Evidence of early medieval trade and migration between Wales and the Mediterranean Sea region

Imported Mediterranean pottery recovered from 5th–7th century settlement sites along the south Wales coast indicates that trade and contact between Wales and Byzantium continued following the collapse of the Roman Empire in the early-5th century. It is hypothesised that people as well as pottery continued to travel to Wales from Byzantium, some of whom subsequently settled amongst the local communities. Strontium and oxygen isotope analysis was undertaken on human remains (n = 33 individuals) from four early medieval cemeteries from south Wales. The study identified individuals who may not have been local to the British Isles, thus demonstrating that the isotopic analysis of human remains from Wales can further our understanding of migration to Britain during the early medieval period.     

Local Markets and the Polarization of Public-Sector Schools in England and Wales

Notwithstanding the recent change of government, UK educational policy continues to stress school performance tables, parental choice and competition – reflecting an acceptance by New Labour of Tory notions concerning the role that market mechanisms play in improving school performance. In view of the 1997 Education White Paper's insistence that the new government's goal was to 'overcome the spiral of disadvantage … passed from one generation to the next', this implies that the DfEE remains unimpressed by long-standing arguments concerning the socially-divisive consequences of market forces in education.
This paper seeks to add empirical weight to this debate. Arguing that recent analyses of aggregate levels of social stratification have masked polarization occurring at the local level, our analysis places schools in the context of the local markets within which they operate. This yields clear evidence that educational markets tend to exacerbate existing differences between schools in terms of both their performance and social status.     

Faith,philanthropy and the aged poor in nineteenth-century England and Wales

In the last half of the nineteenth century, Victorians grappled with welfare issues regarding the aged poor as social investigators sought to explain their dependency and poverty. Elderly men and women who were unable to care for themselves, and without a family or community to attend to their needs, had few alternatives outside the workhouse in nineteenth-century England and Wales. Catholic homes for the elderly managed by communities of women religious such as the Sisters of Nazareth provided an important option to the aged poor who often needed both accommodation and medical care. These homes provided a unique form of social welfare which attracted the attention of Protestants as well as Catholics as benefactors. Protestant reformers, looking for different approaches to maintaining the aged poor, inspected these Catholic homes in order to develop their own institutional solutions. Perhaps more pointedly, this interaction between Protestants and Catholics offers a counter narrative to the usual histories that emphasise anti-Catholicism, sectarianism and conflict. Despite the anti-Catholic tenor of the times, the homes for the aged of the Sisters of Nazareth were recognized and funded by both Catholics and Protestants as they were seen as providing a much needed form of charitable aid for the aged poor. As an alternative to poor law workhouses, the institutions created and managed by Catholic women religious formed an integral part of the mixed economy of welfare in the nineteenth century.     

Floating culture: the unrecorded antiquities of England and Wales

In England and Wales there exists a corpus of unprovenanced and unrecorded antiquities; a corpus adrift from archaeological context and now ebbing and flowing across the antiquities market and which could be described as ‘floating culture’. This corpus includes illicit antiquities and also antiquities found legitimately but not recorded and subsequently sold with or without the landowner’s knowledge. The definition of floating culture as ‘traces of the human past not fixed on one position, place or level’ presents a way of conceptualising what is, in essence, a transnational issue. This paper explores floating culture and suggests that the impact of non-reporting of antiquities remains a significant ethical and legal challenge both for heritage protection policy and the antiquities market in the U.K. and beyond. Attention is given to the Code of Practice for Responsible Metal Detecting in England and Wales, and to the landowner-finder search agreement as potential ways of mitigating the flow of unrecorded antiquities of uncertain legal status. While neither document is enforceable, both have potential to improve the protection of the archaeological record. Many of the themes conceptualised by ‘floating culture’ are relevant to the wider discussion on heritage protection and the global trade in illicit antiquities.     

The road network of medieval England and Wales

The medieval road system of England and Wales has never been studied in any detail. This article attempts to bring together the cartographic evidence of the Gough and Paris maps and the more indirect evidence of three royal itineraries. This will suggest first which Roman roads were still in use in medieval times, and second what new lines of travel had come into use, thus distinguishing between the paved Roman roads which were still usable and the new routes which made and maintained themselves.     

Welsh migration to England in the mid-nineteenth century

Conventional migration theory suggests that rural to urban movement was a one-way once and for all movement which resulted in the severance of ties to a rural homeland and the gradual adoption of an urban lifestyle and culture. Analysis of Welsh migration to English towns in the mid-nineteenth century suggests that by no means all migrants conformed to this stereotype. Whilst Welsh migrants displayed similar characteristics to other rural-urban movers and fitted easily into an urban labour market, they were able to retain many of their rural traditions and customs in an English urban environment. They also maintained close links with Wales whilst some engaged in return migration. Although easily accepted into English urban society, the Welsh were able to live in two culture worlds for much of the nineteenth century. It is suggested that detailed longitudinal studies of other migrant groups will demonstrate diversity in the extent to which rural traditions were subsumed by urban culture in the nineteenth century.     

Notes on the Seals of Endowed Grammer Schools in England and Wales

Abstract

Excavation and architectural analysis at Kirkham Priory between 1978 and 1984 have led to a re-appraisal of the structural development of that important Augustinian house which was perhaps founded in 1122 and suppressed in 1539. In particular, the early development of the church was resolved, an important western axial tower identified, and the thirteenth-century presbytery placed in context. The ground-plan of the fourteenth-century gatehouse was recovered and its twelfth-century predecessor identified. A new study of the standing remains has identified the development pattern of the claustral ranges which can now be related to the economic history of the priory. In addition, the discovery of a ceramic water-main of later-twelfth-century date provides a rare example of the use of pottery water-pipes in England.     

Arable in England and Wales: estimates from the 1801 Crop Return

This study is based on the 1801 Crop Return for England and Wales, an inquiry which took the form of an arable crops census. Over 75% of the county areas of 12 English and Welsh counties is represented in the surviving Return but under 25% for 13 others. For England and Wales together nearly 50% of the total area is represented. The national distribution of the main grain crops is investigated; and an aggregate analysis of arable England and Wales in 1801 is made. The main result is to produce two different estimates to suggest that arable England and Wales was something over 7 million acres and something under 8 million acres in 1801, the higher estimate comparing very favourably with contemporary ones. Finally, since the Return is extant at parish or township level, it is suggested that it can be subjected to further investigation and to sampling, to break free from the constraints imposed by the county approach by studying or identifying farming regions.     

The structure of mortality in mid-nineteenth century England and Wales

Most analyses of the origins of the secular decline of mortality in mid-nineteenth-century England and Wales have not dealt with the wide range of mortality experienced by the population in that period. The Registrars' General Annual Reports provide data for a set of 631 registration districts that may be used in examining the spatial variations in life expectancy at birth and infant mortality. This evidence, differentiating clearly between urban and rural areas, suggests that the changing urban environment and a variety of factors that in combination led to improvements in public health standards, local administration and housing quality played important parts in mortality decline.     

Charmers and Charming in England and Wales from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Century

Charmers have long been recognised as an important aspect of folk medicine. Unfortunately, however, they have usually been conflated with cunning-folk and consequently the welldefined tradition of charming has been rather obscured. Charmers were quite a diverse group of healers but, in general, they all shared several characteristics that separated them from other practitioners of folk medicine. Popular faith in charmers was undoubtedly very strong, and several traditional forms of charming have continued up till recently. The present article not only examines the question of who the charmers were, but also explores their practices and their place in a wider religious and medical context. It is a companion-piece to the author's previous article published in Folklore 107 (1990):19–31.     

Marital distance and its geographical orientation in England and Wales, 1979

"A representative sample of just over one thousand marriages solemnized in England and Wales in 1979 is used to analyse the distribution of the distances between the partners' addresses at marriage....according to various social and demographic variables also derived from the same source. Comparison with other surveys suggests that marriages in which both partners give the same address are likely to be those of couples who cohabit before marriage. Partners who work in unskilled manual occupations, or who marry with a civil ceremony, or who have been married before, appear more likely than the average to cohabit. Of the marriages where different addresses are given, about one-half bring together partners living within 5 km of each other." It is found that "there is a strong relationship between high social class and increased marital distance, and also between greater marital distance and older ages up to about age 40. Longer-range marriages show clear evidence of geographical orientation, the effect being more pronounced at longer distances. This is attributed to variations in population density over the country and geographical constraints on settlement patterns."     

New evidence of noble and gentry piety in fifteenth-century England and Wales

There has been much recent examination of late medieval lay piety in order to understand the background to Henry VIII's reformation, notably Colin Richmond's studies of the ‘privatised’ religion of the English gentry. Such work has largely over-looked papal sources and the associated issue of relations between English and Welsh society and the papacy. This article seeks to remedy this neglect by presenting new evidence from the registers of the papal penitentiary. In the late middle ages the papal penitentiary was the highest office in the western Church concerned with matters of conscience and the principal source of papal absolutions, dispensations and licences. Petitions seeking such favours were copied in its registers, and this article especially concerns petitions from English and Welsh gentry seeking licences to have a portable altar or to appoint a personal confessor (littere confessionales). It also examines their requests for various other favours that illustrate their piety, notably regarding fasting, chastity and pilgrimage. The article contests Richmond's notion of ‘privatised’ gentry religion and similar distinctions between elite and popular or personal and collective religion. It appends translations of three significant documents from the penitentiary registers and a statistical table concerning requests for littere confessionales.     

Paying for water: water pricing and equity in England and Wales

Over the past three decades, the business of water supply in England and Wales has been gradually transforming from the supply of a service to citizens, to the sale of a commodity to customers. The paper provides a genealogy of concepts of efficiency and equity in water regulation over the past thirty years, prior to evaluating the implications for water consumers of one aspect of this process – the shift away from policies prioritizing inter- and intra-regional equalization (implying a principle of social equity) towards policies prioritizing economic efficiency (implying a principle of economic equity) in water charging. In closing, alternatives to the current arrangements for domestic consumers are proposed.