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Please also read the Update on the Herefordshire EPE project (December 2005)
A Herefordshire market town: Ledbury from 1500
Herefordshire is England's smallest county in size and population. With parts more akin to mid-Wales than midland England it is remote from fashions spreading from the south-east. It has no large town, no county council, no industry. As for historical scholarship, it has no university, no record publishing society, no complete county history of the classical era. More positively, the county museum and record office already promote educational programmes and the county has its quota of active local history societies and individuals running local museums and producing local history publications. But all are hamstrung by the lack of the sound basis provided elsewhere by the Victoria County Histories. These considerations, ( spelt out at two previous VCH conferences and in its Newsletter ) underlie our choice for this project.
In a county that remains essentially rural and agricultural with poor communications Hereford and the five small satellite market towns remain socially and economically significant. Three retain their stock markets. A fourth market , at Ledbury, closed in 2000. In promoting the relaunch of Herefordshire VCH ( Volume 1 published 1904 ) our Trust, formed in 1997-8, was concerned to begin on an area that did not present an editor new to the county with uncharacteristic problems. [ For this reason we rejected west Herefordshire, with its complex Anglo-Welsh history and the city of Hereford ]. For various sound practical reasons advocated by our partners, the University of Gloucestershire (which is the local 'employer') and Herefordshire Council (which is providing accommodation and services), our choice narrowed to Ledbury and its district. ( I must pay tribute to the steadfast support that both have given to our Trust ).
When the current, more limited, projects were proposed we considered it better to keep to our original decision rather than set off on some alternative topic. As we understand it, these projects are intended to introduce and demonstrate with proper academic rigour the latest methodology of local history and the ways in which professional leadership will harness the energy of local communities. We therefore put forward a programme to apply and test these new methods in the research and dissemination of the history of Ledbury.
We will concentrate first on the period since 1500 before moving on, before the conclusion of the project, to the more challenging period before 1500. If this sounds chronologically strange to an audience of historians, the logic behind this decision is to involve as soon as possible the volunteer team and the 'Footsteps' element in the modern period. Second, this period has attracted less attention from existing researchers, such as the work of my fellow-trustee, Joe Hillaby on aspects of medieval Ledbury,
It is, however, important to carry the project through the earlier period. It was then that the topographical and historical foundations of the market town were established. It will be a much tougher and potentially more useful test for VCH to lead local historians beyond the modest limits of so many village and community histories published in Herefordshire recently. There is no institution better qualified than the VCH to open up this neglected earlier history.
It would be rash to forecast the outcome of the project. For unexplained reasons the development of Ledbury is out of step with the other Herefordshire market towns. It was established much earlier as a borough in 1120 and fully grown by the end of the 12th century. Then in the later middle ages its growth appears to have halted when other towns expanded. Its great rebuilding occurred in the late 16th and 17th centuries, against the earlier trend in the other towns. The identity and networks of the 16th and 17th-century merchants have yet to be uncovered, as has the long-term impact of turnpikes, canal and railways. The contradiction of the apparent stagnation of the town at a time when it spawned two banking families of national significance, Biddulphs and Martins, has to be resolved. The sources exist but need to be clearly identified. The support of Joe Hillaby, whose own research has been proceeding whilst this project trod water, will clearly be beneficial. Perhaps most importantly, the study of Ledbury, will only be complete when its history can be compared with the other Herefordshire market towns. This project is a beginning, not an end.
We look forward to seeing the shape of the new County Histories emerging from the experience of these projects.
Brian Smith
Update on the Herefordshire EPE project
Dr Sylvia Pinches was appointed Team Leader for the Ledbury project at the end of September 2005. She has had a busy autumn acquainting herself with the town and its region and meeting many local people. She has also been forming links with the staff of the county Record Office, Library Service, Heritage Services, Archaeology Unit and Hereford Cathedral Library. When not beset by the practicalities of setting up a new project, she has been identifying sources for the first of the volumes to be published, on the later history of Ledbury.
A very successful public launch was held at the Burgage Hall, Ledbury, on 2nd December, attended by about seventy people on a very wet and windy night. Sir Roy Strong, patron of the Herefordshire Victoria County History Trust, gave an amusing and inspiring address expressing his pleasure in seeing the England’s Past for Everyone project start in Ledbury. He hoped that it augured well for the revival of the Victoria County History main series in Herefordshire. This was followed by a brief talk by Prof. John Beckett, Director of the VCH, explaining what the VCH is and how the England’s Past for Everyone Project came about. Then Dr Pinches spoke in more detail about the plans for Ledbury and answered a number of questions from an interested audience.
As a result of this, a band of fifteen or twenty volunteers has been recruited and will begin work in January 2006. Dr Pinches is delighted that Dr Janet Cooper, retired VCH County Editor for Essex, now living in Herefordshire, has agreed to be the Volunteer Group Leader. Under her guidance, the volunteers will tackle such projects as an analysis of occupational structure from the nineteenth-century census returns and wills and inventories from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It is also hoped to have a building recording group and an oral history project, with perhaps an archaeology project feeding into the second volume.
Sylvia Pinches
December 2005
