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.     

The origins of the birth control movement in England in the early nineteenth century

The origins of the birth control movement in England in the 19th cen tury are discussed. The impact of Malthus's "Essay on the Principle of Population" and the activities of such thinkers and reformers as Jermy Bentham, James and John Stuart Mill, Francis Plance, Richard Carlile, Robert Dale Owen, and Charles Knowlton are discussed. The social debate that arose during the century is discussed.     

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.     

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."     

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.     

Popery,politics, and play: visual culture in succession crisis England

This article assesses the place of graphic satire in the burgeoning news culture of late seventeenth-century England. It argues that historians who have used visual sources as typical of party positions in a manner similar to modern political posters underestimate the sophistication of their interventions into politics. Graphic satires did not simply distil already existing ideologies into easily digestible images, but made significant contributions to political culture: through the repetition of key images from the Popish Plot (1678–1682) Whig graphic satire created a narrative which asserted control over the interpretation of events in a bitterly contested news culture. In response, Tory satirists developed sophisticated visual strategies to undermine that narrative, and it is argued that the graphic element of graphic satire – the skilful playfulness with which it parodied, commentated upon, or mocked other elements of news culture – was vital to its unleashing biting political commentary.     

The Scale of Dissimilarity: Concepts, Measurement and an Application to Socio-Economic Variation Across England and Wales

The paper considers the scale – the measure, extent, and dimension – of uneven distributions in space for a wide range of census variables. While the traditional 'index of dissimilarity' is affected by random as well as social factors, a solution presented here allows the index to be calculated even for very small populations. Small areas across England and Wales tend to be fairly similar demographically but quite diverse on ethnic and socio-economic measures. Differences between areas become more noticeable as we move from districts, to wards, to enumeration districts, but the rate of differentiation depends heavily on the variables considered.     

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.     

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.     

Globalization,State Restructuring and Innovation in European Water Management Systems: Reflections from England and Wales

Since the mid-1990s the notion of 'hollowing out' has been increasingly used within debates about the changing role of the nation-state in the management and regulation of public services. This paper is concerned with the impact of the various processes of hollowing out on innovation actions in the privatized water sector, particularly in terms of the changing drivers for innovation and the reconfiguration of public and private sector roles across Europe. In order to develop a more detailed case study of English water management, we draw on the Innovation Systems literature, regulation theory and globalization debates to locate a shift from a hierarchical and insular national system in England pre-privatization to a more complex and diffuse system after 1989. In common with some of the more sophisticated accounts of hollowing out we demonstrate that the role of the nation-state in shaping innovation decisions has not necessarily diminished, rather it has been reconfigured in response to various social, economic and environmental factors.