This paper draws on and forms part of the growing body of literature which examines critically the relationships between landscape and Englishness in the first half of the twentieth century. In particular this paper develops our understanding of the moral geographies of outdoor recreation and the popular discovery of rural England. It also shows how national identity itself was seen to be threatened by first, the alteration of the English landscape to accommodate new kinds of visitors, and second, by the apparent inability of those visitors to enjoy the English countryside in an appropriate way. These issues are explored through the variety of ways in which the Cotswolds were being discovered and encountered in the first half of the twentieth century. This was occurring at a time when rural England more generally was being ‘discovered’, explored, constructed and re-created both physically and in print through non fictional rural writing, guide books and topographical works. Discovering the Cotswolds and England was a deeply contested activity fraught with tensions and paradoxes which were themselves informed by ideas of class and culture.

The publication of The Art and Mystery of Historical Archaeology, a festschrift in honour of James Deetz, makes a useful starting point for assessing the remarkable development of American historical archaeology over the last four decades. The discipline of ‘historical archaeology’ is the New World equivalent of British post-medieval archaeology. It is the study of the material culture of colonial and industrial America. Unlike its highly marginalised British counterpart, the discipline has seen an enormous growth in America over the last two decades, reflected in the creation of numerous posts both in universities and public-sector archaeology. This article seeks firstly to discuss some of the main contributions to the festchrift and areas of promise for future research. Secondly it will assess the relevance of some recent contributions on the history of consumption to Deetz's concept of the ‘Georgian world view’ and the notion of radical change in eighteenth-century material culture.

In 1950 Iran and the United States signed the first Point Four agreement, establishing a program now known as USAID. It fulfilled President Harry S. Truman's desire to control the Soviet bloc and to share technology with third world countries. Utah State University contracted with the U.S. Point Four program to provide technicians in agriculture from 1951 to 1954. This paper examines the successes and the frustrations that the Utahns felt in transporting technology to Iran. While there were some successes, the cultural and economic difficulties were hard to overcome. As a result, the technicians in the 1960s experienced the same problems faced by those in the 1950s. These included a negative reaction to farm machinery in a land with many laborers, problems training machinery operators, and language barriers.

This article examines coastal defence in East Norfolk between the late eighteenth and early twentieth centuries. From 1802 until 1932 sea defence between Happisburgh and Winterton was the responsibility of the Commissioners of Sewers for the Eastern Hundreds of Norfolk, more commonly known as the Sea Breach Commission (SBC). This article explores the geographies of authority shaping sea defence, with the SBC a body whose relationship to the local and national state could be uneasy. The article outlines the SBC’s nineteenth-century roles and routines, and examines its relationship to outside expertise, including its early hiring of geologist William Smith. The article reviews challenges to the SBC’s authority following late nineteenth-century flood events, details its early twentieth-century routines, and examines disputes over development on the sandhills. The article details the SBC’s dealings with an emerging national ‘nature state’, around issues such as coastal erosion and land drainage, matters which led to the SBC’s demise following the 1930 Land Drainage Act. The article concludes by considering the SBC’s contemporary resonance in a time of challenges to the role of the nature state, and anxieties over coastal defence.

Canwick Hall, near Lincoln, was the seat of the Sibthorps from 1730 to 1940. They represented the city in Parliament over several generations. The evolution of their estate village is seen here in contrast to the open village of Melbourn, in the context of the open-closed village model, and in comparison with two other estates of similar size and value (the Sneyds' estate at Keele, Staffordshire and the Fawkeses' estate at Farnley in Wharfedale). The Sibthorps were a ten thousand-acre and ten thousand pounds-a-year family for most of the nineteenth century, but the amount of attention they paid to Canwick varied considerably, depending on the individual circumstances and preferences of a succession of life-tenants.

During the nineteenth century newly invented clayworking machinery offered potential solutions to production problems in the British brickmaking industry. Three different mechanical brickmaking processes were available, but a combination of design imperfections and restrictions imposed by the excise duties on bricks discouraged their adoption in ordinary brickyards for many decades. This posed a serious dilemma for machine inventors. Without an opportunity to test machinery in brickmaking situations, they were unable to correct defects and produce implements that were clearly superior to hand brickmaking methods. For as long as brickmakers rejected mechanisation, the technical development of machinery was effectively halted. A breakthrough occurred in the 1840s when a lucrative new market emerged for machines capable of manufacturing large quantities of drainage pipes and tiles in rural locations. The exhibitions and implement trials at meetings of the Royal Agricultural Society of England were a decisive factor in the continuing technical development of clayworking machinery. Agricultural consumers, through debate, evaluation and negotiation with machine makers, ultimately determined the success of one mechanical clayworking process over others, and established the direction of future technological change in the brickmaking industry.

I approach this paper as a prehistorian whose research has been primarily in areas with little or no surviving evidence for prehistoric fields, so that my only close encounter with field systems has been at Kilmashogue and other sites in the uplands just to the south of Dublin (figure 1 shows the location of the main areas and sites in Ireland mentioned in the text). These are certainly fixed in space but unfortunately are as yet floating in time (Cooney, 1985). But this personal predicament is in fact central to the problems approached in this paper: that while there is increasing evidence for prehistoric field systems in Ireland, they are frequently perceived as occurring in the archaeological record only in certain areas; that the relationship between them and other aspects of the archaeological record is not always clear; and that there are major problems in dating these field systems.

My second introductory point is to comment that the sequence of the title is deliberate. The significance of field systems must be seen in the context of what would have been the contemporary cultural landscape and land use, and the various interpretations which have been made of these. The occurrence of field systems has major implications for the way we view the human impact on the environment and use of the land during the Neolithic period in Ireland (4,000 – 2,500 BC).

In 1850, The Yorkshireman, a radical newspaper, offered the following analysis of York's annual Martinmas Hiring Fair:

Martinmas Fair … is an evil which increases crime, causes the profligate waste of money, adds greatly to the already large number of inmates within the walls of our House of Correction, and so increases the City expenses by their maintenance and the necessary increase of the police force to preserve the public from robbery, without conferring a benefit on the public in any way.

In an area characterised by livestock farming, the auction mart had a pivotal role, both economically and culturally, and was crucial to the continued success of the community and the businesses of the area. Although made up from the surrounding farming community, the community of the auction mart was separate and different, if only on a temporary basis, with its own physical and social boundaries, cultural norms, and traditions, which had a significant effect on the personal identities of those who counted themselves as members. This article explores the auction mart community, its links to a wider farming network, and its influence on rural ideas about masculine identity, through an oral history study of the Lower Wharfedale area. This offers a window onto a community and a culture which has received very little academic attention due to its closed nature. The article concludes that the auction mart regulars constituted a community within the farming community, in which the theme of trust ran through every interaction, linking the everyday activity of the mart space to wider debates about the meaning of masculinity, transitions and ritual, social networks, and the nature of community.

‘How came I to be his property? What right has he in me, but such as a thief may plead to stolen goods?’ cried Pamela, the virtuous servant maid of Richardson's novel. Pamela was written in 1740, but the assumption that masters had sexual rights over their servants cast a long shadow. The questions Pamela raises about powerlessness and ‘worth’ are crucial to understanding the plight of female servants in the nineteenth century. This study examines why servants were particularly vulnerable to sexual harassment, the consequences of sexual abuse for victims and offenders, and underlying male attitudes which affected both the incidence of assaults and the justice meted out by the courts.

When writing his final report in 1823 on the current state of affairs in the county of Kopparberg in Sweden, its governor, Hans Järta, made a short digression to ponder upon the differences between England and Sweden. According to Järta, England had been unfortunate in that it had deprived a large proportion of its rural population of the land on which they could otherwise have supported themselves. They had now, Järta remarked, no other choice but to work in the factories, and were the first to suffer when these had to close down. In some parts of Sweden, efforts were at this time being made to organise agricultural production in accordance with similar ideas, that is, through the use of wage labour. Järta was deeply sceptical about these experiments however, claiming that they led to nothing but poverty and social problems.

In the introduction to his practical manual on the organisation of friendly societies published in 1851 J.H. James writes:

The character of a nation may be pretty well ascertained from the general features of its public institutions. When these are directed to the morals, social and intellectual training of the human mind, and to the privilege of a cultivation of religious principles we may be sure of the existence of that high degree of buoyancy and healthiness of mental vigour, accompanied by great physical energy not to be found in any other condition of society.

This article examines the role of particular ideas of the countryside in unemployment relief schemes. While interwar thinking on the countryside has received attention, it has not been examined in the specific context of unemployment relief. This article uses four case studies from North East England, namely the Team Valley Trading Estate (Gateshead), Hamsterley Forest Instructional Centre (Durham), Swarland model village (Northumberland) and Heartbreak Hill (Cleveland). All four projects took different approaches to the unemployment problem, but all used some form of rural rhetoric. The ways in which the projects deployed images of the countryside creatively recombined a wide range of ideas to suit their needs rather than being rigidly confined by particular schools of thought.

Poverty is the consequence of not having sufficient income to sustain lives and ways of life. While there are many papers addressing poverty in today’s Poland, no comprehensive study was done to explain and describe rural poverty also in a historical aspect. Therefore, this article attempts to synthetically identify the patterns and particularities of rural poverty in Poland between the wars, and to present the multifaceted and diverse nature of Polish poverty in the initial years of national independence. The authors’ main objective is to indicate the changes in the scope of Polish poverty and to describe the adaptive mechanisms and the discomfort involved in the depreciation of needs. Before independence, the situation varied across the Polish territory. The relatively worst socio-economic conditions were experienced in Galicia due to absence of non-agricultural activities. The population of Prussian rural areas found themselves in a more advantageous situation because of industrial development and working outside agriculture. The situation of peasants was exacerbated by the destructive and resource-draining First World War, whereas rural misery was made even worse by the combination of unemployment and underdevelopment of the country. In the Second Polish Republic, the situation of the rural population did not improve even though the country made great progress at that time. Note that rural poverty varied across employee groups, with cultural and lifestyle differences, limited competences and passive attitudes playing an important role.

Agricultural credit organisations are paramount to every country because agriculture must operate under threats of risk and uncertainty. When small-scale family farms are dominant, all types of agricultural organisations become important to keep farmers’ incomes at a reasonable level and encourage agricultural development. Midhat Pasha understood the importance of agricultural organisations, and he created a well-designed system for agricultural credit. He is the founder of Homeland Coffers that distribute credits to farmers. The original side of these credit organisations was capital accumulation and the methods of using it. Capital for these Coffers were provided by the joint actions of credit users. Midhat Pasha connected two cooperatives while the production cooperative provided capital for Homeland Coffers, they operated as a credit cooperative for twenty-five years in the Ottoman Empire. This credit organisation helped development of agriculture and provided many social benefits to the rural area.

From the beginning of time human settlement has depended on water; its proximity being indispensable not only for the development of agriculture but also for the maintenance of stable settlements. The presence of water has promoted the development of civilisations, its absence has undermined their continuity. Getting hold of water has been the source of many confrontations in which at issue was not just the acquisition of more and better territories but nothing less that the community's own survival. The intrinsic social value of water has influenced social structures through the community rules for the distribution of this collective good.

In one of the earliest issues of Rural History, Jacqueline Simpson urged students of Popular rural culture to examine local legends that centre upon some specific place, Person or object and which are a focus for local pride. Many of these are well-known tales which have been adapted, often in a humorous way, to local circumstances. Thus the seventy-odd stories of dragon-slaying which she has collected for Britain usually depict a local figure, not St George or a knight errant, as the hero. It is normally difficult, if not impossible, to explain how these tales began. The Dragon of Wantley, however, offers some unusual opportunities for delving into the historical context of a ballad that achieved national fame.

The extent of the handmade lace industry in the nineteenth century is difficult to estimate. Most lacemakers were not given an occupation in the census. For instance, Belleek (in county Fermanagh) was one of the centres of handmade lace in Ireland. Of the fifty-one women active in the Belleek lace and sprigging class in January 1911, fifty-six per cent were given no occupation in the 1911 census manuscripts and four per cent were given occupations other than lacemaker. In Ireland, it is clear that the census statistics do not include the tens of thousands of women making lace for the home industries societies examined in this article. The statistics for lacemaking in England, Wales and Scotland (given in table one) are confused by the fact that no distinction is made between hand and machine-made lace.

William Cobbett was, during his own lifetime, a highly controversial figure who often found it necessary to defend himself against supposed misrepresentation. His historical persona remains no less controversial. The complexities of Cobbett's career and character have supported a variety of interpretations, and many writers this century have felt the need to define ‘the real Cobbett’. Modern misrepresentations have arisen less from false stories invented to damn him than from the misleading emphases employed to praise him, with both Left and Right seeking in their different ways to appropriate what they see as his legacy. For conservatives, he has been an essentially timeless figure, standing for Old England and all that may have made such a place great. Writers on the Left have treated him rather as a figure of the past, rationalised to fit into the rise of working-class consciousness and organisation, and divested of some aspects unseemly in an early representative of ‘the cause’. Cobbett has been adopted as an important figure for the Left, but readings based on the assumptions about working-class radicalism held by the modern British Labour movement have often found it necessary to exclude aspects of his writings as inconsistent, or at least idiosyncratic.

This article explores the development of the Council for the Preservation of Rural England's (CPRE) policy response to the increasing demands for rural land by the armed forces and other war effort-related government departments prior to and during the Second World War. The CPRE was supportive of Britain's war effort, but nevertheless throughout the war sought to remain an effective advocate for the preservation of the rural landscape – a landscape that was regularly evoked by state propaganda to stimulate the population's support for the war effort, yet was subject to alteration and degradation by that very effort. The result was a generally private campaign of lobbying characterised by opposition to some war effort-related proposals for rural land use, acquiescence to others, and consistent efforts to seek to ensure that requisitioned land was returned to its prewar use. Central to the CPRE's capacity to influence was a consultative mechanism created by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in 1938, which established the CPRE as a stakeholder that government ministries were required to consult with over their proposed use of land in rural areas for airfields, training camps, war industry, and other purposes. The immediate postwar legacy of this work, both for the CPRE and the rural landscape, is also examined. This article therefore contributes, albeit from a tangential perspective, to the growing historiography on the militarisation of landscapes, defined by Coates et al. as ‘sites that have been fully or partially mobilised for military purposes’.2