Local and Regional History as Heritage: The Heritage Process and Conceptualising the Purpose and Practice of Local Historians

The expansion and evolution of local history over the last half century has given rise to both celebration and critical self‐reflection. This attention has been stimulated by the continued importance of local history as a popular cultural activity, in parallel with, paradoxically, a relatively recent decline in academic teaching provision in the subject. The reflection on the characteristics and role of local history has yielded searching consideration of its relationship with the pursuit of history more broadly, most especially in the academic discipline. However, little work has approached comprehending local history as being by its very nature also heritage. This paper turns to a series of essays by academic and non‐academic practitioners for a county history society’s journal over a period of 35 years, in order to shed light on the place of local history in evolving understandings of heritage as process.     

‘Fighting from the fields’: developing the British ‘National Farm’ in the Second World War

The Second World War had a profound impact on British Agriculture, with state intervention at an unprecedented level cementing the idea of a ‘National Farm’ in both the popular and the governmental psyche. Critical attention has recently begun to refocus on this period, adding to the somewhat celebratory meta-narratives written in the official histories. Drawing from the practice of micro-historical research and recent work in geography that seeks to understand the production of the landscape ‘from within’, this paper explores how ‘small stories’ can afford an appreciation of the ‘complications of everyday existence’ and bring greater depth, nuance and understanding to these ‘larger’ historical events and their influence on the British countryside. Utilising oral histories from farms in Devon (UK), the paper explores the micro-geographies which shaped as well as destabilised the national farm message as it was translated into the local context.