J.B. Priestley: Bradford and a provincial narrative of England, 1913–1933

J.B. Priestley's writing has been used to explore aspects of landscape and Englishness. Through an analysis of Priestley's early journalism in the Bradford Pioneer and the Yorkshire Observer, we argue that his critical disengagement to most of the landscapes of England was based on a connection to the landscapes of his youth in Bradford where he first developed his fictional and documentary narrative style. In his early journalism, Priestley articulated a sense of dwelling in Bradford that was rooted in the experience of two distinct local landscapes: the spaces of the city and the nature of the surrounding upland and moorland. Priestley's geographical ideal balanced the civility of the Edwardian city embedded in a landscape that offered escape to and commune with nature. The existential balance between the two was, we argue, central to the narrative geographies developed by Priestley in his fiction which is illustrated through an analysis of his two early novels: The Good Companions (1929) and Angel Pavement (1930). We suggest that the ways in which Priestley's interwar writing expressed dwelling in local landscapes might be thought of as a critical provincialisation of London and England.     

Recording Transition in Post-Industrial England: A Future Perfect View of Oxford’s Motopolis

Deindustrialisation is rapidly recreating Britain's economic landscape. Heavy industry is being replaced by the built forms and landscapes needed by service industries. This paper introduces an archaeology of deindustrialisation as it occurs in the present. It examines the ways in which the Taylorist and Fordist auto-manufacturing landscapes that have defined their environments are being reshaped and commemorated.     

Tom Licence,What the Victorians Threw Away. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2015. 108 pp., 90 illus. £9.99. isbn 9781782979756

Abstract

Beehive coke ovens in Derbyshire were used to provide fuel for local blast furnaces, for the Sheffield crucible steel industry and for railway locomotive fuel. Members of the Industrial Archaeology Section of Derbyshire Archaeological Society have made a careful survey of four ranges of beehive coke ovens at Ramshaw, near Unstone, formerly the site of Ramshaw Colliery.