Edited by Stephanie Carter with principal contributions by Karen Averby, Stephanie Carter, Hannah Ingram, Mark Page and Charlotte Young
The Victoria History of the Counties of England: A History of Northamptonshire, volume VIII
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Long-awaited volume for the Victoria County History of Northamptonshire covers the 6 parishes in Towcester Hundred including the historic market town of Towcester.
This contribution to the Red Book series is the eighth volume of the Victoria County History of Northamptonshire. It provides accounts of Towcester hundred, encompassing 6 parishes including the historic market town of Towcester. The rolling landscape is punctuated by dispersed villages that form the hundred with each settlement linked to the Roman Watling Street that traverses the full length of the hundred. Towcester's history is inextricably linked to this transport corridor, with an important coaching trade emerging in the 17th and 18th centuries. The hundred had a notable range of localised industries by the 1800s, including shoemaking, lacemaking and framework knitting. Its predominantly agricultural landscape was interrupted by the coming of the Grand Union Canal and railway in the 19th century, bringing industry, manufacture and expansion.
Gillian Cookson, Christine M. Newman, Graham R. Potts
The Townscape of Darlington
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Darlington from Anglo-Saxon settlement to thriving town, via the middle ages and the coming of the railway.
It is exactly a thousand years since Darlington first appeared in written records. During the following millennium, the small Anglo-Saxon settlement grew into today's thriving town, its history now generally linked in the public mind with entrepreneurial Quakers and the birth of railways. But as this book shows, Darlington's history encompasses many more diverse aspects in the change from medieval village to modern town. Through a survey of its physical development, the book describes how the town flourished in the middle ages; was largely destroyed by fire in 1585; and grew again in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, before the coming of the railway in the mid-1800s reinforced its prosperity. Its story is taken up to the present day, showing how Darlington is characterised by residential suburbs, with a town centre where Victorian and eighteenth-century buildings populate the original medieval streets. Dr GILL COOKSON is the County Editor for the Victoria County History of Durham.
Edited by Emmeline Garnett and Sarah Rose, with contributions by Christopher Donaldson, Fiona Edmonds and Angus J. L. Winchester
Victoria County History of Westmorland I
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This long-awaited volume, the first installment in the Victoria County History of Westmorland, covers the 13 townships of scenic and historic Lonsdale Ward from prehistory to the near present.
This landmark book is the first Victoria County History publication for the historic county of Westmorland and the 250th volume in Red Book series. It provides an account of the 13 townships comprising Lonsdale Ward, one of the four ancient divisions of the county of Westmorland, parts of which now lie in the Yorkshire Dales National Park. Most of these townships belonged to the parishes of Burton-in-Kendal and Kirkby Lonsdale, both centres of pre-Conquest worship. Kirkby Lonsdale developed as a market town at a major crossing of the River Lune. The medieval Devil's Bridge has long attracted visitors and tourists to the town, as has the view from St Mary's churchyard, which was immortalised by J.M.W. Turner and John Ruskin. Lying on a major north-south route, Burton was a significant corn market from the late 17th century. With a largely rural upland landscape, agriculture was the chief occupation in the area for centuries. An exception was Holme, where a flax mill and industrial settlement developed in the 1800s. A lack of industry helped to preserve the historic character of Kirkby Lonsdale and Burton-in-Kendal, where many Georgian buildings survive.
Simon Townley
Victoria County History of Oxfordshire XXI
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This volume focuses on the Cotswold market town of Chipping Norton and on half a dozen surrounding rural parishes, including Hook Norton and the Rollrights. Drawing on intensive archival research, the authors look in detail at the town's origins, growth, and buildings, and at its economic, social, political, and religious history up to the present day, including its association with the medieval wool trade and the later development of the famous Bliss tweed mill. The surrounding parishes were predominantly agricultural and were reliant on traditional Cotswold sheep-corn farming, although Hook Norton developed significant ironstone quarrying in the 1880s-1940s, and is well known for its still-functioning Victorian brewery. The parishes' wider histories are fully explored, notable features including parks and country houses, the remains (at Swerford) of a motte-and-bailey castle, and the prehistoric Rollright Stones.
Edited by M.C. Siraut with Matthew Bristow and Adam Chapman
A History of the County of Somerset
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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.
Andrew Wareham
A History of the County of Cambridge and the Isle of Ely
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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.
D.A. Crowley
A History of Wiltshire
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Chalke and Dunworth hundreds are in south-west Wiltshire on the Dorset border. The parishes of Chalke hundred were united by being part of Wilton abbey's estate before the Norman Conquest, but most of the hundred is homogeneous. Long and narrow parishes lie north and south across the river Ebble and are characterized by extensive chalk downs. Until farmsteads were built on the downs in the 19th cen-tury, nearly all settlement was in small riverside villages. From the Reformation to the 19th century the earls of Pembroke owned most of the eastern parishes. Sheep--and-corn husbandry and more recently arable and dairy farming was the pattern of agriculture in all the parishes except Semley where there is a remarkable survival of common pastures. Dunworth hundred is largely in the Vale of Wardour, and land in most of its parishes belonged to the Barons Arundell of War-dour as successors to Shaftesbury abbey. It is an area of broken landscape and mixed farming in which only Tisbury has grown larger than an ordinary village. Except at Tisbury, there has been little manufactur-ing in the area, but Portland stone has been extensively quarried at Chilmark, Teffont Evias, and Tisbury, and greensand stone has been quarried at the Donheads. Partly because of its stone, Dunworth hundred is notable for its secular buildings. The castle at Wardour is the only one to survive in Wiltshire; Fonthill Abbey in Fonthill Gifford was the most remarkable house of its day in England. Among the many farm-houses of local stone which survive from the Middle Ages is Place Farm at Tisbury, which was frequently visited by the abbess of Shaftesbury and has the largest medieval barn in England. Except for Sedgehill parish and part of Donhead St. Mary parish both hundreds are in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty: the exceptions are in aSpecial Landscape Area.
K.J. Allison
A History of the County of York East Riding
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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
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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.
Simon Townley
A History of the County of Oxford
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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.
W.A. Champion
A History of Shropshire
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Comprehensive survey of the history of Shrewsbury.
This volume examines the county town of Shrewsbury, which boasts a largely unaltered medieval street plan, and over 600 listed buildings, including some of the finest timber-framed buildings in England, Ditheringon flax mill (thefirst iron-framed building in the world), a Norman castle, Shrewsbury abbey and the remains of the medieval town walls. It recounts the history of the town from the early medieval period until the twenty-first century in a seriesof chapters written by experts. They include the archaeologist Dr Nigel Baker and Professor Richard Holt on Shrewsbury before 1200; Alan Thacker, Robert and the late Dorothy Cromarty on the town between 1200 and 1350, when Shrewsbury was of national importance; W.A. Champion on developments between 1350 and 1780 when the town within the walls achieved its current physical shape and character; and Barrie Trinder on modern Shrewsbury, its industrial development and suburban spread. There are also sections on individual religious congregations and their buildings, institutions and their continuity, and topics particular to Shrewsbury such as the common lands, its county institutions,the town walls and castle, and the liberties and municipal boundaries. This is the first of two volumes devoted to Shrewsbury, presenting a survey of its history; the second volume will focus on individual topics and themesin detail.
Mark Page
A History of the County of Northampton
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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.
Gillian Cookson
A History of the County of Durham
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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.
C. P. Lewis
A History of the County of Sussex V.ii
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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.
Nicholas Orme
A History of the County of Cornwall
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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.
C P Lewis
A History of the County of Chester
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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.
Nigel J. Tringham
A History of the County of Stafford
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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.
J.H. Chandler
A History of the County of Gloucester
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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.
Nigel J. Tringham
A History of the County of Staffordshire
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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.R.J. Jurica
A History of the County of Gloucester
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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.
V.R. Bainbridge
A History of the County of Wiltshire
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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.
Graham Kent
A History of the County of York: East Riding
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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.
Simon Townley
A History of the County of Oxford
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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
The Victoria History of the County of Oxford: Volume XX
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Unique multi-disciplinary study of a key part of the Oxfordshire Chilterns over a thousand years, based on intensive new research and exploring landscape, settlement, farming, and social and religious life.
Drawing on intensive new research, this volume covers a dozen ancient parishes straddling the south-west end of the Chiltern hills, set within a large southwards loop of the Thames close to Reading, Wallingford, and Henley-on-Thames. London, connected by river, road, and (later) rail, lies some 40 miles east. The uplands feature the dispersed settlement and wood-pasture typical of the Chilterns, contrasted with nucleated riverside villages such as Whitchurch and Goring. Caversham, formerly "a little hamlet at the bridge", developed from the 19th century into a densely settled suburb of Reading (across the river), while other recent changes have largely obliterated the ancient pattern of "strip" parishes stretching from the river into the hills, which bound vale and upland together and had its origins in 10th-century estate structures.
The economy was predominantly agricultural until the 20th century, with woodland playing a significant role alongside rural crafts and industry. Crowmarsh Gifford (near Wallingford) had an early market and fair. Gentrification and tourism gained momentum from the mid 19th century, accelerated by the arrival of the railway from 1840 and especially affecting riverside villages such as Goring and Shiplake, which saw extensive new building by wealthy incomers. Goring was earlier the site of an Augustinian nunnery and (probably) of a small pre-Conquest minster, while Mapledurham and several other places became foci for post-Reformation Roman Catholic recusancy, with Protestant Nonconformity expanding from the 19th century. Major buildings include mansion houses at Hardwick (in Whitchurch) and Mapledurham, alongside timber or brick vernacular structures and some striking modernist additions.
Christopher C. Thornton
A History of the County of Essex
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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.
Philip Riden, Dudley Fowkes
A History of the County of Derby
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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.
Simon Townley
A History of the County of Oxford
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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.
R. W. Dunning
A History of the County of Somerset
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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
Patricia Croot
A History of the County of Middlesex
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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.
David Neave, Susan Neave
A History of the County of York: East Riding
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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.
Mary D. Lobel
A History of the County of Oxfordshire
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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
D.A. Crowley
A History of Wiltshire
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The history of Calne, a market and industrial town in north Wiltshire, and the places around it.
Calne, a small town in north Wiltshire, stood on a large royal estate, and the witan met there - St Dunstan survived the partial collapse of a building at one meeting. It sent members to parliament from the thirteenth century, andit became a pocket borough in the eighteenth. The town stands on what until 1971 was the main London to Bristol road; markets and fairs were held, and inns flourished. It was also industrial: water-powered mills were used for fulling, and from the sixteenth century to the 1840s it was a centre for cloth making. The topography of the town, its growth, government and cultural life are fully explored, and churches, chapels and schools discussed. In Calne's hinterland most settlement was in small villages with open fields and commonable pastures. Bowood park was inclosed from the forest c.1618 and Bowood House was built in the park c.1727. The house, the changes to it by Robert Adam and others, and the redesigning of its park by 'Capability' Brown are fully described. In the nineteenth century many estate cottages were built. For the places around Calne the history of the settlement and churches in each village, the manorial descents, and the evolution of farming and farms are all traced, and there are architectural descriptions of the churches.D.A.CROWLEY is County Editor, Victorial History of Wiltshire.
Simon Townley
A History of the County of Oxford
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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-Wychwoodacquired national notoriety in 1873 as home of the so-called "Ascott Martyrs", reflecting local agrarian difficulties.
M.C. Siraut
A History of the County of Somerset
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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.
Edited by Christopher C. Thornton and Herbert Eiden
A History of the County of Essex
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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.
Simon Townley
A History of the County of Oxford
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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.
M.C. Siraut
A History of the County of Somerset
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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.
David Crouch
A History of the County of York: East Riding
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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.
Patricia E.C. Croot
A History of the County of Middlesex
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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.
Gillian Cookson
A History of the County of Durham
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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.
William Page
A History of the County of Suffolk
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Published by Boydell & Brewer Inc.
Christopher C. Thornton
A History of the County of Essex
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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".
N. J. Tringham
The Victoria History of the County of Stafford
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Classic VCH account of the important town of Tutbury and its environs.
Tutbury and Needwood forest have a rich history, fully explored here from the earliest times to the present day: the former with its great medieval castle, the heart of a major feudal honor held from the 13th century by the royalearls and dukes of Lancaster, and the latter with its medieval parks and hunting lodges. The volume also covers the important early Anglo-Saxon monastic and royal site of Hanbury, the burial place of St Werburh, a Mercian princess; and offers accounts of the mansion houses built in and around the ancient forest area by members of the Bass brewing family and others, and the magnificent late 19th-century church of Hoar Cross, one of Bodley's masterpieces.
NIGEL TRINGHAM is County Editor for VCH Stafforshire and lecturer in history at the University of Keele.
Nigel J. Tringham
A History of the County of Stafford
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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.
Charles Insley
The Victoria History of the County of Northampton
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This latest volume in the history of Northamptonshire covers the history of its industry in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including, of course, its most celebrated products: boots and shoes. Particular attention is givento the impact of industrial development upon the infrastructure, topography and environment of the county.
R. W. Dunning
A History of the County of Somerset
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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.
Mary D. Lobel
The Victoria History of the Country of Oxford
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Published by Boydell & Brewer Inc.
Philip Riden
The Victoria History of the County of Northampton
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Cleley comprises a dozen parishes in the south on either side of Watling Street, and includes the royal estate, the honor of Grafton.
This new volume, the first to be published for Northamptonshire since 1937, deals with a group of a dozen parishes in the south of the county, on either side of Watling Street between Towcester and Stony Stratford. Essentially a group of typical Midland open-field parishes, the main interest of the area lies in the creation of a great royal estate, the honor of Grafton, in 1542, which occupied about half the hundred. In 1706 the honor passed to the secondDuke of Grafton under a grant made by his grandfather, Charles II. The dukes remained the principal owners in the district until a series of sales just after the First World War.Researched with the thoroughness for which the Victoria County History has long been well known, and illustrated with numerous maps and plates, this volume will be of great interest to local residents who wish to know about the past history of their community, and also to a widerange of academic readers, especially historians interested in landed estates between the sixteenth and the twenty-first century.
Mary D. Lobel
The Victoria History of the County of Oxford
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William Farrer
The Victoria History of the County of Lancaster
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The volume contains histories of the eleven ancient parishes in Leyland hundred (Leyland, Penwortham, Brindle, Croston, Hesketh-with-Becconsall, Tarleton, Rufford, Chorley, Hoole, Eccleston, Standish) and of two of the five ancient parishes in Blackburn hundred (Blackburn parish and Whalley). Some very considerable places in the volume never achieved the status of ancient parish: Darwen was part of Blackburn parish, and Whalley included Accrington, Burnley, Clitheroe, Colne, and Nelson. In the Middle Ages the area was relatively poor, with extensive royal forests used for deer and, later, cattle and sheep farming. From the late 18th century the woollen industry gave way to cotton spinning and weaving in hundreds of factories, and the coalfield was exploited. Despite the growth of industry the area retains much undeveloped countryside, gentry houses in the lush pasture land of the Ribble Valley, and many oldfarmhouses on the slopes of the Pennine moorlandsand Pendle Hill.
R.B. Pugh
A History of Wiltshire
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Ecclesiastical History, Industries, Roads, Canals, Railways, Population Table, Sport, Spas and Mineral Springs, Freemasonry, Forests. Indexed.
William Page
The Victoria History of the County of Oxford
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Ecclesiastical History, Religious Houses, Social and Economic History, Table of Population, Industries, Agriculture, Forestry, Ancient Earthworks, Sport.
Elizabeth Crittall
A History of Wiltshire
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Wilton borough, Old Salisbury borough, New Salisbury city, Underditch hundred. Indexed.
William Page
The Victoria History of the County of Huntingdon
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William Page
The Victoria History of the County of Kent
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Published by Boydell & Brewer Inc.
H. Arthur Doubleday, William Page
A History of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight
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Published by Boydell & Brewer Inc.
William Farrer
The Victoria History of the County of Lancaster
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Natural History. Early Man. Anglo-Saxon Remains. Domesday. The Fuedal Baronage.
William Page
The Victoria History of the County of Gloucester
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Ecclesiastical History. Religious Houses. Social and Economic History. Industries. Agriculture. Forestry. Sport. Schools.
William Farrer
The Victoria History of the County of Lancaster
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Topography: West Derby hundred (cont., including Liverpool, Wigan), Salford hundred.(part, including Manchester)
William Page
The Victoria History of the County of Nottingham
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Published by Boydell & Brewer Inc.
R. A. McKinley
A History of the County of Leicester
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Published by Boydell & Brewer Inc.
R.B. Pugh, Elizabeth Crittall
A History of Wiltshire
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Bradford, Melksham, and Potterne and Cannings hundreds (including Bradford-on-Avon, Melksham, and Trowbridge). Indexed.
J. P. C. Roach
A History of the County of Cambridge and the Isle of Ely
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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.
William Farrer
The Victoria History of the County of Lancaster
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The volume contains the histories of the three ancient parishes in Blackburn hundred north of the Ribble (Mitton, Chipping. and Ribchester) and of the eight ancient parishes in Amounderness hundred (Preston, Kirkham, Lytham, Poulton-le-Fylde, Bispham, part of Lancaster, St. Michael-on-Wyre, and Garstang). A very large part of Amoundernesshundred is the level area between the Ribble estuary and Cockerham Sands called the Fylde and one known as 'the wheatfield of Amounderness'. Some of the ancient parishes include places that have become larger, more populous, and better known than the old centres ofpopulation which gave the parishes their names. Poulton-le-Fylde includes Fleetwood, and Bispham is better known to the world as the seaside resort of Blackpool, which also extends into Poulton.
William Farrer
The Victoria History of the County of Lancaster
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Topography: Lonsdale hundred, north and south, Index to Vol III, Corrigenda.
William Page
The Victoria History of the County of Norfolk
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William Farrer
The Victoria History of the County of Lancaster
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Topography: West Derby hundred (part including Prescot).
William Farrer
The Victoria History of the County of Lancaster
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Ecclesiastical History. Religious Houses. Political History. Industries. Agriculture. Forestry. Sport. Ancient Earthworks. Schools. Index to vols I and II.
William Page
Index to The Victoria History of the County of York
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D.A. Crowley
A History of Wiltshire
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THE VOLUME relates the history of the 15 parishes in Kinwardstone hundred in east Wiltshire. The hundred lay between two medieval royal forests, Savernake and Chute. It is generally fertile and was devoted to sheep-and-corn husbandry. Each of c. 45 villages and hamlets in it had its own set of open fields and its own common pasture, and there is evidence of colonization from some of the larger villages. Much of the common pasture was inclosed in the 17th century, most of the open fields were inclosed in the 18th. Outside the villages new farmsteads were built on downland in the 19th century, and in many of the villages in the later 10th century the sites of farmsteads were used fornew housing. The largest villages are Great Bedwyn, which was an early borough and retains a small market square, Pewsey, which had a market in the 19th century and became a local shopping centre in the 20th, and Burbage. Only 12parish churches stood in the hundred in the Middle Ages, when most of their revenues were taken by religious houses and prebendaries of Salisbury cathedral; their parishes were large and most villages lacked a church. Five new churches were built in the 19th century. A great estate in the hundred was accumulated by Protector Somerset, whose descendants built Tottenham House in parkland on the edge of Savernake forest. Notable among other secular buildingsin the hundred is the red-brick almshouse for 50 widows which was built at Froxfield in the 1690s.PARISHES: GREAT BEDWYN (INCLUDING GRAFTON), LITTLE BEDWYN, BURBAGE, BUTTERMERE, CHILTON FOLIAT, CHUTE, CHUTE FOREST, COLLINGBOURNE KINGSTON, EASTON, FROXFIELD, MILTON LILBOURNE, PEWSEY, SAVERNAKE, TIDCOMBE (AND FOSBURY), WOOTTON RIVERS.
William Page
The Victoria History of the County of Lincoln
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The volume was published more than eighty years ago, and its reissue makes available what is virtually an antiquarian book; it is nevertheless a work of reference that in many respects has not been replaced. Half the volume is devoted to Ecclesiastical History and separate histories of the religious houses of the county, numbering no less than 125 and including Lincoln cathedral and Crowland abbey; several of those histories were written by Rose Graham andthe accounts of the seventeen friaries by A. G. Little. The second half of the volume contains chapters on Political History (by C. H. Vellacott), Social and Economic History (including a table of population summarizing the firsteleven national censuses), Industries, Agriculture, Forestry, Endowed Schools, and Sport.
Mary D. Lobel
A History of the County of Oxford
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Bullingdon Hundred, including Cowley, Cuddesdon, Headington, Iffley, Nuneham, Courtney.
L.Margaret Midgley
A History of the County of Stafford
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The Staffordshire section of Domesday Book; West Cuttlestone hundred (villages south-west of Stafford to the Shropshire border).
H.E. Salter
The Victoria History of the County of Oxford
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The volume was originally published in 1954, and was the work of a team of distinguished historians. It broke new ground, for although separate histories of the university and its colleges had been written, it was the first comprehensive scholarly account of all those institutions. The opening chapter on the history of the university from its 12th-century beginnings to the mid 20th century is followed by chapters on the grammar schools of the medieval university and on the architectural and institutional history of the several university buildings. The greater portion of the book is devoted to the histories of the colleges and halls, each of which is the subject of a separate article. The articles are precise and fully referenced, telling of such matters as the foundation and buildings of the college, its estates, its religious and academic history, and its outstanding personalities. The many illustrationsinclude plates of old prints and drawings; there are also plans which carry forward the work of the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments. 'The book abounds in new and interesting information ... the result of research in muniments which have not before been so carefully and intelligently investigated.' (F. M. Powicke in English Historical Review).
William Page
The Victoria History of London
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T. P. Hudson
A History of the County of Sussex
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Published by Boydell & Brewer Inc.
William Farrer
The Victoria History of the County of Lancaster
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Topography: Salford hundred (cont., including Rochdale), Index to vols III, IV and V.
William Page
The Victoria History of the County of Sussex
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Ecclesiastical History, religious Houses, Maritime, History, Social and Economic History, Industries, Agriculture, Endowed Schools, Sport.
Susan Reynolds
A History of the County of Middlesex
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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.
K.J. Allison
A History of the County of York East Riding
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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.
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.
William Page
The Victoria History of the County of York
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Natural History, Early Man, Schools and Forestry.
William Page
The Victoria History of the County of Kent
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L. Margaret Midgley
A History of the County of Stafford
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East Cuttlestone hundred (towns and villages in the Cannock Chase area).
H. Arthur Doubleday
The Victoria History of the County of Cumberland
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Susan M. Keeling, C.P. Lewis
A History of the County of Sussex
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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.
William Page
Index to the Victoria History of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight
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W. R. Powell
A History of the County of Essex
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Roman Essex (whole county).
L.F. Salzman
The Victoria History of the County of Sussex
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Romano-British Sussex, Chichester City.
William Page
The Victoria History of the County of Sussex
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Natural History, Archaeology, Domesday, Political History.
B. E. Harris
A History of the County of Chester
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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.
William Page
The Victoria History of the County of Huntingdon
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J.W. Willis-Bund
The Victoria History of the County of Worcester
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William Page
The Victoria History of the County of Nottingham
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Published by Boydell & Brewer Inc.
T. F. T. Baker
A History of the County of Middlesex
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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.
William Page
The Victoria History of the County of Derby
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William Page
The Victoria History of the County of Kent
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Published by Boydell & Brewer Inc.
R. B. Pugh
The Victoria History of the County of Cambridge and the Isle of Ely
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The Isle of Ely: Liberty and City of Ely. Ely, North and South Witchford, and Wisbech hundreds.
The Isle of Ely: Liberty and City of Ely. Ely, North and South Witchford, and Wisbech hundreds.Parishes: Benwick, Caxton, Coveney, Doddington, Downham, Elm, Ely, Haddenham, Leverington, Littleport, Manea, March, Mepal, Newton inthe Isle, Outwell, Parson Drove, Stanground North, Stretham, Sutton, Thetford, Thorney, Tydd St Giles, Upwell, Welches Dam, Wentworth, Whittlesey, Wilburton, Wimblington, Wisbech, Wisbech St Mary, Witcham, Witchford.
