The Regional Heritage Centre's predecessor organisation, the Centre for North-West Regional Studies, published a broad range of publications covering many of the significant historical, cultural, social and environmental elements within the region.
Our Patrons and Friends receive a 35% discount off the published price of all our publications and will receive a free book from our backlist each year. Patrons also receive a complimentary copy of each new title as it is published. Find out more on our support webpage.
In 1951 the Lake District was designated as a national park. That designation aimed to further the conservation and enhancement of the area’s natural beauty while also promoting its enjoyment by the public. Yet, as would quickly become clear, national park status did not automatically safeguard one of England’s most beautiful landscapes. From proposals to clutter the valleys with electricity poles and water schemes that involved flooding valleys and draining lakes to the infrastructural demands presented by increasing volumes of traffic and a burgeoning tourist trade: the Lake District National Park became a landscape under threat.
John Balshaw’s Jigge, a little-known manuscript held by the British Library, was created in the small village of Brindle, Lancashire, at the time of the Restoration. This exciting document is one of the latest known examples of a stage ‘jig’, a form of musical entertainment which had been particularly popular during the Elizabethan period. It would have been performed to ballad tunes that were in vogue, combining words, music and dance into a spectacular whole.
This jig is particularly noteworthy because of its Lancashire origins and its Civil War context: it was created during a time of unprecedented upheaval which reached every community in the country, dividing families and friends along religious and political lines.
It therefore gives a fascinating insight into popular entertainment in rural Lancashire during the 17th century as well as the ways that the arts could be used to discuss problems of allegiance during the Civil War years. This edition explores not only the story and the songs, but also the local context of this outstanding manuscript.
Kirkoswald and Renwick is the first parish history to be produced for the Victoria County History of Cumberland
Produced by the Cumbria County History Trust in collaboration with Lancaster University and published by the Institute of Historical Research with full colour illustrations, this book covers the modern civil parish of Kirkoswald, which lies nine miles north east of Penrith. Once the seat of the powerful Barons Dacre of the North, Kirkoswald enjoyed a long period as a market and business centre.
The names of individual fields can help us to understand how the rural landscape has evolved over the centuries. Originally coined to identify a field by capturing what was distinctive about it, field-names often record how a field was used in the past, what it looked like or who owned it. Recorded on old maps and sometimes preserved in the memory of older residents, field-names provide fascinating raw material for local history.
This book, published in association with the Cumbria County History Trust, contains short, pithy summaries of historical information about every community in Cumbria, large and small. Arranged alphabetically, it provides a digest of facts about population, land ownership, local economic history, places of worship, schools and other community institutions across the centuries.
Poet, novelist, journalist and political radical, Ethel Carnie Holdsworth (1886-1962) was born in Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire. From the age of thirteen, she worked in cotton mills, but also attended evening classes and read voraciously in a Co-operative Society library. She published her first poetry in 1907, joining the Blackburn Independent Labour Party soon after. As a young woman, Holdsworth wrote regularly, studied at Owens College, Manchester, and taught at Bebel House, London, whilst developing her personal political philosophy – all before she was entitled to vote. Marriage and the responsibilities of family life did little to lessen her literary output: in 1920 alone she published three novels, even though she gave birth to her second daughter in January that year.
This beautifully-illustrated book is packed with information about the physical creation of maps from the mid-sixteenth to late eighteenth centuries. It encompasses the entire historic County Palatine of Lancaster, which stretched from the southern Lake District to modern Cheshire, taking in both Manchester and Liverpool. A huge variety of landscape is represented in the maps: bustling cities, small towns and villages, the scenic Western Pennines, verdant plains and beautiful coastline such as Morecambe Bay.
Launched in Lancaster in 1806 and named after Abraham Chalwill Hill, a merchant and planter in the Virgin Islands, the Abram sailed from the port to the West Indies 21 times in the period up to 1818. She called at Tortola, St Thomas and St Croix in what are now the British and American Virgin Islands, and was then refitted as an Arctic whaler. From 1819 she sailed regularly to the Northern Whale Fishery, before being crushed by pack ice in Baffin Bay in 1862.
The Lake District and its surrounding countryside was a significant centre of botanical research in the nineteenth century. It is striking that the main explorers were not prominent academics but ordinary individuals with inquiring minds, men who saw opportunities to make significant contributions to botanical knowledge and who were prepared to commit themselves to years of painstaking labour in the cause of science, with little prospect of widespread recognition for their achievements.
Lavishly illustrated with over 150 images – photographs, Victorian prints and specially-drawn plans – this is more than a guide or gazetteer. It is a comprehensive introduction to the rich heritage of Lancashire’s country houses, from the twelfth to the twentieth centuries. John Champness provides a lucid account of how and why the layout and decorative details of these houses evolved, how they reflected the attitudes and ambitions of their owners, and how they were built and financed.
The bulk of this book is devoted to two recent excavation-campaigns, which took place on adjacent sites in southern Lancaster. Also included is an assessment of the current state of our knowledge of the Roman fort at Lancaster and its associated civilian settlement, and an attempt to draw together all the reports of funerary material found between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, which are contained in a variety of antiquarian and casual publications. The final chapter of the book presents a discussion of these and other related contextual matters. CNWRS is pleased to acknowledge financial assistance from the Heritage Lottery Fund and Lancashire County Council in support of this publication.
Ever since its ‘discovery’ in the eighteenth century, the English Lake District has been identified as a unique landscape which deserves the highest level of protection. Established in 1934, Friends of the Lake District is one of the most influential conservation groups in England. It played a crucial role in the campaign for the Lake District to be designated as a national park during the 1930s and 1940s; its work to protect and increase knowledge of this area continues to the present day. Friends of the Lake District: the early years is the first detailed study of the inception of this organisation, and was commissioned to celebrate the seventy-fifth anniversary of its foundation.
In an era of environmental change linked to global warming, floods are frequently in the news, whether they are those which affected England in the summer of 2007 or the ones which have devastated other parts of the globe, from New Orleans to Bangladesh. There is growing interest in the severity and chronology of flooding in the past as an indication of possible future scenarios. In Britain regular scientific measurements of streamflow and flood peaks often go back for only 30 years or so. However, historical records can provide details of past floods reaching back to the seventeenth century and sometimes earlier and yet they have rarely been examined in detail. Floods in North West England: a history c. 1600 - 2008 is the first detailed study of flooding in the region and is essential reading for anyone who is interested in the impact of climate change on Britain. It explains why floods happened and what effects they had on the landscape, the buildings, and the people who were affected by them. In the course of this volume the authors tell some dramatic stories, many of which have lain forgotten among the pages of old newspapers and other records.
Regional Heritage Centre
Department of History
Bowland College
Lancaster University
Lancaster
LA1 4YT
United Kingdom
+44 (0)1524 593770
Usually staffed on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday 9:30-15:30
RHC Director:
Dr Chris Donaldson
Academic Co-ordinator:
Dr Oliver Wilkinson
Administrator
Ann-Marie Michel
For the Victoria County History of Cumbria, please contact Dr Sarah Rose
