Local & Community

In the UK millions of people volunteer to support activities in their local area and communities. The preservation of historical places, artefacts and sites is a valuable part of that community volunteering, while the research and promotion of local history to the communities that it can affect is an important way of connecting people to history and to each other. In this section articles and information will be included on local history activities such as ‘Local History Month’, the activities and concerns of local history societies, and community action and engagement projects around particular aspects of history.

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  • Victoria County History

    Article

    Local history is the study of places and communities. It dates from the time of the great antiquarian county histories from the sixteenth century onwards. Local history is taught in universities, often at postgraduate level, and each county as well as many villages and towns, have their own societies. Family history,...

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  • Victoria County History (VCH)

    Article

    Victoria County History  Founded in 1899 and originally dedicated to Queen Victoria, the VCH is an encyclopaedic record of England's places and people from earliest times to the present day.  It is without doubt the greatest publishing project in English local history, having built an international reputation for scholarly standards. Based...

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  • What caused the decline of trams in West Yorkshire?

    Article

    In an article based on his award-winning essay for the Young Historian competition, Christopher Barnett describes the development, decline and potential resurrection of West Yorkshire’s tram network...

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  • Willington and the Mowbrays: After the Peasants’ Revolt

    Article

    Willington and the Mowbrays: After the Peasants’ Revolt, Dorothy Jamieson, Bedford Historical Record Society Vol 95, Boydell Press, 2019, 241p, £25-00, ISSN 0067-4826. At one level this scholarly and meticulous study introduces us to the Willington neighbourhood in Bedfordshire. Based on Dorothy Jamieson’s careful transcription of its manorial court rolls,...

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  • Woodland in the East Staffordshire landscape

    Article

    Richard Stone explains that the natural landscape can be a resource for anyone exploring local topography. The idea for researching this topic came while reading Oliver Rackham’s excellent Trees and Woodland in the British Landscape. Calculations based on woodland recorded in Domesday Book revealed my home county of Staffordshire, with...

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