In the past, Luton was a market town and, for many years, was also a centre for the brewing industry. In the 19th century it became famous for hat making, and more recently it has grown into a thriving industrial centre. During the Second World War it played an important part in the manufacture of army vehicles, and children bound for school had to dodge the Churchill tanks on their way to various theatres of conflict. Nowadays, Luton Airport is the gateway for all types of traveller and the town is well known for its famous football team. Luton has always provided visitors with a warm welcome and many have stayed and made the town their home. Local industry offered employment opportunities in the early 20th century and many had cause to be grateful for its relative prosperity during the Great Depression. Following the Second World War, immigrants from the Indian subcontinent and from the West Indies brought with them colourful new cultures that are celebrated in the annual Carnival. This fascinating and illustrated account of Luton's past will inform and delight anyone who lives in the town and inspire those who grew up here.
Preacher, soldier, rebel: Who was the author of Pilgrim’s Progress, one of the most influential books ever written? John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress is one of the most important works of English literature. Translated into more than 200 languages, it once rivalled the Bible in popularity in the English-speaking world. In A Turbulent, Seditious and Factious People, Christopher Hill reassesses the well-known author to recover Bunyan’s significance as a preacher—a man whose nonconformist religion led him into conflict with the Quakers and resulted in long years of imprisonment. It was while confined that he wrote his most famous works. This classic biography by one of the leading historians of the seventeenth century offers an extraordinary insight into one of Britain’s most influential writers.
In this fundamental reassessment of women's experience of work in eighteenth-century England, Bridget Hill examines how and to what extent industrialization improved the overall position of women and the opportunities open to them. Focusing on the most important unit of production, the household, Dr Hill examines women's work, not only in "housework" but also in agriculture and manufacturing, and reveals what women lost as the household's independence as a unit of economic production was undermined. Considering the whole range of activities in which women were involved, the increasing sexual division of labour is charted and its implications highlighted. The final part of the book considers how the changing nature of women's work influenced courtship, marriage and relations between the sexes.
Over the last thirty years, historical studies of building types have become something of a growth area. As well as such general surveys as Nikolaus Pevsner's History of Building Types, there are growing numbers of studies of individual types, of which the most distinguished perhaps remain Mark Girouard's Life in the English Country House and Robin Evan's study of prisons, The Fabrication of Virtue. This growth is not surprising, because the subject lends itself to the 'New Art History', and to our increasing desire to set buildings within their social and cultural contexts, as well as their stylistic and cultural ones. This book by Dr Graham is a comprehensive study of a type of building - the law court - which has, to date, remained largely unexplored. Ordering Law establishes when, why and how the trial came to be housed in purpose-built accommodation in England, and what was architecturally distinctive about that accommodation in the period leading up to 1914. The main text concentrates on examining in depth a series of well-documented individual buildings and groups of buildings, using a wide range of contemporary sources to illuminate the way in which they were designed and used. Other information gleaned about court buildings nationwide is placed in an appendix, in gazetteer form; originally drawn from the 200 or so examples listed in the Buildings of England guides, this has expanded to include over 800 entries. As a piece of scholarly research, this work draws on several disciplines and will be of interest to those studying social and legal history, as well as those with a broader interest in architectural history.
In the eighteenth century the justices of the peace governed England. While Parliament debated questions of trade, taxation, and foreign policy, the justices administered England's internal affairs. So powerful were the later Stuart and early Hanoverian justices that they were virtually independent, and it is their independence which makes them fascinating. Neither the central government nor Parliament told them what to do, closely supervised their activity, or even insured that they at at all. What tid the justices choose to do? In what manner did they do it? why, indeed, did they assume the burdens of local government? Norma Landau examines the office of justice of the peace from the viewpoint of the justices themselves, delineating those ideals and inducements inherent in local government which prompted the English elite to assume their distinctive role as paternal rulers. Through analysis of the appointment of justices, the political and social composition of the bench, the institutions of local government, the justices' administrative and judicial activities, and manuals written for justices, this study traces the evolution of the elite's conduct of government an dof their concept of their relation to those they governed. Through analysis of the appointment of justices, the political and social composition of the bench, the institutions of local government, the justices' administrative and judicial activities, and manuals written for justices, this study traces the evolution of the elite's conduct of government and of their concept of their relation to those they governed. Because the justices were so important, discussion of their role touches upon some of the major debates in current historiography: the debate on the nature of politics; on the relation of rulers to the governed in a "deferential society"; on the definition of the elite in early modern society; on the course of of administrative development; and on the relation of law to images of authority. This portrait of the justices illuminates a crucial stage in the tranformation of England's rulers from local patriarchs to administrators for the nation. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1984.
Before the modern growth of centralised government, the most important unit of administration was the county. Counties were run by Justices of the Peace sitting together at Quarter Sessions where, as well as trying criminal cases, they dealt with all county business. In the years between 1650 and 1830 a increasing proportion of their time and resources was taken up in erecting public buildings. Building by counties, taken together, represents a substantial and previously little noticed programme of public works. Unlike most other building works in this period, where the details of planning, building, execution and cost are lost, county building is well documented, allowing us to follow clearly the stages of erection. The county building programme reflected changes in society and in the economy, apart from being itself an indication of the growing wealth of the period. A sizeable part of county budgets was spent on bridges. A series of increasingly elaborate bridewells and gaols reflected concerns over employment and crime, also reflected in the erection of judges' lodgings and court houses; the latter being often incorporated in shire halls. Rising humanitarian alarm about mental illness led to the building of pauper lunatic asylums after 1800. English Counties and Public Building, 1650-1830 is an original and important contribution to both administrative and architectural history. Before the modern growth of centralised government, the most important unit of administration was the county. Counties were run by Justices of the Peace sitting together at Quarter Sessions where, as well as trying criminal cases, they dealt with all county business. In the years between 1650 and 1830 a increasing proportion of their time and resources was taken up in erecting public buildings. Building by counties, taken together, represents a substantial and previously little noticed programme of public works. Unlike most other building works in this period, where the details of planning, building, execution and cost are lost, county building is well documented, allowing us to follow clearly the stages of erection. The county building programme reflected changes in society and in the economy, apart from being itself an indication of the growing wealth of the period. A sizeable part of county budgets was spent on bridges. A series of increasingly elaborate bridewells and gaols reflected concerns over employment and crime, also reflected in the erection of judges' lodgings and court houses; the latter being often incorporated in shire halls. Rising humanitarian alarm about mental illness led to the building of pauper lunatic asylums after 1800. English Counties and Public Building, 1650-1830 is an original and important contribution to both administrative and architectural history.
This is a major reinterpretation of John Bunyan, each of whose works, including the posthumous, is analyzed in its immediate historical context. The author draws on recent literature on depression to demonstrate that Bunyan suffered from this mood disorder as a young man and then used this experience to help mold his literary works.
The range of women's work and its contribution to the family economy studied here for the first time. Despite the growth of women's history and rural social history in the past thirty years, the work performed by women who lived in the nineteenth-century English countryside is still an under-researched issue. Verdon directly addresses this gap in the historiography, placing the rural female labourer centre stage for the first time. The involvement of women in the rural labour market as farm servants, as day labourers in agriculture, and as domestic workers, are all examined using a wide range of printed and unpublished sources from across England. The roles village women performed in the informal rural economy (household labour, gathering resources and exploiting systems of barterand exchange) are also assessed. Changes in women's economic opportunities are explored, alongside the implications of region, age, marital status, number of children in the family and local custom; women's economic contribution to the rural labouring household is established as a critical part of family subsistence, despite criticism of such work and the rise in male wages after 1850. NICOLA VERDON is a Research Fellow in the Rural History Centre, University of Reading.
