THE ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT OF LOCAL HISTORY
Finally, it may be worth taking a look at how local history has developed in England over the last few centuries. British history was a subject of interest to both Roman historians and, later, to Saxon and medieval monastic chroniclers. Their topics, though, were often national, mythological or religious, with Geoffrey of Monmouth writing the fictional History of the Kings of Britain in the twelfth century. It was only in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that authors began to collect material for what would later be termed local history (at about the same time as there began, among the newly rich, an interest in genealogy, with heralds’ visitations resulting in the construction of not always accurate pedigrees – the birth of family history). It was a time of great national upheaval as the Tudor age heralded the end of the Middle Ages and the end of the dominance of the Catholic Church in Britain. Perhaps one of the chief differences between local and family historians is that the latter do not usually publish their findings because they are deemed to be only of interest to the researcher and their immediate family, whereas local historians aim to have their work brought to the attention of a wider audience through being published in some form, for a history of a town or county is likely to have an appeal to all residents past and present.
The first people to study local history in England were those who made journeys through some or all of the country, titled itineraries. William of Worcester has been identified as the first. He made tours and recorded what he saw on them, especially about significant buildings but also the streets and lanes of his native Bristol, between 1477 and 1480. Another was John Leland in the first half of the next century, during the period of radical change when the monasteries were dissolved. His writings were not published until two centuries later, but they were far more substantial than Worcester’s and are still of value today.
It was only at the end of the sixteenth century that people began to write what we would recognise as local history. They wrote not about the whole of the country or several parts of it, but concentrated on just one district. William Lambarde wrote the first history of an English county, The Perambulation of Kent in 1570. Two decades later, John Norden had his histories of Middlesex and Hertfordshire published. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries others followed suit and so by 1800 there were few English counties which lacked a published history. Some had more than one and some were multivolume. The Revd Daniel Lysons wrote several volumes of a history of the counties around London at the end of the eighteenth century, divided into chapters, each based on an individual parish.
These historians consulted various sources in order to have the evidence to write what they did, rather than rely solely on the evidence of their eyes as William of Worcester and John Leland had. Some used parish records, for example. Others relied on archives made available to them by senior clergy and officials. Personal observation still counted, however. These books were often very narrow in their scope. The authors were usually gentry, and, increasingly, clergymen, who had the time, leisure, contacts and education in order to research and write. They tended to concentrate on noble and gentle families and their lineage, and on the landed estates of the county in question. Churches and clergymen also figure prominently, as does manorial history. Economic and social history, and that of the bulk of the population, was often neglected, unless there is something exceptionally unusual, such as a man living to 114 or a clergyman baptising a female child Thomas.
This tradition continued until at least the nineteenth century, even among authors who were not from the social elite. One such was Thomas Faulkner (1777–1855), who ran a bookseller’s and stationery shop in London, but also wrote several books about different parishes in Middlesex and West London from 1810 to 1839. He concentrated on the nobility, gentry and clergy, recording their inscriptions in parish churches and focusing on their lives – of course the descendants of these people were his main customers.
The development of county histories led to that of town histories. John Stow’s Survey of London, of 1598, was the first. He acknowledged his inspiration lay with the county historians. Yet books concerning towns and cities were less numerous than those of counties. Ralph Thoresby’s history of Leeds in 1715 was the first of any Yorkshire town or city; others soon followed in his wake.
Choosing a smaller scope, but at a deeper level, was the parish. The Revd White Kennett was the first parish historian in 1695, with his History of Ambrosden and other adjacent parts. Other clergymen followed his lead. Not all parish historians were clergy; John Lucas, a Leeds schoolmaster from Lancashire, wrote a history of Warton, his parish of birth, in the early eighteenth century, though this was not published for another two centuries (a not uncommon occurrence for some early local historians).
Thomas Faulkner, local historian. (London Borough of Ealing)
A good example of the content of these early histories and their source material can be found in the introduction to the first volume of the Revd Daniel Lyson’s Environs of London, first published in 1790, and described by the author as ‘Advertisement’:
Whilst a taste for local history so generally prevails, it is somewhat singular that the counties adjacent to London should not have had their due share of illustration; for even in those of which histories have been published, some very interesting particulars have been wholly unnoticed. The author of the following work offers to the public what he has been able to collect, relating either to the ancient history or present state of the several parishes within twelve miles of the capital, a district which furnishes perhaps more curious and interesting matter for observation than any other of the same extent of the kingdom. A brief description of the situation, soil, produce, and manufactures; the descent of the principal, particularly manerial [sic] property; the parish churches, and ecclesiastical history; the state of population, and the biography connected with each parish; are the principal objects of the following work.
Through the obliging permission of Thomas Astle, Esq. John Caley, Esq. and John Kipling, Esq. to inspect the Records of the Tower, the Augmentation Office, and the Rolls; through the politeness of the present proprietors of the several manors, and the ready and liberal assistance of the gentlemen of the law; the author has been enabled to give the descent of property in a manner which, though brief, he hopes will be found accurate. In the description of parish churches, those epitaphs only are given at length, which are either singular in themselves, or record persons of eminence, and these have been all copied on the spot; from the others he has inserted the names of the persons recorded, with the dates of their decease, merely to denote the place of their interment of the several families. In treating of the ecclesiastical history, an account is given of the nature of the benefice of each parish, and, where it could be ascertained, the descent of the advowson. In this department, the frequent references to the MSS. in the Lambeth library will shew how much the author has been indebted to his Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury, for his permission to consult them. The succession of incumbents on each benefice has not been given, on a presumption, that a bare list of names would be very uninteresting to the reader, and tend to swell the volume to very little purpose; the author has confined himself therefore to the noticing of such persons only as have been in any respect eminent. The parochial registers (for a ready access to which, as well as for other occasional information, he is much indebted to his brethren the clergy) have been found of much assistance in ascertaining the comparative state of population and furnishing hints for biographical matter. The ravages of the plague in many of the parishes at various periods, have been ascertained from the same source of information; and such instances of longevity as are there recorded, have been also noticed. From the churchwardens accounts, particularly at Lambeth and Kingston, several curious circumstances, relating to the price of provisions, and local customs, have been extracted.
The difficulty of correctness in a work of this nature, wherein the references are necessarily so numerous, is well known. The reader, it is hoped, will excuse such trifling inaccuracies as may have escaped the author’s observation; especially as he has endeavoured to correct those which are material, particularly in the references to public records, which have been …
Apart from a narrow focus, other early local historians were happy to repeat myths and legends as if they were true, if they were sufficiently interesting. Thus John Allan Brown of Ealing wrote Greenford Parva in 1894 and included a lengthy chapter on the Ghost of Perivale Mill, which lacks contemporary source material. William King Baker in 1912 in his History of Acton included pages about figures from national history (Oliver Cromwell, Richard Baxter and the third Earl of Derwentwater) whose connection with his subject was fleeting at best. Of the industries which had been established in the town in recent decades he said virtually nothing.
Local historians were from a narrow stratum of society. They were almost all male, often with a university background at a time when very few participated in higher education. Many were gentry or clergy, or had the wealth to have the time for study and writing. They also needed the right contacts as well as the right education, as access to documents was limited. They had to have the wealth and/or contacts to have their work published. Many had an interest in genealogy, interestingly enough. Ralph Thoresby claimed his family could be traced back to the early eleventh century and it was not uncommon to reproduce the descents of major county families within their books, as appears in Edmund Hasted’s History of the County of Kent.
All this is now known as the antiquarian tradition. Despite its limitations, it should not be despised nor ignored. First, the authors often reproduce documents or describe places or inscriptions which now do not exist and therefore they have collected unique material within their books. Secondly, their comments about their own times are valuable in themselves as providing evidence of contemporary attitudes.
Publication of local history books needed money and many authors were not able to provide for such out of their own means. They therefore solicited subscriptions from the social elite of the county or town/city in which they were writing, and the names of nobility, gentry and clergy are often inscribed at the beginning of the book, as they paid for their copies in advance and so covered the costs of publication. Therefore it made sense for the author to devote much of the book to the descent and activities of the social elite of the district.
Academic rigour was increasingly brought to bear on the writing of local history at the end of the nineteenth century. This was in the form of the Victoria History of the Counties of England (known as the VCH), with its ambitious aim to produce a properly sourced history of each parish in each county in England. It was initially and optimistically envisaged that this would be a 160-volume series and would be completed within six years. As with much local history publication, it was initially financed by subscriptions (headed by Queen Victoria). By 1908, 50 volumes had been produced. It was taken over by the Institute of Historical Research, part of the University of London, in 1933 and is now partly financed by the local authorities whose territories under survey are part of its jurisdiction. The plan was to have two or three introductory volumes covering chapters devoted to themes drawing from the county’s history; prehistoric, geological, agricultural, political, educational, sporting and so on. Then there would be a parish by parish survey, with each volume covering a number of parish histories. Many of the early volumes (e.g. Buckinghamshire, Lancashire, Hampshire, Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire) were not dissimilar to what had been written in the past: a focus on the (highly detailed) descent of landed families, of manors and estates, of the parish church and the clergy, followed by a list of parish charities, often established by the aforesaid squires and parsons. The actual history of the parish and its people was often neglected in these accounts. Yet they are often well illustrated with photographs and contain copies of early street plans and plans of churches, cathedrals, castles and large houses. They also note the source of information given in the text. Work on these volumes was in the hands of local county committees and local historians.
In more recent volumes, chiefly those post-1945, the contents of the series are far different and cover various themes such as communications, economic and social history, religious, charitable and educational history. They are written by professional historians. The information included is sourced to enable the interested reader to follow them up. The series is still being published, and there is now no clear idea when completion will occur. These histories are not meant as the last word on the subject, but rather as a useful framework for further research. Most of the volumes can now be read and searched online.
Some counties, such as Northumberland (a county history committee for this county produced its own volumes of county history, very much in the antiquarian tradition) and Westmorland, have not been covered at all, and some, such as Cumberland and Kent only have the introductory volumes covering the survey of the county. However, Essex, Middlesex, Lancashire and Cheshire have had many volumes devoted to their history. This series represents the best introduction to the history of a particular county or parish.
One issue was that the writing of history in past centuries was the work of antiquarians as opposed to historians proper. An antiquarian was a collector of facts, often very valuable in themselves, but which were laid out in text without any discernment as to what was of value and what was not, and without much analysis or narrative – in short, not history, but the materials for history. This sort of ‘history’ is by no means confined to the past and antiquarianism still lives on.
There was further interest in local history in the 1920s and 1930s. A small number of universities ran extension lectures in local history, chiefly on individual buildings. The new University College of Hull, in 1929, had a Chair of Adult Education. Tutors were employed to give lectures in villages about the local history of the locality; in two instances these resulted in short courses of a dozen lectures. Summer courses were established, often including visits to buildings of interest. Many of those attending became part-time tutors. War interrupted such activities but did not kill them off.
Since the Second World War there has been an upsurge in interest in local history. Local history societies were formed, often for villages and towns, as well as the more established county history societies. In 1948 the first standing conference for local history was established to encourage the study of local history and bring together representatives of local history committees (which rose from 13 in 1948 to 43 in 1973). Universities began to offer degree courses in local history (one of the pioneers being Leicester University in 1949 under the aegis of Professor W G Hoskins) and adult evening courses in the subject were being offered by colleges, the Workers’ Education Association, and less formally, under the aegis of village groups such as parish councils and Women’s Institutes.
Regional history has also been a topic of interest. For example, Lancashire University had a Centre for North Western Regional Studies. This published works which covered historical topics with an impact of the whole ‘region’ (such as this author’s Responses to the Jacobite Invasion of 1745 in North West England). Journals such as Southern History, Northern History and Midlands History were established (in 1979, 1965 and 1971 respectively) to publish articles and review books which covered aspects of the history of these regions, cutting across county and parish boundaries. Generally these were the province of ‘professional’ historians rather than those whose interest in local history is that of a hobbyist.
An important publication, The Amateur Historian, renamed The Local Historian in 1968, was published from 1952, which included articles about various topics related to local history as well as reviews of the increasing number of books on the subject. The editorial of the first issue stated:
During the last few years, there has been a great increase in the interest shown in history. In Britain, perhaps more than in any other country, we have always tended to look upon our history as part of our personality; but during the war the threat to our way of life and our ancient cities turned particular attention to the past from which our traditions have stemmed. With the removal of that threat, the interest has not lessened; rather with the records once more available, it has flowered into a widespread active curiosity about our history, and particularly the history of our towns and villages.
Articles included therein tend to be of two types. First, there are those which cover a particular source for local history, such as maps, photographs and oral history, or discuss sources relevant to a particular topic. Then there are articles about particular people, places or events which concern aspects of local history. Finally there are book reviews about books relevant to the study of local history or of local history books. Anyone seriously interested in local history should read these (they are now published quarterly); most record offices and some libraries subscribe to the journal.
Local historians had been chiefly gentlemen and clergy in previous centuries but in more recent decades have become rather more diverse. They include professionals: archivists, librarians, museum curators, archaeologists, teachers and academics. But they also include those for whom history is not their profession, but a hobby. They tend to come from professional backgrounds, often with a degree, sometimes retired, but with a great enthusiasm for the subject.
Local history books were written in larger numbers than ever before. Some publishers commissioned whole series of books, of varying kinds. One popular choice is the publication of books of old photographs of a particular town, often based on old postcard collections, with captions of varying lengths. There were also more textual books, though usually highly illustrated, as well. These were often written by librarians, archivists and others with historical training. There is, however, no comprehensive coverage. Many villages are without adequate histories or only have very elderly ones which have inevitably missed more recent decades, which have often been periods of change as great as any in the past. Even generally good books have virtually nothing to say of recent decades. (John Coulter’s Lewisham: History and Guide, published in 1994, says nothing about the town’s last three decades and very little about the twentieth century; ‘a catalogue of disasters’ notes the author. Frances Hounsell’s Greenford, Northolt and Perivale Past, published five years later, treats its history as ending in about 1950.) Whether this is a defect or not is a matter of opinion, but once the period in question ceases to remain in living memory it certainly will be.
Bookshops, libraries and museums should sell the more recently published of these books. They may also be found on online book sites, though for out of print ones abebooks is recommended, as well as the dwindling number of second-hand bookshops.
Local history societies have flourished since the early nineteenth century. One of their functions has always been to enable like minded people to meet and to share their findings in convivial surroundings. Originally often restricted by class and sex, they are now open to anyone who has an interest in the subject. These societies have regular meetings where either an outside speaker gives a talk or one of its members does, on a topic which is relevant to the district’s local history. It is worth ascertaining if there is such a society which covers the district that your ancestors came from (local libraries or record offices should know of any) and what their talk schedule is. Even if the topic is not of obvious interest, for example, a talk about the brass industry in Birmingham, but your ancestors there were jewellers, then it may still be worth venturing along because it will give you a chance to meet with members whose research interests may coincide with yours and so you may gain invaluable research tips which might have taken longer to discover. Not all towns and counties have a local history society, but many do; they may be titled archaeological or antiquarian societies, but usually their remit is wider than the title suggests. Societies vary considerably: some are recent creations and some date back over a century, some produce an impressive range of publications, others do not. Some have informative websites, but not all.
Local history societies have risen and some have collapsed over the years, due to lack of local support or as members die off. Even where there is not a local history society in existence, there is usually a local historian or two. Their knowledge and accessibility is certainly diverse, but their enthusiasm is usually immense because this is one of their passions in life.
It is important that anyone investigating local and family history should have an informed knowledge on national history. National developments, such as legislation, wars and rebellions, have an impact on communities and so an awareness of these is important. Otherwise it will lead to confusion and a lack of understanding. I recall a history of Deptford’s Catholic church stating with amazement that the Catholics there were being maligned in a document published in 1745. When it is known that this was a year in which there was a dangerous rebellion which aimed to put a Catholic King on the throne, then all is made clear. Single-volume histories of England/Britain are easily available, as are specific volumes of different periods of history, which should give more detail.
Local history has a pedigree of several centuries. It has produced much, especially in recent decades, though this output has been variable in nature. Its products are of use, but should always be checked wherever that is possible (sometimes it is not, for original documents consulted in an earlier century may well have been subsequently lost or ceased to exist). It is now a topic that is researched and written about by both amateurs and professionals, aimed at diverse markets.
Yet it is not a separate world from family history. Several recent books aim to link the two, by stressing the link between family and community history. Names, dates and places make up a family tree, it has been argued, but family history is an extra and enlightening dimension, and that requires the family historian to study local history, too.