Name: A History of the County of Oxford
Brand: Alan Crossley
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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.

L.F. Salzman

The Victoria History of the County of Sussex

$115.00

Cichester rape, the western end of the county, including Midhurst and Bognor.

The Victoria History of the County of Sussex

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

G. C. Baugh

A History of Shropshire

$140.00

Published by Boydell & Brewer Inc.

William Page

The Victoria History of the County of Derby

$140.00

Published by Boydell & Brewer Inc.

The Victoria History of the County of Derby

A.T. Gaydon

A History of Shropshire

$115.00

This volume contains the histories of twenty-two parishes in central Shropshire, stretching from the Severn valley up into the northern fringes of the south Shropshire hills. Much new evidence is brought forward on landscape history and on the evolution of the distinctive pattern of settlement in this part of England. There are descriptions of such well-known buildings as Acton Burnell Castle, Pitch-ford Hall, and Condover Hall, and attention is paid to many more modest houses. These include a high proportion of medieval date. Though predominantly agricultural the district includes the sites of several 17th century ironworks, numerous coal mines, and the Snailbeach lead mine.

A. P. M. Wright, C. P. Lewis

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

$115.00

THE volume relates to the part of the county lying north-west of Cambridge and includes the histories of twenty-seven parishes forming the hundreds of Chesterton, Northstowe, and Papworth. The area is bounded on the south by the road to St. Neots, on the east by the river Cam, and on the north by the Great Ouse or Old West River; it falls into two distinct physical landscapes, the land in the south sloping gently from a ridge and that in the north formingan extension of the fenlands of the Isle of Ely. Two distinct settlement patterns reflect the geographical division. The villages on the higher ground were mainly devoted to arable farming. Some of the smaller parishes there cameinto or remained in the hands of a single landowner between the early 16th and the mid 17th century, and each parish tended to be dominated by its principal landowner and the Church of England; population rose steadily in the earlier 19th century but fell sharply from the 1870s. Along the fen edge the parishes were mostly larger and included extensive meadow and pasture created on former marshland; numerous smallholders could support themselves out of theresources of the fens, grazing sheep on the commons, fishing, fowling, and cutting peat, and in the 17th century the villagers combined to resist the attempts of new lay lords to restore seigneurial rights and to inclose large tracts of commons. Religious dissent was strong. From the 1870s the establishment of orchards and market gardens and the growth of the Chivers jam factory at Histon enabled the villages to maintain or increase their population. Thesouth-east corner of the area was particularly affected by the urban and academic expansion of Cambridge in the late 19th and the 20th century; several parishes were largely built up, Chesterton became fully suburban, and research organizations were established.

T. F. T. Baker

VCH Middlesex XI

$140.00

Published by Boydell & Brewer Inc.

L. F. Salzman

The Victoria History of the County of Cambridgeshire and the Isle of Ely

$140.00

Social and Economic History. Ecclesiastical History. Religious Houses. Industries. Political History.

The Victoria History of the County of Cambridgeshire and the Isle of Ely

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.

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.

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.

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.

C. R. Elrington

General Introduction: Supplement 1970-90

$140.00

THIS volume is a supplement to the General Introduction published in 1970, which described the origins and progress of the Victoria County History and included lists of contents of the 150 volumes published by then, with indexes of the articles and authors included in those lists. Since 1970 a further 50 volumes have been completed, and the Supplement lists and indexes their contents. There is also a brief account of the progress of the Victoria County history over the last eighteen years.

General Introduction: Supplement 1970-90

D.A. Crowley

A History of Wiltshire

$115.00

This volume contains the history of the town of Malmesbury and twenty surrounding parishes forming Malrnesbury hundred. The town evolved in the Anglo-Saxon period round the early monastic foundation: the town's position on a promontory between the Tetbury and Sherston branches of the Bristol Avon and the abbey's surviving buildings remain the town's most noticeable features. The abbey's estate included more than 20,000 acres in the twenty parishes, besidesmore outside the hundred. At the time of the Norman Conquest the town was as developed as any in Wiltshire, but after that it declined in comparison with neighbouring market towns, and its medieval street pattern, with the extension of the urban area into the adjoining parish of Westport, has persisted. In the surrounding parishes the abbey's lands were broken up at the Dissolution, but the Howards, earls of Suffolk and of Berkshire, built up a large estate centred on Charlton Park, the grandest mansion in the hundred. Among other large houses, Draycot House has been wholly destroyed, and Seagry House largely so. The rural parish churches include a fine example at Crudwell. The history of the landscape is traced in the inclosure of open arable fields from the 16th and 17th centuries; on the east the hundred adjoins Braydon forest, and the inclosure of the forest and its purlieus in the 1630s was also influential physically, socially, and economically. In the 20th century the area has been much affected by the building of the M4 motorway. One of the parishes which the road touches is Stanton St. Quintin, which might serve as a paradigm for the area, with its two villages (one with the church, manor house, rectory house, and school, the other with copyhold farmsteads and a nonconformist chapel), its manorial descent recorded without a break, its open fields and common pastures of which the location and dates of inclosure are known, its ancient woodland, possible lost village, hermitage, moated site, walled park, 20th-century housing, airfield, and motorway junction.

C. R. Elrington

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

$115.00

This volume contains the histories of 25 parishes in west Cambridgeshire and eight articles on sport. The parishes form the hundreds of Longstowe and Wetherley. On the west they lie along the Old North Road, which has affected thechanging shape and fortunes of some of the villages, while on the east the closeness of Cambridge has been influential through the ownership of land and livings by the colleges and, in modern times, through the spread of satellite housing. The soil is mostly a heavy clay that was not easily drained, and the existence in Wetherley hundred of five deserted village sites may attest the difficulties of cultivation. One site, however, was that of Wimpole, moved to make apark around what became the county's finest country house, once the seat of the Chicheleys and later of Edward Harley, earl of Oxford, and of the earls of Hardwicke. A few other places stand out from their neighbours,Bourn with its Norman castle-site, Caxton as a small market town and coaching centre which prospered until the decline of the Old North Road, and Rupert Brooke's Grantchester. The parishes tend to be small, with nucleated settlements. Much land remained in open fields until the eighth century, and several villages retain extensive greens. During periods of agricultural depression the inhabitants suffered acute poverty; coprolite-digging between 1855 and 1885 brought some prosperity. Modern agriculture includes large-scale arable farming, fruit-growing, and market-gardening. Light industry, cement-works, and radio-telescopes vary the rural scene. Of the sports whose history is toldin the volume, racing takes pride of place since Cambridgeshire includes Newmarket Heath. The presence of the university underlay the development of rowing, football, and cricket, while the county's geographical characteristics have given peculiar importance to wildfowling and skating.

G.C. Baugh

A History of Shropshire

$115.00

Volume XI, relating to an area between the left bank of the Severn and the Weald Moors, covers most of the east Shropshire coalfield. Two parishes from the borough of Wenlock and eight from Bradford hun-dred contributed territoryto Telford New Town and the volume opens with an account of the town's planning and growth since designation (as Dawley) in 1963. Prehistoric settlement centred on the Wrekin in the late Iron Age. Uxacona stood on Watling Street,which crosses the area. Post-Roman settlement was earliest north of Watling Street; to the south settle-ments were smaller in woodland cleared at a later date. Lilleshall abbey, Wombridge priory, and other monasteries nearby hadlarge interests in the area's growth. Wen-lock priory established a market at Madeley in 1269 but Wellington proved a more successful town, becoming one of Shrop-shire's three largest in the 18th century. The area cradled the industrial Revolution. Seventeenth-century coal and iron works grew rapidly after the 13th-century innova-tions, of the Darbys of Coalbrookdale, and the Iron Bridge (opened 1780) symbolizes the area's entrepreneurial talent. From c.1850, however, and despite the growth of Oakengates, the area declined; it has been for Telford new town to reverse that decline. In the north Telford's rural sur-roundings comprise land sloping down to the Weald Moors; in the westthe Wrekin dominates Aston, Little Wenlock, and other secluded villages. To the south the scenery and historic remains of Coalbrook-dale and the Severn Gorge are now sedulously conserved. The volume includes an account of Bradford hundred.

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

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

Alan Crossley

The Victoria History of the County of Oxford

$115.00

Published by Boydell & Brewer Inc.

The Victoria History of the County of Oxford

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.

D.A. Crowley

A History of Wiltshire

$115.00

This volume contains the history of 25 parishes in Amesbury hundred and Branch and Dole hundred. Apart from the small towns of Amesbury and Lud-gershall the site of a small royal castle in the Middle Ages and a parliamentary borough, the area was agricultural, with little woodland. The parishes lie on chalk downland, mostly on the south-east part of Salisbury Plain, bearing many marks of prehistoric activity. Stonehenge, with its hinterland a World Heritage Site from 1984, stands in Amesbury parish. Among monuments from the historic period the churches are small, medieval fortified houses at Sherrington and Stapleford have disappeared, the only manor house of more than local import-ance was that called Amesbury Abbey, and there is little medieval vernacular building. The numerous small villages lie close together beside the rivers Avon, Bourne, Till, and Wylye, flanked from the 17th century by water meadows. They depended on sheep-corn husbandry, and in many parishes open fields survived until the 19th century, inclosure being followed by the building of down-land farmsteads. In the 20th-centurv tanks have succeeded sheep over muchof Salisbury Plain, where from 1897 the War Department bought estates for mili-tary training, closed roads, and set up firing ranges. Army camps were built at Tidworth, Bulford, and Larkhill, stimu-lating the growth first of Amesbury and Ludgershall, both with railway stations, and then of Durrington. Airfields and other military centres were established. To the south-west rural villages remain surrounded by farmland.

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.

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.

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

$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.

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.

D.A. Crowley

A History of Wiltshire

$115.00

This volume contains the histories of the hundreds of Ramsbury and Selkley and of the borough of Marlborough. The area is mostly on the Marlborough Downs in the north-east quarter of Wiltshire. The Kennet flows east through both hundreds and skirts the town of Marlborough to the south. Its valley and those of its tributaries have provided settlement sites, including those of Avebury, probably an important cult centre in the Neolithic Period, and the Romantown of Cunetio, and determined many lines of communication from earliest times. The area has always been predominantly agricultural. Tracts of rough downland, some the site of warrens from the Middle Ages, are still used for sport. In the 19th and 20th centuries racehorses have been trained on the downs notably at Beckhampton in Avebury and at Manton in Preshute. At Aldbourne Fustians were manufactured and bells were founded. Ramsbury hundred, which comprised Bishopstone in the Cole valley and the large parish of Ramsbury, belonged to the bishops of Ramsbury and contained a pre-Conquest see. It passed to the bishops of Salisbury, the site of whose medieval palace is marked by Ramsbury Manor. Littlecote House, once the home of the Darrells, dates mainly from the 14th and 16th centuries and is open to the public. An airfield was established in Ramsbury during the Second World War. The village is chiefly known as the home of the Ramsbury Building Society formed in 1846. Marlborough was a borough from the 11th century until 1974. It was represented in parliament from 1275 to 1885 and from the 18th century was a pocket borough of theBruces. Its medieval castle was a favourite residence of Henry III and its site is now occupied by Marlborough College. Marlborough has long been important as a market town where main routes converge rather than as a manufacturing centre.

G.C. Baugh

A History of Shropshire

$115.00

This volume is devoted to the story of agriculture in Shropshire from the earliest times to the present day. It is the work of a team of expert authors. The introductory chapter discusses the environmental background provided by the natural landscape, soils, and climate. There follows a comprehensive survey in six chronological chapters, divided at the time of the Domesday survey, the end of the 13th century, the dissolution of the monasteries, the mid 18th century, and 1875. Each chapter deals systematically with the ownership and division of the land, the various methods of exploiting it, agricultural technology and practice, live-stock breeds, the changing prosperity of landowners and farmers and labourers, and the marketing of produce. Where appropriate, the authors consider such topics as inclosure and other changes in the man-made landscape, rural housing, and agricultural education. Besides offer-ingan informed and thoroughly docu-mented view of a fundamental aspect of Shropshire's history, the book provides many new insights into the agricultural and economic evolution of English rural society.

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.

J. J. Wilkes

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

$115.00

This volume is devoted to an account of Roman Cambridgeshire. It completes the `general' articles on the county for the Victoria History, while the topography, on which four volumes have already been published, remains to be completed in three or four further volumes. Although in Roman times the county in no way formed a unit, and may indeed have been divided between the provinces of Britannia Superior and Inferior along the line of the Fen Causeway, andalthough only a relatively small part of the area looked towards the Roman settlement of Cambridge as its centre while the rest looked towards urban centres tying beyond the later county boundary, it has been possible to piece together the story of Roman Cambridgeshire. To a considerable extent it has been possible because of the pioneering groundwork done by the late Sir Cyril Fox on the Cambridge region, extending beyond the county but including all itssouthern part, and more recently by the Fenland Research Committee, taking in the Isle of Ely along with the rest of the Fens. The author of the present volume, Mr. David Browne, has devoted a long time to the study of Roman Cambridgeshire and has built on the work of his predecessors. Following a discussion of the landscape, which has changed greatly since the 1st century A.D., and of the roads, he unravels the story of settlement in the Roman period, in which the town of Cambridge, the Duroli-ponte of the Antonine Itinerary, provides contrasts with the villages of the Fens and the villas of the southern uplands. An analysis of the recorded items of material culture, together with shorter sections on agricul-ture, currency, religion, and burial, is linked with the settlement history to provide a comprehensive survey which may be used also as a selective gazetteer.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A. P. M. Wright

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

$115.00

This volume covers the two hundreds of Armingford and Thriplow in south-west Cam-bridgeshire. They comprise 23 ancient parishes, lying between the Gogmagog Hills south-east of Cambridge, where an Iron Age hill fort partly survives, and the clay-covered West Cambridge-shire upland. To the north-west they are largely bounded by the Cam or Rhee, to the south by heathlend along the Icknield Way. The land has long been used mainly for arable farming. Some of the villages, which are mostly nucleated, may stand near the sites of Roman or earlier settlement. Those in the far west had some dependent hamlets, mostly vanished long ago. In that area several villages, after the early inclosureof their poor, heavy soils for pasturage, shrank greatly or, as at Clopton and Shingay, became. entirely deserted. Elsewhere open fields survived until the early 19th century. Later in that century coprolites were widely dug; in the 20th com-mercial fruit growing was introduced; the chalk has been dug to make cement and whiting; and some of the larger villages, such as Melbourn, have attracted light industry. During the Second World War much level ground was taken over for airfields. The churches of the area range from the humble early Norman work at Hauxton, through cruciform 13th-century buildings, as at Fowlrnere, to the stately Decorated of Trumpington and Bassingbourn. The Igth century saw much rebuilding and refurnishing, sometimes financed by local religious plays. Several villages retain much timber framed vernacular building. The only aristocratic mansion, Gogmagog House of the dukes of Leeds at Wandlebury, has been demolished, but lesser houses include some well preserved late medieval manor houses and much good, plain Georgian work, as at Trumpington Hall, seat of the Pembertons. The villages near Cambridge have been greatly affected in the 20th century by the spread of population.

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.

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.

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.

A History of the County of York East Riding

Elizabeth Crittall

A History of Wiltshire

$115.00

Volume I(2) contains a series of chapters originally planned to accompany within a single volume a comprehensive gazetteer of Wiltshire's prehistoric remains. In the event the gazetteer was published as Volume I(1) in 1957 and thechapters are now ap-pearing after a considerable lapse of time. Although the chapters are based largely upon the evidence contained in the gazet-teer, the authors have taken account of relevant excavations and research under- taken since 1957. The first five chapters tell the story from the beginning of human settlement until the end of the final phase of bronze technology, and they take, so far as archaeological evidence permits, a narra-tive form: thussome monuments with long life-spans, such as Stonehenge and Avebury, appear and re-appear as the chronological account unfolds. Those chapters cover a period for which the Wiltshire evidence is of great significance; they are written by Professor Stuart Piggott, whose long and close acquaintance with the antiquities of Wiltshire has enabled him to enter into considerable detail and often to set the local evidence against a continental or wider British background. Six chapters follow taking the story from the early pre-Roman Iron Age down to the end of the Roman era. Here the nature of the evidence makes a narrative style easier to adopt. The growing complexity of the settlement form is traced from the single enclosed farmstead of the early Iron Age to the hamlets and even small villages of the Roman period. The steady course of Romanization in Wiltshire is traced until its eventual collapse and the Britishvictory at Mount Badon. A final chapter deals with the Pagan Saxon period, using archaeological, documentary, and place- name evidence; it gives special attention to that impressive but enigmatic earthwork known on its Wiltshire course as the East Wansdyke. Numerous line illustrations have been drawn specially for the volume.

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.

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.

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.

A.T. Gaydon

A History of Shropshire

$115.00

Ecclesiastical history, the history of public schools and endowed grammar schools, and sporting history provide the bulk of the content in Volume II. The opening chapter deals not only with the territorial organization of the established church in Shropshire but also with the history of Roman catholic and protestant nonconformist organization. There are separate articles on 40 religious houses including the abbeys of Buildwas, Haughmond, Lilleshall, and Shrewsbury and the priory of Wenlock; an account of the Ludlow Palmers' Guild, which maintained a college of chaplains in St Lawrence's church, is also included. Among the 15 schools whose histories are treated are Ludlow Grammar School and Oswestry School, whose origins lie in the Middle Ages, and Shrewsbury School, founded in 1552 to become one of the leading schools of Elizabethan England and restored to greatness in the early 19th century under the energetic rule of Samuel Butler. The dozen articles on the sporting history of Shropshire, besides illuminating the social basis of some sports, revive the memory of such noteworthy sportsmen as John Mytton of Halston and John Purcell,the sporting parson of Sidbury. A table of population completes the volume; based on the official censuses 1801-1961, the table gives statistics of each parish and for various other local government areas.

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.

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.

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.

Elizabeth Crittall

A History of Wiltshire

$115.00

The volume relates the histories of the borough of Devizes and of the 22 parishes in Swanborough hundred. It covers an area in the centre of Wiltshire, including the western end of the Vale of Pewsey, and ascending the escarpmentof the Marl-borough Downs to the north and that of Salisbury Plain to the south. Eastwards Swanborough extends to the Cheverells and the heavy clay-lands of west Wiltshire. Within it stand Milk Hill and Tan Hill, the two highest points in the county, and along the ridge of the Marlborough Downs is a series of important prehistoric settlement sites. Through the hundred run the ancient track known as the Ridge Way, a small stretch of Wansdyke, the Kennet andAvon Canal, and one of the main railway lines to the west of England. Once noted for its sheep-and-corn husbandry, the region has more recently seen a great ex-pansion of dairy-farming, particularly in the parishes of the Vale. Horticulture has also flourished on the greensand soils in the east and west. In 1975 the area remains almost entirely rural, although it in-cludes R.A.F. Upavon and the land on Salisbury Plain is within the army's con-trol. Most of the settlements are small, none now ranking as more than a large village, although Upavon had a market in the Middle Ages and Market Lavington had one until the 19th century. Almost all of the few industries have agricultural orhorticultural connexions. Great Cheverell was once renowned for its sheep-bell makers. Jam is still made at Easterton. Devizes has a history of unusual interest for a town of its size. Its castle, scene of many stirring events inearly times, was described in the 12th century as one of the most splendid in Europe. Its market, still held weekly in the 20th century, can be traced back at least to the early 13th. The central position of Devizes within Wiltshire gave it a claim to become the county town and has caused it to develop some of the characteristics of such a town.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Elizabeth Crittall

A History of Wiltshire

$115.00

Volume IX contains histories of Swindon, Wootton Bassett, and nine rural parishes. Special attention has been given to the development of New Swindon after the coming of the G.W.R. works in 1845, and to the effects of that development upon the small and ancient market town of Old Swindon. Space is also devoted to Swindon's quarrying industry; which flourished for 200 years before the arrival of the G.W.R. works, and to the new industries which were attracted to the town at about the time the railway works began to decline in the 20th century. The rural parishes lie chiefly to the south and west of Swindon, and several have been influenced in recent years by the growth of their large industrial neighbour. Some are also shortly to be disrupted by the construction of the M4 motorway through their land. Much of that land lies in the rich dairy-farming region of the county, but in the south it climbs the chalk escarpment of the Marlborough Downs, where sheep were grazed in the Middle Ages. A study of Wootton Bassett has led to the suggestion that it was deliberately laid out as a small market town in the 13th century. The impact made upon Lyneham by the R.A.F. station there is considered in the history of that parish. Among the illustrations is one showing what the large and elegant house at Lydiard Tregoze looked like before rebuilding in the classical style inthe 18th century. The volume contains a street plan and ten maps.

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.

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.

G.C. Baugh

A History of Shropshire

$115.00

The themes of Volume III are the government and parliamentary representation of Shropshire from their beginnings up to 1974. The long perspective allows the vicissi-tudes of successive institutions of county government to be examined thoroughly. For example, the rise of the justices of the peace is fully chronicled from their in-conspicuous origins under Edward I to the amplitude of their powers and duties in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. Shropshire's medieval government had a number of peculiarities, caused by the county's fron-tier position opposite the hostile Welsh. Accordingly its 'palatine' earldom, its serjeants of the peace, its loss of territory to marcher lordships, and its subjection to the Council in the Marches of Wales receive special attention. From Elizabeth I's reign, as the magistrates' concerns increased, the story comes to include much of the social history of the times. From 1889, when the county council was formed, that history has been one of unprecedented penetration by local government into formerly untouched areas of local and personal affairs. The institutions of Shropshire's govern-ment provided opportunities for influence and advancement; the volume thus em-bodies a history of the fortunes of Shrop-shire's leading men and families. Most prominent in the Middle Ages were the earls of Shrewsbury, Arundel, and March. Since then the families of Corbet, Newport, Herbert, Clive, and Bridgeman have been among the weightiest. Linked with their fortunes were those of smaller landowners and local officials. In the 18th century, with the appointments of itsfirst permanent county treasurer and of its first county surveyor, Thomas Telford, Shropshire took a large step towards the formation of a modern county bureaucracy. Nowhere has the play of ambition and manouvre been more openlyexercised than in elections to Parliament. The volume explores the intricacies of Shrop-shire electioneering from Edward I's reign to the general election of October 1974, and illustrates the manner in which conflicting electoralinterests bit deep into the sub-stance of Shropshire society.

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.

R. B. Pugh

General Introduction

$140.00

THE Victoria History of the Counties of England has been in progress for 70 years and has recently seen the publication of its 150th volume. The General Introduction provides a conspectus of all that has been published up to and including 1970, with a bibliographical survey, lists of the contents of each volume, and indexes of the titles of articles and of authors. It opens with an account of the origin and progress of the Victoria History, from its confident beginning at the close of Queen Victoria's reign, through its quiescence between the two World Wars, to its renewed vigour and expansion under the wing of the University of London and with the support of Local Authorities.