Search results for ""Hertfordshire Press""

Garden history is more than the study of individuals such as 'Capability Brown' who created estates for a wealthy élite. A new approach, which includes insights from geology and archaeology, the perspectives of social class and gender, the history of art and architecture, science, technology and literature, is changing our perspective so that we can see gardens and gardening within wider social, economic, political and cultural contexts. Landscapes were created, formed and interpreted by town dwellers, women and lesser-known gardeners and designers as well as the 'great men' of the past. Based on papers given at a conference at the University of Birmingham, and written by distinguished scholars who are also writing for a wide audience, these essays highlight the wealth of recent research into landscape and green spaces in the West Midlands. The book ranges from the Picturesque movement in Herefordshire to William Shenstone's unique ferme ornée at The Leasowes, near Halesowen and the aspirational gardens and allotments of the Quaker ironmasters at Coalbrookdale in Shropshire. Other contributions celebrate women's entrepreneurial activity in the nursery trade, chart the uncovering and restoration of a hidden eighteenth-century landscape at Hagley in Worcestershire and explore the lost Vauxhall pleasure gardens in Birmingham, which were established as a commercial venture in the eighteenth century. An examination of Victorian public parks reveals how their aesthetics were shaped by architecture made from the products of manufacturing industry while a study of three modest suburban estates considers how local industrialists shaped the environment of south Birmingham. The relationships between health, medicine and green spaces are explored through an analysis of the role of 'therapeutic landscapes' in late-nineteenth- and twentieth-century Worcestershire. Enhanced with maps, plans and black-and-white and colour illustrations, this is a volume of important scholarship that places the West Midlands at the heart of landscape history.

Read more less

The title of this book is taken from Ebenezer Howard's visionary tract To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform. Published in 1898 as a manifesto for social reform via the creation of Garden Cities, it proposed a new way of providing cheap and healthy homes, workplaces and green spaces in balance in cohesive new communities, underpinned by radical ideas about collective land ownership. While Howard's vision had international impact, in this book planning historian Stephen Ward largely honors the special place that Hertfordshire occupies on the peaceful path, beginning with the development of Letchworth and Welwyn Garden Cities.

Read more less

In this meticulous study of the impact of total war on the civilian population of Essex between 1939 and 1945, Paul Rusiecki examines how people coped with the immense stress caused by heavy bombing, the fear of invasion and other anxieties while so much was demanded of them by the authorities. The book brings into focus the social, economic, political, and religious strains caused by the war. Education was forced to adapt in the face of massive disruption and industry too; the contribution to victory made by firms that switched to war work is analyzed. A picture emerges through the records kept by individuals of how Essex people viewed wartime events both at home and much further afield—the successes and failures of their own government and the actions of both allies and enemies. The experience of war also encompasses aspects that are at odds with traditional views of wartime Britain and the so-called ""Dunkirk spirit."" Rusiecki recounts the hostility faced by conscientious objectors, as well as the undercurrents of political disaffection circulating by 1942 which produced a sensational by-election result at Maldon. The murkier aspects of the war in Essex—crime and a supposed crisis in morality—are also dealt with in depth. Faced with the most appalling circumstances, most nonetheless found ways of keeping their spirits up, whether that meant reading in air-raid shelters, continuing to flock to the theater and cinema, or playing football for their factory team. This is the story of how the people of Essex survived the most extraordinary challenges they had ever faced, ultimately emerging with a sense of having earned the right to eradicate the gross inequalities that had marred society for so long.

Read more less

English rural society underwent fundamental changes between the thirteenth and eighteenth centuries with urbanization, commercialization and industrialization producing new challenges and opportunities for inhabitants of rural communities. However, our understanding of this period has been shaped by the compartmentalization of history into medieval and early-modern specialisms and by the debates surrounding the transition from feudalism to capitalism and landlord-tenant relations. Inspired by the classic works of Tawney and Postan, this collection of essays examines their relevance to historians today, distinguishing between their contrasting approaches to the pre-industrial economy and exploring the development of agriculture and rural industry; changes in land and property rights; and competition over resources in the English countryside.

Read more less

Skillfully written and complemented with photos, this biography is the first to honor British actress-manager Lena Ashwell. In a rapidly changing world, Ashwell was crucial to the advancement of women in English theater and in the formation of the National Theater. The book highlights the inspiring woman’s other valuable accomplishments as well, including her efforts to raise money during World War I for thousands of concert-party troop entertainments and regular theater performances she established throughout local London communities. From her first appearance on stage in 1891 to the end of her life, this is Lena Ashwell’s story.

Read more less

This book seeks to explore the changing nature of English society through a case study of countryside and town in southern England during the period from c.1380 to c.1520. It explores the influence of landscape and population on the agriculture of Wiltshire, the regional patterns of arable and pastoral farming, and the growing contrast between the large-scale mixed farming of the chalklands and the family farms of the claylands. It examines the changing situation of the rural tenant population as it reacted to the greater opportunities available in the land-market. During this period, Wiltshire became one of great cloth-producing counties of England (as reflected in its rising taxable wealth). Such economic expansion generated jobs both within the industry and beyond, stimulating the market for food, services and manufactured goods. Salisbury was one of greatest cities in the kingdom, and below this was a hierarchy of interesting lesser towns. But such growth generated its own problems: more and more people became dependent on the cloth trade and particularly on exporting cloth; if exports fell, as during the mid-fifteenth-century crisis, they suffered. As scholars are increasingly aware, the later Middle Ages was a period of considerable change, and this study contributes to debates about the nature of both change and continuity at a national level. It will also be of value to local historians interested in one of the most important periods in Wiltshire's history.

Read more less

Seeking to draw new conclusions about settlement distributions and population densities, patterns of wealth, underprivileged assistance, and land usage, this reference uses multiple criteria to subdivide England into regions. This unusual and probing study establishes the presence of an informal cultural frontier between two proposed societies, which would lie astride the Leicestershire–Lincolnshire border, in order to identify cultural differences and divides that are clearly visible in the English countryside. Taking the unique approach of stressing early-modern-period rural landscapes, this examination looks at the enduring social and economic links between the area’s population and its landscape.

Read more less

Exploring a range of topics, including Greek tragedy, Shakespearean theater, contemporary British plays, opera, and the theatricality of Parisian culture, this compilation provides new perspectives on the relationship between Eros and Death in a series of dramatic texts, theatrical practices, and cultural performances. Detailed and analytical, these informative essays demonstrate how changing attitudes towards sexuality and death—opposed but entangled passions—were reflected in theater throughout the course of history. Psychoanalytical and philosophical models are also referenced in this work that features essays from dramatists Dic Edwards, David Ian Rabey, and David Rudkin.

Read more less

"Mapping the Unseen: The Art of Ahmed Moustafa" is a short monograph on the work of artist Ahmed Moustafa.

Read more less

"Beholden: Reinhild Beuther" is a short monograph on the work of artist Reinhild Beuther.

Read more less

Lady Anne Bacon was a highly educated woman who lived through the political and religious transitions of five reigns, embedded at the Tudor court. Drawing on her forthright letters and other sources, this deeply researched and compellingly readable book reveals her extraordinary part in shaping the public story of Tudor history.

Read more less

During the second half of the nineteenth century, Moseley, a small hamlet just south of Birmingham, developed into a flourishing middleclass suburb. Drawing on a wealth of primary sources, Janet Berry’s ambitious research asks why and how this particular suburb grew and who was instrumental in its development. What influenced the types of houses that were built and the styles of their gardens? How did residents experience life in the new suburb? How did they create a community? In analysing an extraordinary quantity of records, Dr Berry builds a notably nuanced portrait of a place and its people that goes beyond stereotypical images of the Victorians. The suburb was a physical, social, cultural, and psychological space where people conveyed messages about their identity; relationships, lived experiences, and responses to change are all revealed. The economics of buying or renting accommodation in Moseley are addressed, showing what was involved in setting up a single-family home, the key marker of belonging to the middle class. Aspects of this, such as how the interiors of homes were demarcated, decorated and furnished, have not previously been considered in the context of suburban studies to any extent. Additionally, this book has a particular focus on the suburban middle-class woman, her achievements and opportunities, roles and responsibilities, both inside and outside the home. By the first decades of the twentieth century Moseley had become part of the metropolis of Birmingham. This engaging account of the process from village to fully integrated suburb will be of particular interest to urban historians.

Read more less

Although the history of orchards and fruit varieties is of great popular interest, there have been few academic treatments of the subject. This book presents results from a three-year project, 'Orchards East', investigating the history and ecology of orchards in the east of England. Together, the eastern counties of Hertfordshire, Essex, Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire, Bedfordshire, Norfolk and Suffolk have a tradition of fruit cultivation comparable in scale to that of the better-known west of England. Drawing on far-reaching archival research, an extensive survey of surviving orchards and biodiversity surveys, the authors tell the fascinating story of orchards in the east since the late Middle Ages. Orchards were ubiquitous features of the medieval and early modern landscape. Planted for the most part for practical reasons, they were also appreciated for their aesthetic qualities. By the seventeenth century some districts had begun to specialise in fruit production - most notably west Hertfordshire and the Fens around Wisbech. But it was only in the 'orchard century', beginning in the 1850s, that commercial production really took off, fuelled by the growth of large urban markets and new transport systems that could take the fruit to them with relative ease. By the 1960s orchards were extensive in many districts but, since then, they have largely disappeared, with significant impacts on landscape character and biodiversity. For well over a century now, orchards have been romanticised as nostalgic elements of a timeless yet disappearing rural world. Even before that, they were embedded in myths of lost Edens, or golden ages of effortless plenty. A key aim of this book is to challenge some of these myths by grounding orchards within a wider range of historical and environmental contexts. Orchards are not timeless, and in some ways our relationship with orchards is a classic example of the 'invention of tradition'. What do our attitudes to this aspect of our heritage tell us about our wider engagement with the past, with nature, and with place?

Read more less

Studies of child labour have examined the experiences of child workers in agriculture, mining and textile mills, yet surprisingly little research has focused on child labour in manufacturing towns. This book investigates the extent and nature of child labour in Birmingham and the West Midlands, from the mid-eighteenth century to the end of the nineteenth century. It considers the economic contributions of child workers under the age of 14 and the impact of early work on their health and education. Child labour in the region was not a short-lived stage of the early Industrial Revolution but an integral part of industry throughout the nineteenth century. Parents regarded their children as potentially valuable contributors to the family economy, encouraging families to migrate from rural areas so that their children could work from an early age in the manufacture of pins, nails, buttons, glass, locks and guns as well as tin-plating, carpet-weaving, brass-casting and other industries. The demand for young workers in Birmingham was greater than that for adults; in Mary Nejedly's detailed analysis the importance of children's earnings to the family economy becomes clear, as well as the role played by child workers in industrialisation itself. In view of the economic benefit of children's labour to families as well as employers, both children's education and health could and did suffer. As well as working at harmful processes that produced dangerous fumes and dust or exposed them to poisonous substances, children also suffered injuries in the workplace, mainly to the head, eyes and fingers, and were often subjected to ill-treatment from adult workers. The wide gulf in economic circumstances that existed between the families of skilled workers and those of unskilled workers, unemployed workers or single-parent families also becomes evident. Attitudes towards childhood changed over the course of the period, however, with a greater emphasis being placed on the role of education for all children as a means of reducing pauperism and dependence on the poor rate. Concerns about health also gradually emerged, together with laws to limit work for children both by age and hours worked. Mary Nejedly's clear-eyed research sheds fresh light on the life of working children and increases our knowledge of an important aspect of social and economic history.

Read more less

The growth of nineteenth-century London was unprecedented, swallowing up once remote villages, commons and open fields around the metropolitan fringe in largely uncontrolled housing development. In the mid-Victorian period widespread opposition to this unbridled growth coalesced into a movement that campaigned to preserve the London commons. The history of this campaign is usually presented as having been fought by members of the metropolitan upper middle class, who appointed themselves as spokespeople for all Londoners and played out their battles mainly in parliament and the law courts. In this fascinating book Mark Gorman tells a different story – of the key role played by popular protest in the campaigns to preserve Epping Forest and other open spaces in and near London. He shows how throughout the nineteenth century such places were venues for both radical politics and popular leisure, helping to create a sense of public right of access, even ‘ownership’. At the same time, London’s suburban growth was partly a response to the rising aspirations of an artisan and lower middle class who increasingly wanted direct access to open space. This not only created the conditions for the mid-Victorian commons preservation movement, but also gave impetus to distinctive popular protest by proletarian Londoners. In comparing the campaign for Epping Forest with other struggles for London’s commons, the book highlights influences which ranged from the role of charismatic leaders to widely held beliefs regarding the land, in which the rights of freeborn Englishmen had been plundered by the aristocracy since the Norman conquest. Mark Gorman reveals a largely hidden history, since ordinary Londoners left few records behind, but his new research clearly reveals how their protests influenced the actions of the more visible elite groups who appeared in parliament or in court.

Read more less

While the Edwardian castles of Conwy, Beaumaris, Harlech and Caernarfon are rightly hailed as outstanding examples of castle architecture, the castles of the native Welsh princes are far more enigmatic. Where some dominate their surroundings as completely as any castle of Edward I, others are concealed in the depths of forests, or tucked away in the corners of valleys, their relationship with the landscape of which they are a part far more difficult to discern than their English counterparts. This ground-breaking book seeks to analyse the castle-building activities of the native princes of Wales in the thirteenth century. Whereas early castles were built to delimit territory and as an expression of Llywelyn I ab Iorwerth’s will to power following his violent assumption of the throne of Gwynedd in the 1190s, by the time of his grandson Llywelyn II ap Gruffudd’s later reign in the 1260s and 1270s, the castles’ prestige value had been superseded in importance by an understanding of the need to make the polity he created - the Principality of Wales - defensible. Employing a probing analysis of the topographical settings and defensive dispositions of almost a dozen native Welsh masonry castles, Craig Owen Jones interrogates the long-held theory that the native princes’ approach to castle-building in medieval Wales was characterised by ignorance of basic architectural principles, disregard for the castle’s relationship to the landscape, and whimsy, in order to arrive at a new understanding of the castles’ significance in Welsh society. Previous interpretations argue that the native Welsh castles were created as part of a single defensive policy, but close inspection of the documentary and architectural evidence reveals that this policy varied considerably from prince to prince, and even within a prince’s reign. Taking advantage of recent ground-breaking archaeological investigations at several important castle sites, Jones offers a timely corrective to perceptions of these castles as poorly sited and weakly defended: theories of construction and siting appropriate to Anglo-Norman castles are not applicable to the native Welsh example without some major revisions. Princely Ambition also advances a timeline that synthesises various strands of evidence to arrive at a chronology of native Welsh castle-building. This exciting new account fills a crucial gap in scholarship on Wales’ built heritage prior to the Edwardian conquest and establishes a nuanced understanding of important military sites in the context of native Welsh politics.

Read more less

This book investigates what a case study of a northern market town and its rural hinterland can tell us about village differentiation, exploring how and why rural communities developed in what was chiefly an industrial region and, notably, how the relationship between town and country influenced rural communities. It looks at six villages close to Doncaster - Sprotbrough, Warmsworth, Rossington, Fishlake, Stainforth and Braithwell - chosen to represent the diversity of landownership and land type of the Doncaster district. Rural communities, and more specifically the development of English villages, have proved fertile ground for historians. This book makes an original contribution to these debates. In particular, it engages with existing models of village typology, suggesting that not only are they too restrictive to account for nuanced differences, but also that they fail to acknowledge the importance of the relationships between rural communities and between town and country. Following Sarah Holland’s detailed research into different aspects of rural communities, the book offers new perspectives on how rural communities in close proximity developed, often differently, during the mid-nineteenth century. Themes looked at in detail include living and working conditions, agriculture and industry, religion and education, and through these Holland considers existing theories of village typology, before setting out her ideas regarding social hierarchies, spheres of influence and agency, which combine to create complex patterns of differentiation. Communities in Contrast will appeal to all those interested in rural life and economy in the nineteenth century, the relationship between town and country, as well as the history of Yorkshire.

Read more less

Very little is known of the first workhouse in Birmingham, which was located in Lichfield Street. Even the assumed date of its building, given as 1733 by William Hutton, Birmingham’s first historian, is wrong. This book is the first attempt to write a history of the workhouse and the ancillary welfare provision for Birmingham, frequently referred to as the `Old Poor Law’. The first workhouse remained in operation until 1852 when a new building with its infamous `arch of tears’ was constructed in Winson Green and the original building’s history has been overlooked as a result of the association of the word `workhouse’ with Nassau Senior and Edwin Chadwick’s `New’ Poor Law, implemented in 1834. This study of welfare in Birmingham in the century before the Poor Law Amendment Act reveals some surprising facts which fly in the face of the scholarly consensus that the old system was incompetently administered and inadequately organised. A workhouse infirmary opened in the 1740s, long before the General Infirmary in Summer Lane. The Overseers of the Poor built a well organised `Asylum for the Infant Poor’ before the end of the eighteenth century. Work was found for the able-bodied. The insane were housed separately in specialist facilities. Food, although dreary, was certainly adequate. The records of the Overseers and the Poor Law Guardians reveal a complex balancing act between maintaining standards of care and controlling spending. Although there was mismanagement, most famously in 1818 when George Edmonds exposed embezzlement by workhouse officials, the picture which emerges will be familiar to our age when welfare services struggle to meet public needs with limited budgets.

Read more less

Käthe Buchler (1876–1930) was a pioneering woman photographer whose exceptional photographs offer very personal insights into Germany during World War One, with a particular focus on the home front and the lives of women and children. Born Katharina von Rhamm in Braunschweig, Germany, and from a wealthy and privileged background, she was taught painting as a girl; many of her photographs have a notably painterly quality. She went on to study photography at Berlin’s Lette Academy which, unusually for the time, admitted women. Like many women of the upper middle class, family life with her husband and children was Käthe Buchler’s focus and became the central theme of her photography in the years before the First World War. During the war itself, in the most public phase of her career, her leading role in local institutions, including the Red Cross, gave her largely unrestricted access to the city’s war effort and she produced unexpectedly intimate photographs of daily life in Braunschweig, in the city’s military hospitals, as well as in the revealing series `Women in Men’s Jobs’. As a result, she offers us a distinctive vision, raising the intriguing possibility of presenting the conflict from the perspective of women and children.Surprisingly, Buchler’s work remained unknown outside its immediate locality, but it was exhibited in the United Kingdom for the first time between October 2017 and May 2018, allowing the process of placing it within its proper international context to begin. This catalogue, marking the exhibition Beyond the Battlefields, contains a wide selection of Buchler’s work, including some of her exquisite Autochromes (using the world’s first commercially available colour photographic process). The accompanying essays introduce the artist and address, amongst other things, the role of amateur photography in documenting war. In depicting the minutiae of daily life against the backdrop of war and its aftermath, Buchler’s remarkable photographs speak to us across the intervening century, disrupting national stereotypes and opening up fresh perspectives on the Great War.

Read more less

This book forms a continuation of the research published in Medieval Parks, Anne Rowe's highly regarded volume of 2009. Now she turns her attention to the deer parks that existed in Hertfordshire during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Drawing on the earliest county maps, most notably those produced by Saxton in 1577 and Norden in 1598, and both State papers and estate records, Anne Rowe builds a detailed picture of Hertfordshire's Tudor and Early Stuart parks. At least 60 parks existed in Hertfordshire at various times between 1485 and 1642, but for only 46 of those parks is there evidence that they contained deer at some point during the period. These confirmed or probable deer parks form the focus of this study. Of course not all of them were sixteenth-century creations: less than one-third were `new' parks, the remainder had been in existence for much longer, in one or two cases being recorded in Domesday Book. In the first part of the book detailed evidence for who created and owned the county's parks and how they were used and managed is given. The dawning of design in Hertfordshire's park landscapes is also explored. Part 2 gives an account of the presence of the Tudor and early Stuart monarchy in Hertfordshire. Several monarchs and members of their immediate families spent significant periods in Hertfordshire and played a notable part in the history of its parkland; indeed, by 1540 Henry VIII held about 70 per cent of the parkland in the county. Part 3 is a gazetteer in which each entry brings together the documentary, cartographic and occasional field evidence available for a park, with a map showing its probable extent in the period covered. At this time hunting continued to be the most popular leisure activity, as it had been for centuries. Wealthy landowners enjoyed a range of hunting activities essentially unchanged from the medieval period, including deer- and hare-coursing on foot, falconry, fishing and wild-fowling. But the pursuit of a stag or buck on horseback accompanied by a pack of hounds was considered the noblest hunting experience. Based, like the first volume, on an enormous amount of original work, this meticulously researched book opens a window onto Tudor and early Stuart Hertfordshire and once again illuminates a significant aspect of the county's landscape history.

Read more less

This detailed and original study of early-modern agrarian society in the Somerset Levels examines the small landholders in a group of sixteen contiguous parishes in the area known as Brent Marsh. These were farmers with lifehold tenures and a mixed agricultural production whose activities and outlook are shown to be very different from that of the small 'peasant' farmers of so many general histories. Patricia Croot challenges the idea that small farmers failed to contribute to the productivity and commercialization of the early-modern economy.

Read more less

Much has been written about the men who left to fight in the First World War but what was life really like for those left behind on the Home Front? A bustling market town profoundly touched by the war, St Albans is the perfect place of which to ask this question, thanks in part to the survival of exceptionally rich archives of records from the period.This book explores the immediate challenges the townspeople faced during the war as well as the longer-term effects on the city. When the war finally ended, could life ever return to 'normal' as some 3,000 soldiers returned home?

Read more less

Celebrating the rich heritage of archaeology and of archaeological research in Hertfordshire, the 15 papers collected in this work focus on various aspects of the region, including the Neolithic to the post-Medieval periods, and include a report on the important excavations at the formative henge at Norton. Several chapters focus new attention on the Iron Age and Roman periods, both from a landscape perspective and through detailed studies of artefacts, while a discussion of the rare early Saxon material recently excavated at Watton at Stone makes a vital contribution to the existing corpus of knowledge about this little-understood period. All of the papers in the volume focus on the local scene with an understanding of wider issues in each period and as a result, the papers are of importance beyond the boundaries of the county and will be of interest to scholars with wide-ranging interests.

Read more less

At the cutting edge of new social and demographic history, this book provides a detailed picture of the most comprehensive system of poor relief operated by any Elizabethan town. Well before the Poor Laws of 1598 and 1601, Hadleigh, Suffolk—a thriving woolen cloth center with a population of roughly 3,000—offered a complex array of assistance to many of its residents who could not provide for themselves: orphaned children, married couples with more offspring than they could support or supervise, widows, people with physical or mental disabilities, some of the unemployed, and the elderly. Hadleigh's leaders also attempted to curb idleness and vagrancy and to prevent poor people who might later need relief from settling in the town. Based upon uniquely full records, this study traces 600 people who received help and explores the social, religious, and economic considerations that made more prosperous people willing to run and pay for this system. Relevant to contemporary debates over assistance to the poor, the book provides a compelling picture of a network of care and control that resulted in the integration of public and private forms of aid.

Read more less

Features contextualising essays around the exhibition 'Clothes for Living and Dying' of the photographic series "Clothes for Death" and the "Graduation Dresses".

Read more less

With a special emphasis on the exchange of land between medieval servile tenants—especially from the 13th century onward—this scholarly examination of the peasant land market of the Middle Ages explores the identification of peasant families with particular lands to which they had a hereditary right. Using this theme to explore village life and showing how peasants were affected by the changes over time and place, this study employs primary source material from the Winchester estates. Analyzing thousands of land exchanges and interactions from more than 50 different manors on Winchester, this volume reveals unparalleled opportunities for comparing regional and local differences of experience.

Read more less

Don Chapman tells for the first time the story of the "Oxford Playhouse", to coincide with the seventieth anniversary of its present home in Beaumont Street, Oxford. He traces the history of this great theater back to its earliest roots in a production of Agamemnon in 1880 which led to the founding of the Oxford University Dramatic Society, the rebuilding of Oxford's New Theater and, eventually, the launch of the Playhouse itself. Jane Ellis was the 'young, obscure actress' from London who made it happen, motivated by a desire for a venue where she herself might play decent roles. She asked J.B. Fagan (who was to produce the first successful Chekhov play in England) to be the theater's first director. Subsequent directors who made their mark included Stanford Holme, Eric Dance (who rebuilt the theater in Beaumont Street in 1938), Frank Shelley, Peter Hall, Peter Wood, Frank Hauser, Minos Volanakis, Gordon McDougall, Nicolas Kent and Richard Williams.The book also celebrates a galaxy of actors including Flora Robson, John Gielgud, Maggie Smith, Ronnie Barker, Judi Dench and Helena Bonham-Carter and records the first steps of countless students from Peter Brook to Maria Aitken, Diana Quick to Rowan Atkinson, including a few, like Edward Heath and Joanna Trollope, who gained distinction in other spheres. Most fascinating is the role of the University of Oxford. Using the legal powers invested in Vice Chancellors, Dr Lewis Farnell almost stifled the Playhouse at birth in 1923. And even from 1961 to 1987, when the Playhouse was the University Theater, Dr Chapman describes its relationship with the University as 'a shotgun marriage that ended in a messy divorce'.Since reopening in 1991 following a four-year closure, the theater has flourished as an independent trust with support from the University, Arts Council England and other donors, staging a varied program to delight audiences old and new and benefiting in the process from the sea change in academic attitudes to drama. Thea Shurrock, Rosamund Pike and Holly Kendrick are just three of more recent students who have followed in the footsteps of Michael Palin, Imogen Stubbs and Mel Smith and made names for themselves.

Read more less

Presents a comparative study of regional theatre in Britain and Germany during the period of 1918 to 1945. Taking Yorkshire and Westphalia as his two representative regions, this book details the history of theatre in York, Hull, Sheffield, Bradford and Leeds as well as in Munster, Dortmund, Hagen, Bielefeld and Bochum.

Read more less

This monograph of an innovative art installation documents not only the installation itself but also the visitors' interaction with it. The Wishing Ceremony consisted of six booths, each filled with wishing tokens and the wishes of past visitors; new viewers were encouraged to leave their wishes there as well, becoming part of the exhibit. The wishes, reproduced in this book, range from the mundane to the profound and allow an intimate glimpse at a common humanity.

Read more less

As portrayed in this monograph, sculptor Simeon Nelson's work examines human attempts to define, order, and classify nature throughout the ages, questioning how human understanding of the natural world has evolved in relation to the changing fashions of scientific and artistic inquiry.

Read more less

This practical and comprehensive guide provides an introduction to family historians to trace their ancestors in Hertfordshire. Every aspect of our ancestors' lives has been considered, from their birth and baptism to their death and burial. Examples of source material, together with photographs and drawings from the collections at Hertfordshire Archives & Local Studies, illustrate the text. The book is thematic in approach, the chapters incorporating related material on subjects as broad as military ancestors and the poor and the sick. In each chapter a brief background to the subject is followed by a description of the kind of records you can expect to find, including their usefulness to family historians, and details of where those records are held. The emphasis is on sources available in Hertfordshire, and particularly those held in the Family History Centre at Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies (HALS) in Hertford, but other sources are also covered. A wealth of experience from family historians and the staff at HALS is passed on in the form of tips and vital information. Appendices have been used to provide useful addresses and websites, and also to list in detail the availability of essential sources such as parish registers and other records, nonconformist registers, and the whereabouts of wills before 1858. This should be of interest to anyone researching their Hertfordshire ancestors.

Read more less

There have been many changes since the first edition of this publication appeared in 1984. In addition to the closure of many more local cinemas, there has been the growth of the multiplexes so the picture is not entirely black. This book has been written by Alan Eyles, a full-time specialist researcher and writer on the history of cinema. The new edition has twice the number of pages as the first and nearly 200 photographs including many which have been uncovered by the author in the last 20 years. It includes every cinema which has opened in Hertfordshire since 1908 (when the first opened its doors) and is arranged by town for ease of reference.

Read more less

Gypsies in Britain are descendents of people who survived an attempt at genocide in the 16th century. Laws making it a capital crime to be of Romany ethnicity remained on the statute book for two centuries. The British state and people have never apologized for this, never paid reparations - and why should they? Almost every other European state has behaved in the same way. The 1994 Criminal Justice Act is recriminalizing Gypsies. Gypsies may be considered only as a "problem", that a few teachers, council workers and policemen have to accommodate. But it should be considered how and why Gypsy identity has survived many centuries of persecution. Relations with the state and with non-Gypsies have been central to the shaping of the lived identity of Gypsy people. Reaction to Gypsies have been built around the image of them as nomads - even in Eastern Europe where the great majority are not nomads. This book examines how the state deals with Gypsies and travellers, and how they deal with the state. It also provides a comparative study of Gypsy politics in Britain and abroad.

Read more less

This book examines the landscape archaeology of the Second World War on the section of the east coast of England known as the Suffolk Sandlings (the coastal strip from Lowestoft to Felixstowe), an area unusually rich in military archaeology. It was in the front line of Britain's defences against invasion throughout the war and as a training ground it was the setting for nationally important exercises in the lead-up to the D-Day landings. In 1944 it also played a major role in Operation 'Diver', the defence against the flying bomb. The Sandlings is therefore an ideal testbed for much wider questions about the militarisation of the landscape during the Second World War. This important new study considers how this area was transformed in the course of the conflict by synthesising an extensive range of sources, including the physical remains of defences and training, aerial photographs, the war diaries of military units on the coast, oral history and artistic representations. What emerges is the most detailed account to date of a coastal landscape during the Second World War. A highly innovative interdisciplinary study, this holistic approach reveals in astonishing detail the struggle to build defences in 1940, the dramatic reorganisation of those defences in 1941? 2 and the slow transformation of the military landscape from one of defence to one where troops prepared for the offensive. The reader is shown not just a new view of the wartime landscape, but a new methodology for the study of conflict landscapes more broadly; in this the book makes a major contribution to scholarship. Richly illustrated with plans, maps and wartime photographs - many published for the first time - the book presents a vivid picture of a landscape in a crucial period in its history and will be of great interest to military historians, landscape archaeologists and all those with an interest in the area.

Read more less

An exhibition catalogue of an installation by Andy Goldsworthy at the Margaret Harvey Gallery, St Albans.

Read more less

This book is the authorised and fully documented history of the late Sir Nigel Hawthorne's fifty-year career in the theatre. It presents an appraisal of post-war theatre by focusing on the personal journey of one of Britain's finest and most respected actors.

Read more less

Securing the long-term survival and status of the family has always been the principal concern of the English aristocracy and gentry. Central to that ambition has been the successful management of their landed estates, whilst failure in this regard could spell ruination for an entire family. In the sixteenth century, the task became more difficult as price inflation reduced the value of rents; improved management skills were called for. In Norfolk, estates began to change hands rapidly as the unaware or simply incompetent failed to grasp the issues, while the more astute and enterprising landowners capitalised on their neighbours’ misfortunes. When Sir Hamon Le Strange inherited his family’s ancient estate at Hunstanton in 1604 it was much depleted and heavily encumbered. The outlook was bleak: such circumstances often led to the disappearance of families as landowners. However, within a generation, he and his remarkable wife Alice had modernised the estate and secured the family’s future. After 700 years, the Le Stranges still survive and prosper on their estate at Hunstanton, making them the longest surviving gentry family in Norfolk. The first part of this book presents new research into the secret of their rare success. A key aspect of their strategy was a belief in the power (and economic value) of knowledge: Hamon and Alice wanted to ensure that their improvements would endure for posterity. To this end, they curated their knowledge through meticulous record-keeping and carefully handed it down to their successors. This behaviour, instilled in the family, not only facilitated on-going reforms, but helped future generations overcome the inevitable reversals and challenges they also faced. The second part of the book collects together four related papers from Elizabeth Griffiths’ research about the Le Stranges, Hobarts and Wyndhams, republished from the Agricultural History Review and edited from two Norfolk Record Society volumes. For anyone interested in early modern rural society and agriculture and the history of Norfolk gentry estates, this volume will be essential reading, offering as it does new perspectives on the history of estate management, notably the role of women, the relationship with local communities and sustainability in agriculture.

Read more less

The standard of congregational singing in mid-eighteenth-century parish churches was often in a parlous state, a situation viewed with alarm by many influential clergy and social commentators. In this authoritative study, Maggie Kilbey explores attempts to improve parochial music-making over the following century and the factors that played a part in their success or failure. Using Hertfordshire as a basis, original research by this respected author and historian uses a wide range of documentary evidence to reveal a complicated picture of influence and interaction between the gentry, clergymen and their parishioners. Her innovative approach to the social history of church music-making sheds light on interactions between militia and church bands, singers, organists, the role of charity school children and the use of barrel organs. Because of its proximity to London, Hertfordshire was particularly attractive to elites with an interest in the capital, and fell under the influence of metropolitan music-making more readily than less accessible parts of England. The involvement of both fashion-conscious and socially aware gentry was mirrored by those further down the social scale, and formed part of a complex pattern of support for church music-making. Unsurprisingly, this support was not universal, and often short-lived once initial enthusiasm or funding ran out. Consequently, although many attempts were made to ‘improve’ music-making in parish churches, sooner or later these were considered to be failures, swiftly forgotten - and then tried again. To make matters worse, church rate disputes hampered efforts to improve or sustain parish music-making during the nineteenth century, resulting in financial hardship for organists and other church musicians. Yet this was followed by an 1850s ‘singing craze’ which led to the formation of many church choirs, alterations to the church fabric, and installation of organs. This investigation into patterns of parochial music-making will appeal to both those with an interest in the history of music-making, and also those with a general interest in the social history of Hertfordshire.

Read more less

Dr Thomas Plume, born in Maldon in Essex in 1630, is remembered today for the many bequests he left which established important scientific, religious and cultural charities. Still operational today are the Plumian Professorship of Astronomy at Cambridge University, the Plume Library at Maldon and the Plume Trust for poor clergy in the Diocese of Rochester. This volume provides the first comprehensive account of the life, work and philanthropy of Plume. Educated at Chelmsford Grammar School and Christ's College, Cambridge, Plume was vicar of Greenwich from 1658 and archdeacon of Rochester from 1679, holding both posts until his death in 1704. At Greenwich he was noted favourably for his preaching by Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn on more than one occasion. He died a wealthy man and his will contained 79 bequests. Plume's famous library at Maldon still houses some 8000 books and pamphlets as well as his pictures and manuscripts. The book collection, forming one of the largest private libraries of the period, is an important resource for understanding the Enlightenment, whilst the manuscript collection reveals Plume's intellectual roots in the religious, philosophical and political debates of the mid-seventeenth century. The landmark building itself, a partly converted and rebuilt medieval church, is an important example of a late-seventeenth-century purpose-built library. As vicar of Greenwich, archdeacon of Rochester and prebendary of Rochester cathedral, Plume had equally strong links with Kent, owning an estate at Stone Castle, Dartford. In Cambridge the chair he endowed for 'a learned and studious Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Phylosophy' has been held by many notable scientists including Fred Hoyle and Martin Rees. In contextualising Plume's bequests within the intellectual world of the late seventeenth century, the book reveals the connections between his philanthropy and his family background and education, his wealth, career and patrons, his churchmanship and his character. Having lived in a significant period of religious tumult and intellectual debate, Plume's legacy is both to have influenced the accretion of knowledge for over three hundred years and also to have illuminated his own times.

Read more less

The fifty years from the last decade of the eighteenth century saw great changes in Britain. Significant technological and economic change, not to mention wars, affected great swathes of the population and profoundly changed many aspects of life. In this book Fabian Hiscock considers this dramatic upheaval as it played out in western Hertfordshire, focusing in particular on just one of the many innovations of the time: the Grand Junction Canal, created to connect the Midlands with London. Having described the complex process of creating the Canal itself, the author turns to how western Hertfordshire experienced, and responded to, the new trade route that now traversed its fields and settlements. In the area’s towns and villages - particularly Rickmansworth, Watford, Hemel Hempstead, Berkhamsted and Tring - the Canal made an impact, but to what extent did it live up to the promises made by its promoters? And what were the impacts on trade and transport, on work and home life? Did it create jobs and wealth for local people? Or did it simply pass through, leaving those living on either side relatively unaffected? Whether and in what way western Hertfordshire changed as a result of the Grand Junction Canal is the focus of this work. 1841 is the chosen end date for the study period because of the coincidence of the Census undertaken that year, which sheds some light on the industrial make-up of the area, the tithe awards made between 1838 and 1844, allowing study of the Canal’s effect on land ownership and usage across the area, and the start of the London and Birmingham Railway’s real economic effect. In combining canal history with a detailed social and economic study of a part of the county that is not much written about, Fabian Hiscock has written a superbly researched and wide-reaching book that will be of interest to a broad range of readers.

Read more less

2018 marks the bicentenary of the death of Humphry Repton, one of the most important and prolific of English landscape designers. Repton made a particularly significant contribution to the landscape of Hertfordshire, working at no less than eighteen places in the county, ranging in size from great mansions like Cashiobury and Panshanger to more modest 'villas' owned by wealthy businessmen and industrialists, such as Woodhill in Essendon. This book - the fruits of many years of research by members of the Hertfordshire Gardens Trust Research Group - describes in detail all of these commissions, assessing in each case the extent to which Repton's ideas were actually implemented and how much survives of them on the ground today. Particular attention is given to those places for which Repton prepared one of his famous 'Red Books', such as Tewin Water, Lamer House, New Barnes and Wall Hall. But sites where Repton's contribution is less well documented are also discussed, including Organ Hall and Hilfield House in Aldenham, Cashiobury Park and The Grove in Watford, Brookmans Park, Bedwell Park, Wyddial Hall, and Marchmont House in Hemel Hempstead. In all cases, the book presents complete transcriptions of all the key documents relating to Repton's activities, including the full text of seven Red Books. The introductory essay by Tom Williamson sets Repton's activities in Hertfordshire within the wider context of his career, and also shows how his work in the county can cast important new light on his style, and on its economic, aesthetic and ideological implications. Profusely illustrated in colour with reproductions of all the Red Book watercolours, together with extracts from contemporary estate maps, sketches and other material, this scholarly yet readable volume will be of considerable interest to garden historians, landscape historians, and all those interested in Hertfordshire's rich historic heritage.

Read more less

English rural society underwent fundamental changes between the thirteenth and eighteenth centuries with urbanization, commercialization and industrialization producing new challenges and opportunities for inhabitants of rural communities. However, our understanding of this period has been shaped by the compartmentalization of history into medieval and early-modern specialisms and by the debates surrounding the transition from feudalism to capitalism and landlord-tenant relations. Inspired by the classic works of Tawney and Postan, this collection of essays examines their relevance to historians today, distinguishing between their contrasting approaches to the pre-industrial economy and exploring the development of agriculture and rural industry; changes in land and property rights; and competition over resources in the English countryside.

Read more less

The landscape history of North-East England has not been studied as much as other parts of the country. This book begins to fill this gap by utilizing Actor-Network Theory (ANT) to re-assess the familiar topics of enclosure and improvement. It reveals the contribution of local 'actors' – including landowners, tenants and the landscape itself – to these 'processes'. In so doing it transforms our understanding of the way in which the landscape of Northumberland was created during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and carries wider implications for how we might approach enclosure in other parts of the country.

Read more less

There are many different variations of academic dress, depending on the academic qualification held by the wearer. In this booklet, the different degrees and diplomas awarded by the University of Hertfordshire are described, together with the special gown, cap and hood associated with each award. There is also a section on the distinctive costume prescribed for the university's Senior Officers.

Read more less

Rachel Garfield uses video, painting and photography to make work, which explores the gap between an individual's perception of their identity and the perceptions of others. A common theme in all her works, in whatever medium, is the way in which they layer multiple experiences and viewpoints. The presence of the artist as both subject and interviewer is also a recurring feature. The work places stereotypes alongside the subject of those stereotypes, to examine issues of identity, racism and belonging. However, the viewer is offered no easy pointers as to how to respond. Garfield presents us with a complex, multi-faceted view of the individuals concerned, and their relationship to their communities and histories.

Read more less