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Boydell & Brewer are pleased to announce that as from 1 December 2001 they will be distributing the Victoria County History, which has an international reputation as a work of reference for English local history. Begun in 1899, the publication of about three new volumes each year is gradually creating an encyclopedic history of the counties, ranging from earliest times to the present. For each county there is or is planned a set of volumes, containing general chapters on subjects such as prehistory and ecclesiastical and economic history, and topographical chapters giving a comprehensive, fully referenced account of each city, town and village in the county. Fourteen county sets have been completed; work is in progress on a further thirteen.

Boydell & Brewer are pleased to announce that as from 1 December 2001 they will be distributing the Victoria County History, which has an international reputation as a work of reference for English local history. Begun in 1899, the publication of about three new volumes each year is gradually creating an encyclopedic history of the counties, ranging from earliest times to the present. For each county there is or is planned a set of volumes, containing general chapters on subjects such as prehistory and ecclesiastical and economic history, and topographical chapters giving a comprehensive, fully referenced account of each city, town and village in the county. Fourteen county sets have been completed; work is in progress on a further thirteen.

This history of Middlesex looks from the tidal mills at Stepney along the Thames in the 11th century, to the metropolitan borough in 1900 and right up to the 1990s. Topics covered include local government, religious life and economic development.

This volume contains the histories of five ancient parishes in Oxfordshire, comprising the small town of Bampton and some 13 villages and hamlets. Full treatment is accorded to Bampton, centre of an Anglo-Saxon royal estate, site of a late Anglo-Saxon minster and formerly a market town.

This volume describes the history of the borough of Arundel, with its noted castle, religious houses, and Roman Catholic cathedral, and 11 rural and suburban parishes in the adjoining coastal region of Sussex, including the seaside resorts of Felpham and Middleton.

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.

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.

Publishedby Boydell & Brewer Inc.

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

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.

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.

West Bromwich, Smethwick, and Walsall are all close neighbours and all former county boroughs. This title presents historical accounts of three industrial towns of the Black Country.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A collection of all available Staffordshire volumes in the Victoria County History series.

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.

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.

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.

Provides histories of East Ham, West Ham, Little Ilford, Leyton, Walthamstow, Wanstead, and Woodford. The region, rural until the 19th century, was part of Greater London. Though mainly residential, it includes, at Silvertown, Canning Town, and Stratford, one of the largest manufacturing centres in southern England, as well as the Royal Docks.

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.

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.

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.

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.