Introduction For centuries Hertfordshire was known for malt, and malting was the county¡¯s first industry. John Taylor wrote in 1636: ¡®Hertfordshire is a County that surpasseth all other Countries and Counties for making the best malt.¡¯ Almost a century later, in 1724, Daniel Defoe wrote that Hertfordshire malt was ¡®esteemed the best in England¡¯. The northern and eastern parts of...

Footpaths: Ancient Origins: Animal Tracks The oldest footpaths in the British Isles weren¡¯t formed by feet at all, but by paws and hooves. Many of the paths still walked today were trodden out by animals, 10,000 years ago. Four-legged beasts were the first trailblazers, engineering routes through the land as the Ice Age receded and fertility returned. Only much later...

Australia's Last Steam Railways: Introduction The South Maitland and Richmond Vale Railways together formed an extensive network of standard-gauge lines serving collieries in the New South Wales coalfields. The first section was a railway opened for coal traffic in 1859, between Hexham and a colliery at Minmi owned by John Eales, which subsequently became part of the J. & A...

What If Prince Albert Had Lived?  A reflection on Queen Victoria¡¯s potential legacy The death of Prince Albert in 1861 was a defining moment in British history, shaping the remainder of Queen Victoria¡¯s life and reign and altering the trajectory of the monarchy itself. But what if he had lived? The last chapter of Women in Victorian Society explores this...

Introduction Lynn is not an ancient town with Roman or Anglo-Saxon origins, but a new boom port town of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, similar to Boston on the other corner of the Wash. The Domesday Book (1086) lists a tiny settlement called ¡®Lena¡¯ with inhabitants apparently making salt by evaporating sea water. The town itself was made in the...

There are many difficulties facing the writer of a narrative history aimed at the general reader. The text must be accurate but also provide sufficient sympathies to the ethical standards and beliefs of the time as to generate an emotional investment in the characters and themes being presented. The other major problem is deciding where to start and when to...

Anyone who has ever walked, driven, or cycled through Cumbria will have noticed the sheep. Maybe you¡¯ve paused to take a photo of a cute lamb in the spring sunshine, or perhaps the smiling face of a herdy has given you the boost you need to finish a long walk. Cumbria has a very long and, at times, complicated, relationship...

As an author of historical non-fiction, it is not often you get the chance to write a sequel. Sequels are for fiction. However, as I wrote in my first book, Heroines of the Medieval World, I knew that the premise behind the book could apply to other eras. So why not the Tudors? As I said in that first book...

Walking through the streets of modern Burnley, it is hard to imagine that this small East Lancashire town was once heralded as the cotton-weaving capital of the world. Yet multiple clues to Burnley¡¯s remarkable past are still visible if you know where to look. When researching Secret Burnley & Pendle, it was fascinating to uncover the evidence pointing to the...

During my time as a volunteer at Warwickshire County Record Office I discovered the story of Lady Dorothie Feilding. Family history and genealogical research were becoming popular at the time and many people arrived expecting to be given the information immediately ¨C unaware of how to use the record office as a research tool.  Another volunteer and I were invited...