A Lost Frontier Revealed extract

Table of Contents

List of figures vii

List of tables x

General Editor’s preface xi

Acknowledgements xiii

Abbreviations xiv

Part 1 Introduction

1 The hypothesis 3

2 The Test Area 11

Part 2 A countryside divided?

3 Land and people of the proposed frontier 45

4 Economic characteristics and contrasts 61

5 Cultural expressions 78

Part 3 Mechanisms of segregation

6 Personal spatial loyalties 99

7 Kinship and dynastic moulds 138

8 County and town polarities 150

Part 4 Conclusion

9 Overall judgement and findings 169

Appendix 183

Bibliography 189

Index 203

Extract from A Lost Frontier Revealed

Taken from the General Editor’s Preface

This volume of Studies in Regional and Local History, number seven, offers both a substantive history of a particular area, and a searching theoretical analysis. The area concerned lies on the Leicestershire–Lincolnshire border, from west of the town of Grantham down to the boundary where these two counties meet the small county of Rutland. The area chosen for examination (the ‘Test Area’) extends to some 23 miles east to west and 16 miles north to south, and is itself constituted of seven distinct landscapes which can be distinguished by geology and geomorphology. At various junctures in the book, however, the analysis switches to the ‘Focus Area’, 14 parishes which straddle the county boundary, and hence provide a more immediate target for the consideration of cross-border alliances and divisions. The main chronological focus is upon the eighteenth century, but the study ranges far wider than that. Hence evidence is adduced from the seventeenth century – particularly from the hearth taxes and the Compton census of the 1670s, and from knowledge of the extent of enclosure in 1676 – as well as from mid nineteenth-century trade directories and the evidence of communications routes and networks in this later period. The final section of the book ranges even further afield, to consider the implications of ancient place names and surnames for the theory under examination.

That theory is the thesis proposed by Charles Phythian-Adams, former Professor of English Local History in the department of that name (now the Centre for English Local History) at the University of Leicester. This thesis has been developed in a number of articles but most fully in his book Re-thinking English local history (Leicester, 1987), which formed the first volume in the fourth series of Leicester Occasional Papers, and was revisited in the introduction to his edited book Societies, cultures and kinship, 1580–1850 (Leicester, 1993).¹ Phythian-Adams has been described as ‘the first significant theorist of local history’, and – while this accolade may not do full justice to others who have thought about the subject – it is certainly true that he has written at length about the nature of English local history, about the most appropriate geographical units that might be chosen as the objects of local historical study, and why and how they were separated one from another.² In his various publications Phythian-Adams appreciates that local communities are multilayered and complex entities. Both patterns of migration and surname distributions, he argues, bestow a certain identity (though by no means an exclusive one) on English counties.³ But he also identifies wider entities, groups of counties that he first described as ‘cultural provinces’, now as ‘regional societies’, and these he suggests are commonly separated by the watersheds of major river drainage basins, which ‘predispose their inhabitants to look inwards’.⁴ In defining regional societies, Phythian- Adams posits the existence of a frontier zone – usually sparsely populated and pastoral – across which contacts and culture were respectively limited and contrastive. It is this thesis that Alan Fox explores at such depth in the present volume, for his chosen study area lies across one of the watersheds that, for Phythian-Adams, are so important in defining regional societies.

This exploration involves the consideration of a very wide range of indicators indeed, operating at different levels of generality. The more general analysis examines population distribution, economic and occupational contrasts, varying rates of enclosure and broad cultural differences – including vernacular architecture and dialect. This is followed by analysis at a more personal level, focusing upon topics such as marital endogamy, the geographical location of bondsmen, of relatives and real estate mentioned in testamentary evidence, migration and the identification of family dynasties through a reconstitution exercise using the parish registers for the 14 parishes in the ‘Focus Area’. Transport systems and networks are also explored, before Dr Fox reflects upon the evidence for early identification of a frontier from place-name and surname evidence. In general, he argues that his analyses tends to support Phythian-Adams’ hypothesis, while at the same time offering due circumspection and qualification. Indeed, one would not expect to find complete separation between ‘regional societies’, for, as Phythian-Adams writes, ‘What are now perhaps best described here as “cultural provinces” are to be regarded only as generally focused arenas of influence and regional interaction… Total homogeneity within its limits – as opposed to recognizable similarities – is not to be expected’.⁵ Alan Fox would no doubt agree, and in exploring this hypothesis in such depth has made a singular and impressive contribution to the debate about the identity, and identification of, English local societies, past and present.


1. C. Phythian-Adams, ‘Introduction: an agenda for English local history’, in Phythian-Adams (ed.), Societies, cultures and kinship, 1580–1850 (Leicester, 1993), pp. 1–23. See also ‘Local history and national history: the quest for the peoples of England’, Rural History, 2 (1991), pp. 1–23; ‘Local history and societal history’, Local Population Studies, 51 (1993), pp. 30–45. Leicester Occasional Papers are now published in a revised format by the University of Hertfordshire Press as Explorations in Local and Regional History.
2. R.C. Richardson, ‘English local history and American local history: some comparisons’, in R.C. Richardson (ed.), The changing face of English local history (Aldershot, 2000), p. 209.
3. Phythian-Adams, Re-thinking, pp. 30, 32.
4. Phythian-Adams, ‘Introduction’, p. 13, For ‘regional societies’ see Phythian-Adams, ‘Differentiating provincial societies in English history: spatial contexts and cultural processes’, in B. Lancaster, D. Newton and N. Vall (eds), An agenda for regional history (Newcastle Upon Tyne, 2007), pp. 3–22.
5. Phythian-Adams, ‘Introduction’, p. 14.