Brancepeth parish is situated in County Durham in the north of England. In the seventeenth century the parish contained seven townships. This study questions the Idea of the parish as a single social community by examining social networks between families living within the different townships of the parish. The study is based on a Family Reconstitution which was undertaken in order to reconstruct the life-cycles of family groups who lived in the farms and villages of Brancepeth parish in the seventeenth century. Wills, inventories, land records, the Hearth Tax and a church seating plan have been used to assess the kinds of families represented by the Family Reconstitution in Brancepeth. The scale and structure of social interactions between families have been investigated using Ucinet social network analysis software. The networks analysed were based on witnessing wills, appraising inventories, loans of money made on trust, kinship and surnames. The results clearly point to the existence of a number of social communities within the parish population, the importance of neighbours, and the presence of kin within the neighbourhood. The findings of this study are discussed in the context of the economic structure of the parish, the influence of recusancy, and the history and culture of the population. The study concludes that Brancepeth parish in the seventeenth century had many of the features of a traditional medieval society, in an early modern world.

Whilst the issue of pauper access to medical relief under the English New Poor Law of 1834 has attracted both scholarly attention and systematic study from historians of welfare and medicine, the nature of relief under the Old Poor Law has remained comparatively under-researched. The parochial nature of its administration, combined with a paucity of systematic local or regional studies has meant that although many excellent general surveys of welfare provision have been published, the issue of the plight of sick poor is either relegated to a mere adjunct of wider relief policy, or absent from the secondary literature altogether. Through the employment of a systematic study of the under-researched county of Oxfordshire, this thesis will aim to exploit the research agenda that has increasingly sought to re-engage with the lives of the sick poor themselves, as they navigated the contested terrain of the Old Poor Law. In order to undertake such a study, it is important to first determine the scale and scope of medical relief delivered by the parish to the poor during the period, and so a systematic quantitative analysis of a sample of Oxfordshire parishes forms a necessary starting point of the research. The key aim of this quantification is to establish the centrality of medical relief within the general architecture of the locally administered Poor Law. The thesis will then move into more qualitative territory, employing material that will help unlock our understanding of the medical landscapes which abounded throughout Oxfordshire during the tenure of the Old Poor Law, and how they impacted upon and shaped the relief of the sick poor. Through an evaluation of the supply of medical relief, this thesis will gauge the extent to which the sick poor of Oxfordshire were tied into wider relief paradigms such as the medical marketplace and general narratives of modernity. The real originality of the thesis however lies in its engagement with the actors who shaped medical relief policy within the multitude of Welfare Republics across Oxfordshire. At heart, the Old Poor Law was always conditioned by notions of exclusion, and through an exposition of the process of relief, the concluding two chapters in particular aim to add much original insight into the wider research agenda that has emerged concerning the complex negotiation strategies that were employed by both sides of the relief equation. Such novel approaches to the architecture and 'system' of relief within the parish represent an important contribution to the nascent research agenda coalescing around the medical relief of the sick poor. Further, such studies are important as they represent a move away from a historiography that has tended to obscure the point that medical relief was never merely a question of application and approval during the supposedly generous 'welfare state in miniature' that has come to characterise the Old Poor Law. It is, therefore, the aim of this thesis to exploit these new avenues of research which consider the plight of the sick poor as worthy of study in their own right, whilst also contributing to the emergent research agenda that seeks to locate the experience of sickness as a central component of the English Old Poor Law.

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This thesis is in response to Tom Williamson's study of the parks and gardens in Norfolk. Through an inclusive and multi-contextual approach Williamson dispelled notions of a teleological evolution of designed landscapes over the eighteenth century. In response this thesis analyzed 126 designed landscape parks and gardens within the North Riding through a multi-contextual approach. The analysis of these parks and gardens through a socio-economic context was carried out revealing that the great landowners and land magnates established precedence for the continued maintenance of formal elements within the designed landscapes through out the long-eighteenth century; a trend which was emulated by the members of the greater gentry and lesser gentry. By reviewing the landowners and their designed landscapes through a socio-political context, highlighted alternative narratives through which we can study eighteenth century designed landscapes. Reviewing the national and regional contexts of these landowners through their marital, political and various social contexts, including membership to London Gentlemen's Clubs such as Whites and Brooks's, revealed that the gentlemen of the North Riding were not disconnected from the national context. Analyzing the traditional or progressive stance of the landowners through analysis of their political and religious affinities determined. Whilst some of the landowners were traditional, this traditionalism was not reflected within their designed landscapes. Additionally the maintenance or retention of formal elements within the design transcended political and religious affinities, as landowners regardless of traditional or liberal affinity were taking part in this regional trend. Lastly and conclusively, the designed landscapes in conjunction with these various narratives were analyzed within both a geographical and topographical contexts. Although this analysis highlighted some regional trends occurring within the riding, it revealed that social constructs and connectivity often over-rode regionality based upon individual geographical and topographical situation. Additionally this process elucidated lines of communication occurring across the riding, represented in a regional chronology of design. Through the exploration of alternative narratives, namely the Gentlemen's Clubs, established a venue in which this communication occurred.

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