This volume is the first of two containing the history of all the places in Waltham hundred and some of those in Becontree hundred. This region, most of which is now in Greater London, extends eastwards from the River Lea and northwards from the Thames. Until the mid-19th century it was rich farm land, and was also fashionable with the gentry as a place of residence. Its northern fringe is still rural, but the remainder has since 1850 been the scene of a most remarkable example of sustained inflow and settlement of population. This transformation, starting in West Ham, is described for the region as a whole in a special introductory article. The parish histories include Barking and Dagenham, which now contain the Becontree housing estate; the residential suburbs of Chingford and Ilford; and the market towns of Epping and Waltham Abbey.

A History of the County of Essex: Volume V (Victoria County History)

History

World

Victoria County History

This volume completes the 'general' history of the county which was begun in 1911 in Middlesex II. It contains illustrated articles on the physique and pre-history of Middlesex, from Palaeolithic to Pagan Saxon times, on its religious houses and ecclesiastical organization, and on education within the county. It also includes a translation of the Middlesex section of Domesday Book with map, commentary, and index. The sequence of articles on education includes histories of working-class and private education, accounts of endowed schools, and a history of the University of London and its constituent colleges and schools.

A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume I: Physique, Archaeology, Domesday Survey, Ecclesiastical Organization, Education, Index to Persons and ... General Index (Victoria County History)

King, H. P. F.

Donnell, K. G. T. Mc

Europe

This volume is concerned mainly with the industrial history of Staffordshire. It not only includes a full treatment of pottery and other major industries such as mining, engineering and the various metal trades, but also deals with the textiles of Leek, the boots and shoes of Stafford, the sadd-lery of Walsall, and the beer of Burton. Other industries include quarrying, glass-making, saltworking and brickmaking. An important allied topic is the development of communications, and chapters are de-voted to the history of roads, canals and railways. The volume also includes an account of the forests of Staffordshire, notably Cannock, Kinver and Needwood. Finally there are chapters on the major sports of the county-foxhunting, horse-racing, cricket, and football.

A History of the County of Stafford: Volume II with index to Volumes I and II (Victoria County History)

This volume completes Becontree hundred by providing histories of East Ham, West Ham, Little Ilford, Leyton, Walthamstow, Wanstead, and Woodford. The region, rural until the 19th century, is now part of Greater London. Though mainly residen-tial it includes, at Silvertown, Canning Town, and Stratford, one of the largest manufacturing centres in southern England, as well as the Royal Docks. Until 1965 the region remained outside London for admin-istrative purposes. This strongly influenced urban development, especially in East Ham and West Ham, which, as county boroughs, had sole responsibility for local government services and planning in a period of remark-able growth. West Ham, in 1898, was one of the first English towns to come under socialist control. Throughout the region the expanding population demanded the pro-vision of many new schools and churches, each of which is briefly treated in the vol-ume. In dealing with churches an attempt is made to assess the relative strength of the various denominations. Urbanization has swept away most of the visible remains of earlier history. Until the 19th century the region was fashionable with the gentry, and this is reflected in the size of some of the older parish churches, notably at Walthamstow and West Ham. At Little Ilford, by contrast, is one of the smallest churches in Essex. Wanstead House, the palladian mansion designed by Colen Campbell, was demolished in 1823, though much of its park has survived. The northern part of the region, bordering on Epping Forest, retains some attractive wood-land, especially at Walthamstow, Wanstead, and Woodford, where several 18th-century houses also survive. Notable modern build-ings include Wanstead hospital, built as an orphanage (1861), Sir Joseph Bazalgette's metropolitan sewage pumping station at Stratford (1868), and the town halls at East Ham (1903) and Walthamstow (1941). During the Second World War the south part of the region was heavily bombed, and since 1945 there has been large-scale redevelopment, especially at Canning Town, where the sky-line is increasingly dominated by tower blocks of council flats.

A History of the County of Essex: Volume VI (Victoria County History)

This volume covers the liberty of Havering-atte-Bower and part of Chafford hundred. The area coincides approximately with that of the London Borough of Havering, which was formed in 1965, stretching northward from the Thames. The liberty of Havering-atte-Bower, with its royal manor-house, usually formed part of the queen of England's dower from the 13th century to the 17th. Its tenants had special privileges and it had a measure of admini-strative independence which was formalized in a royal charter of 1465. The liberty included Hornchurch, whose priory build-ings are examined in the volume in a fresh light, and the chapelries of Romford and Havering-atte-Bower. While the last has remained largely rural, Hornchurch was an industrial village which has become a dormitory suburb and Romford was a market town which has become a shopping centre serving estates such as those at Gidea Park, which originated as a garden suburb, and Harold Hill. Chafford hundred, once largely agri-cultural with moated manor-houses and extensive marshland sheep-pastures, still has a few farms, but parishes like Upminster and Cranham have in the 20th century acquired large commuter suburbs. Along the Thames, where Rainham was once a small port for coastal shipping and an early, harbour at Wennington creek has been identified, there is an industrial area making ferro-alloys and providing storage for oil and petroleum. At Little Watley (which like South Ockendon is outside the London Borough of Havering but is included in the present volume) the head-quarters of the Ford Motor Co. Ltd. have replaced a military camp and the barracks of the Essex Regiment. Among the large houses that survive those treated in the volume include Bower House, Bretons, and Langtons, and accounts are also given of others that have been demolished. The gardens at Warley Park, now derelict, were once among the most notable in Europe.

A History of the County of Essex: Volume VII (Victoria County History)

This volume completes Chafford hundred and covers Harlow hundred. The part of Chafford hundred, now in Brentwood District and Thur-rock borough, includes Aveley, Stifford, Grays Thurrock and West Thurrock beside the Thames and, further north, Childerditch, Brentwood, and South Weald. Grays Thurrock, formerly a small port with a brickworks and a brewery, is now the main centre of the borough. The coastal marshes west of Grays were used mainly as sheep pastures until the 18th century, when large-scale chalk quarrying and lime burning began. The West Thurrock cement industry, which grew up in the 19th century, became one of the largest in Europe. It has since declined and the area is now used mainly for the storage of oil and petroleum and the manufacture of soap, detergents, and marga-rine. Brentwood, now a large dormitory suburb of London, owed its early growth to its position on the main London-Colchester road, and per-haps also to the cult of St. Thomas the Martyr. The mansions of Belhus, at Aveley, and Weald Hall, South Weald, both dating from the 16th century, were demolished after the Second World War. South Weald park remains as a country park, and so does Thorndon park, including part of Childerditch, but some land in Belhus park was used after 1950 for a housing estate of the London county council. At Purfleet, in West Thurrock, a smaller housing estate occupies the site of powder magazines built by the government in the 1760s. Harlow hundred contained 11 parishes in west Essex, including the ancient market towns of Hatfield Broad Oak and Harlow. Hatfield, with its Benedictine priory, was one of the principal places in Essex in the Middle Ages, but it de-clined after the 16th century, and the hundred remained largely rural until after the Second World War, when five of its parishes became the new town of Harlow, built to rehouse 80,000 Londoners. Hatfield forest, belonging to the National Trust, comprises over 400 ha. There have been extensive maltings at Sheering and Harlow, breweries at Harlow and Hatfield Heath, and a silk mill at Little Hallingbury. Among great houses the 16th-century Hallingbury Place has disappeared, but Barrington Hall and Down Hall, both rebuilt in the mid 19th century, survive. At Netherhall, Roydon, are the remains of a 15th-century gatehouse.

A History of the County of Essex: Volume VIII (Victoria County History)

Board, Beryl A.

Knight, Norma

The volume describes the history of Tewkesbury and 22 other parishes lying mainly between the Severn and Bredon and Cleeve Hills. Tewkesbury itself was once an important centre for communications, manufacture, trade, and administration; its great abbey church remains, and the many timber-framed houses recall its past prosperity. Bishop's Cleeve had a monastery in the 8th century and later became a demesne manor of the Bishop of Worcester. There was an early minster church at Beckford, and at Deerhurst a Saxon monastery with a remarkable church that is still in use. At Forthampton part of the Abbot of Tewkesbury's manor-house survives. There were also substantial lay estates, not only the great manor of Tewkesbury, long owned by the Earls of Gloucester, but also those of lesser baronial families, like the Beauchamps, Pauncefoots, and Cardiffs. The land, once densely wooded, has mostly long been agricultural, though in Corse and Tirley parts of the former chase were not inclosed until 1797, and there were large sheep-pastures in the hills. Prestbury was becoming residential by the late 18th century and later on engineering works stimulated the growth of other places in the area.

A History of the County of Gloucester: Volume VIII (Victoria County History)

<p>This volume gives the history of the six parishes in Westbury hundred and the sixteen in Whitstone hundred. Both hundreds abut the River Severn. Westbury hundred, on the right bank, adjoins the Forest of Dean: the landscape is relatively wild and large areas of woodland survive. The hundred lies in two parts, including at its north-eastern end the crossing of the Severn at Over Bridge and at its south-western end the crossing of the Wye at Chepstow Bridge. The new Severn Bridge, replacing the ancient ferry from Beachley to Aust, crosses the south--western extremity. Most of the parishes are large, and settlement within them tends to be scattered. Highnam Court (in Churcham parish) and the former Westbury Court, from which the unusual water-garden survives, were two of the county's more notable country houses. The small town of Newnham, squeezed between river and forest, had a Norman castle and was the place from which Henry II left England for his conquest of Ireland. The history of Lancaut, the remote little parish lying on the Wye outside Offa's Dyke, is included in this volume under Tidenham. Whitstone hundred, on the left bank of the Severn, is mainly flat agricultural land, but the eastern parishes climb the Cotswold escarp-ment and were part of the Stroud Valley clothing district. The area is one of varied settlement and economy, including riverside hamlets as in Longney and Saul, former weaving hamlets like Randwick, and scattered moated sites, such as those of Haresfield, Moreton Valence, and Quedgeley. Among buildings that recall monas-tic connexions are the fine 12th-century church of Leonard Stanley, the great tithe-barn at Frocester, and the manor-house at Standish; secular buildings include among country houses Hardwicke Court, Frampton Court, Whit-minster House, and the demolished 19th-century mansion at Fretherne, and large clothing mills at Eastington, King's Stanley, and Stonehouse.</p>

A History of the County of Gloucester: Volume X (Victoria County History)

HERBERT, N.M.

This volume contains the histories of eleven north Oxfordshire parishes and of Bloxham hundred, to which those parishes belonged. The hundred lies intermingled with Banbury hundred in the valleys between the Cherwell and the Cotswold crest along the modern Warwickshire border, and exhibits the chief characteristics of a wider region centred on the important market-town of Banbury. The area covered contained nineteen nucleated settlements, supported almost exclusively by mixed farming, to which the soil was particularly well suited. The prosperity that derived from agriculture is reflected in the fine parish churches, like those of Bloxham and Adderbury, in the quality of the surviving peasant building, and in the large country houses, Wroxton Abbey, Broughton Castle, and Hanwell Castle. The area was notable also for its Puritanism, and later for Quakerism, both of which gained their strength not only from the prosperous independent farmers of the area but also from the leadership of the larger land- owners, the Fienneses of Broughton, the Copes of Hanwell, and Bray Doyley of Adderbury.

A History of the County of Oxford: Volume IX: Bloxham Hundred (Victoria County History)

This contains histories of ten ancient parishes in north-west Middlesex. Wealthy Lon-doners began to buy property here during the Middle Ages and later settled in fine houses, exemplified by the Jacobean mansion of Swake-leys. The area in return supplied the capital with corn, livestock, and, increasingly, with hay and garden produce. In Uxbridge it possessed a medieval market town, whose prosperity grew with the coach trade, and in Harrow, from the 18th century, it boasted a fashionable school. Until the 19th century, however, the parishes were mainly rural and even backward, since agriculture was hampered by the heavy London Clay. The countryside receded only gradually, with the cutting of canals and the digging of brickearth, followed by the penetration of rail-ways and the spread of housing around the railway stations. In 1920 the hay-fields of Perivale, a parish centred around five farms, still contrasted with the factories of Southall, al-though the sale of private estates for development was soon to leave only some carefully preserved open spaces. Contrasts persist today: between the slopes along the Hertfordshire border, with their trees and large residences, and the housing estates which stretch away to the south; between the high streets of Harrow-on-the-Hill and Pinner, scarcely changed in the 20th century, and the M 1 and M 4 motorways; between the village greens at the heart of Norwood and Northolt and the shopping centre under con-struction at Uxbridge; between churches, alms-houses, moats, and barns on one hand, and on the other the stadium and Empire Pool and Arena at Wembley, and London Airport, which has obliterated the hamlet of Heathrow and covered most of the parish of Harmondsworth. The volume contains 19 pages of illustrations, two street-plans, and nine maps.

A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume IV: Elthorne Hundred (continued) and Gore Hundred (part) (Victoria County History)

Baker, T. F. T.

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