late 18th century, and much of the parish has since been absorbed within the city; the village now houses many of the students of the University of Hull. Notable country houses described in the volume include Dalton Hall and Houghton Hall, and the churches include an outstanding Norman building at Newbald. Many of the villages consist of brick houses of the 18th century and later, but 17th-centurytimber-framed houses survive at South Dalton and Cot-tingham. In other villages, however, much use is made of the local Jurassic limestone which outcrops below the wolds escarp-ment. At Leconfield there survives the moated site ofa seat of the Percy family, earls of Northumberland, and it was from Rowley that the rector emigrated in the 17th century to found a town of the same name in Massachusetts.

David Crouch

A History of the County of York: East Riding

$140.00

An authoritative and comprehensive account of an important area centred around the town of Howden.

This is the first part to be published of a two-part volume on the East Riding liberty and wapentake of Howdenshire. It deals with the nineteen civil parishes and townships which made up the liberty outside the town of Howden itself. Until 1836 Howdenshire was one of the bishop of Durham's exempt franchises in Yorkshire, enclaves which survived the Reformation and Civil War. Its special nature, which is mostly ancient wetland reclaimed in the twelfth century, is explored via in-depth sections on drainage and river defence, with a reconstruction of the unique medieval and early modern scheme developed to contain the River Ouse and empty the drainage dykes.

David Neave, Susan Neave

A History of the County of York: East Riding

$140.00

The latest Yorkshire volume provides an authoritative and comprehensive account of an important area centred upon Sledmere.

This volume covers seven parishes and some sixteen ancient settlements on the eastern dip-slope of the Yorkshire Wolds. Its rich and varied past extends from the important Iron Age settlements with their well-known chariot burialsto the great estate - at its high point one of the largest in England - built up by the Sykes family in the 18th and 19th centuries and centred upon the village of Sledmere. The volume includes a substantial introduction coveringthe history and archaeology of the area as a whole and analysing the impact of the Sledmere estate on local villages, churches and farmsteads. There are also detailed sections on the landscape and topography, economic, social andreligious history of the parishes and their settlements.

The villages covered by the volume are Cowlam, Duggleby, Fimber, Fridaythorpe, Helperthorpe, Kirby Grindalythe, East and West Lutton, Sledmere, Weaverthorpe and Wetwang.

DAVID and SUSAN NEAVE are former staff of the University of Hull.

Graham Kent

A History of the County of York: East Riding

$140.00

An authoritative and comprehensive account of an important area centred upon Great Driffield.

Great Driffield, a thriving market town serving an extensive agricultural hinterland, stands at the junction of the Yorkshire Wolds and Holderness. The centre of an important Anglo-Saxon manor, in royal hands in the early middle ages, the main settlement was transformed from a large village into a boom town following the opening of a canal in 1770 that linked it to the expanding markets of Hull and the West Riding; its social, religious and political lifeflourished in the Victorian period particularly. This volume covers its history and that of its adjoining rural townships of Little Driffield, Elmswell and Kelleythorpe, from the Neolithic period to the beginning of the twenty-first century; it provides the first detailed account of the town's trades and industries, as well as exploring landownership, local government, and social, religious and political life.

The editors are former staff of the University of Hull.

David Crouch

A History of the County of York: East Riding

$140.00

An authoritative and comprehensive account of an important area centred around the town of Howden.

This is the second part of a study of Howdenshire, containing a history of the town of Howden and its ancient minster, the least known of the great medieval churches of Yorkshire. The volume also deals with the lordship and civilunit of which the town was the heart, the area called Howdenshire, one of the more complicated regions of England. The book offers a history of the origins and development of the liberty of the bishop of Durham, its ruler until 1836. The liberty of Howdenshire covered all the bishop's possessions in the East Riding, and the book looks at the liberty's scattered exclaves across it, offering a full township and parish study of the most important of them, Welton with Melton, a distant and detached part of Howdenshire until 1894. Finally, the book deals with the two ancient commons associated with Howdenshire. The first is Bishopsoil, a common of 4,000 acres within the bishop's lordship. The volume also contains a study of the administration, drainage and ecology of the great 4,500 acre wetland common of Wallingfen, east of Howdenshire, which from around 1280 until 1781 was governed by the gentry and freeholders of the surrounding parishes, an area of England unique in its history, governance and economy.

Edited by Marshall W. Baldwin. Kenneth Meyer Setton, Editor-in-Chief

A History of the Crusades, Volume 1

$94.95

This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.

Edited by Marshall W. Baldwin. Kenneth Meyer Setton, Editor-in-Chief

A History of the Crusades, Volume 1

$94.95

This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.

Cover image for A History of the Crusades, Volume 1, isbn: 9781512818642

Edited by Robert Lee Wolff and Harry W. Hazard

A History of the Crusades, Volume 2

$99.95

This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.

Edited by Robert Lee Wolff and Harry W. Hazard

A History of the Crusades, Volume 2

$99.95

This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.

Cover image for A History of the Crusades, Volume 2, isbn: 9781512819564

Lenka Krátká

A History of the Czechoslovak Ocean Shipping Company, 1948–1989

$41.00

This book offers a comprehensive history of the Czechoslovak Ocean Shipping Company (C. O. S.) from its beginning in the late 1940s until the fall of communism. Owned by the Czechoslovak state, C. O. S.'s activities were shaped by Soviet standards. This unique study is structured according to the different phases of the Cold War and highlights the political aspects that determined C. O. S.'s fate. Lenka Krátká focuses on two contradictory economic dimensions that C. O. S. had to engage with. Being part of the planned economy of a socialist state, it also dealt with companies in the capitalist West. Another paradoxical aspect of C. O. S. emerges from the memories of former Czechoslovak seamen, who experienced relative freedom when being aboard and strict communist regime control while at home with their families. Krátká's book offers fascinating insights into a neglected topic, using thus far untapped sources and building on primary research in oral history and personal memory.

Cover image for A History of the Czechoslovak Ocean Shipping Company, 1948–1989, isbn: 9783838207162

Peter Purton

A History of the Early and Late Medieval Siege [2 volume set]

$230.00

This 2 volume set contains a magisterial survey of medieval siege warfare in the middle ages, tracing links across continents and linking contemporary historical accounts with archaeological studies.

Sieges were the predominant form of warfare across the medieval world and siege methods and technology developed alongside improvements in defence. This 2 volume set goes back to the original sources to present a comprehensive view of thewhole subject, tracing links across continents and analysing the relationship with changes in the design of town and castle defences, and linking contemporary historical accounts with archaeological studies. It considers the mostimportant questions raised by siege warfare: who designed, built and operated siege equipment? How did medieval commanders gain their knowledge? What were the roles of theoretical texts and the developing science of siege warfare? How did nomadic peoples acquire siege skills? Were castles and town walls built purely of a military purpose, or did they play a symbolic role also?

The first volume begins in 450 AD with the replacement of the westernRoman empire by barbarian successor states, but also examines the development of the Byzantine Empire, the Muslim Caliphate and its successors, and the links with China, through to the early thirteenth century. The second continues with the Mongol conquests in Asia and Europe and the thirteenth-century apogee of pre-gunpowder siege warfare, before examining the slow impact of guns and the cumulatively massive changes in attack and defence of the fifteenthcentury.

A History of the Early and Late Medieval Siege [2 volume set]

Peter Purton

A History of the Early Medieval Siege, c.450-1200

$240.00

Detailed, comprehensive survey of the siege, looking at its development across three continents.

Medieval warfare was dominated by the attack and defence of fortified places, and siege methods and technology developed alongside improvements in defences. This book uses both original historical sources and evidence from archaeology to analyse this relationship as part of a comprehensive view of the whole subject, tracing links across three continents. It considers the most important questions raised by siege warfare: who designed, built and operated siege equipment? How did medieval commanders gain their knowledge? What were the roles of theoretical texts and the developing science of siege warfare? How did nomadic peoples learn to conduct sieges? How far did castles and town walls serve a military purpose, and how far did they act as symbols of lordship?
The volume begins with the replacement of the western Roman empire by barbarian successor states, but also examines the development of the Byzantine Empire, the Muslim Caliphate and its successors, and the links with China, through to the early thirteenth century. The companion volume, A History of the Late Medieval Siege, continues the story to 1500.

A History of the Early Medieval Siege, c.450-1200

Robert W. Prichard

A History of the Episcopal Church - Third Revised Edition

$48.95

This thorough, carefully researched history sets church events against the background of social changes. This third revised edition will be up-to-date through the events of the 2012 General Convention of the Episcopal Church.

Robert W. Prichard

A History of the Episcopal Church - Third Revised Edition

$89.95

"...a lively story of the Episcopal tradition"
—E. Brooks Holifield

A thorough, carefully researched history that sets church events against the background of social changes. Completely revised and updated, this third revised edition covers the history of the Episcopal Church up to the summer of 2014 and includes a closing section on the important work of the Task Force for Reimagining the Episcopal Church (TREC), which will be reporting to the 2015 General Convention.

For church historians, seminarians, and those who have interest in the past, present, and future developments within the Episcopal and broader religious landscape.

George R. Bentley

A History of the Freedmen's Bureau

$95.00

This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.

George R. Bentley

A History of the Freedmen's Bureau

$95.00

This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.

Cover image for A History of the Freedmen's Bureau, isbn: 9781512814330

Michel Baridon. Translated by Adrienne Mason

A History of the Gardens of Versailles

$29.95

The gardens of Versailles are perhaps the most famous in the world. Seemingly open to the horizon, their scale is monumental. Their grand east-west axis celebrates the Sun King, even as they offer an expression of the scientific spirit of the age in their geometrical layout and exploitation of the optical properties of reflecting water. The original park design, realized by André Le Nôtre, a few advisers, and Louis XIV himself—author of The Way to Present the Gardens of Versailles—remains largely intact. Yet Louis XV made his own original contribution to the gardens at the Trianon, where later still Richard Mique and Hubert Robert designed the English garden and the delightful village beloved by Marie Antoinette.

Michel Baridon traces the history of the gardens from their inception through three centuries of their history. He stresses the cultural importance of the landscape, provides a chronology to show the stages of its growth, and discusses the contemporary challenges posed by its conservation and historical interpretation. Beautifully illustrated with archival images and commissioned photographs, A History of the Gardens of Versailles provides visitors and enthusiasts with a guide to these legendary grounds.