This study is an analysis of the development of rural settlement patterns and field systems in Cumbria from the later medieval period through to the late eighteenth century. It uses documentary, cartographic and archaeological evidence. This evidence is interpreted utilising the techniques of historic landscape characterisation (HLC), map regression and maps created by the author, summarising and synthesising historical and archaeological data. The mapped settlement data, in particular, has been manipulated using tools of graphic analysis available within a Graphical Information System (GIS). The initial product is a digital map of Cumbria in the late eighteenth century, based on the county-scale maps of that period, enhanced with information taken from enclosure maps and awards, and other post medieval cartographic sources. From this baseline, an interpretation of the late medieval landscape was developed by adding information from other data sources, such as place names and documentary evidence. The approach was necessarily top-down and broad brush, in order to provide a landscape-scale, sub-regional view. This both addresses the deficiencies within the standard historical approach to landscape development, and complements such approaches. Standard historical approaches are strong on detail, but can be weak when conclusions based on localised examples are extrapolated and attributed to the wider landscape. The methodology adopted by this study allows those local analyses to be set within a broader landscape context, providing another tool to use alongside more traditional approaches to historic landscape studies. The Introduction sets out in detail the broad philosophical approaches taken by this study. It then describes the methodological approach of developing a digitised eighteenth century map and using this as a baseline for analysing and partially reconstructing the late medieval landscape. Chapter 2 discusses in detail the historical cartographic background and the technical aspects of eighteenth century map making, with particular reference to Cumbria. Chapter 3 examines the eighteenth century landscape, and the processes of change which led to its development out of the medieval landscape. A characterisation of the late eighteenth century landscape is presented. Chapters 4, 5 and 6 present an interpretation of the late medieval landscape of Cumbria, examining it through its lordship and structure and with a concentration on those aspects which are mappable attributes. Finally, a characterisation of the late medieval landscape is presented in Chapter 6. The conclusion, in Chapter 7 provides a comparison of the late eighteenth century and medieval landscape characterisations, an explanation of ii difference, and an evaluation of the research approach to understanding landscape development. There are two major products resulting from this study. The first is a digitised and enhanced county-scale map of the late eighteenth century landscape. The second is an interpretation of the late medieval landscape, based on the late eighteenth century composite map. Together, these provide a greater appreciation of the viability and value of post medieval map resources as an indicator of the later medieval landscape.

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This thesis argues that throughout the long eighteenth century, a unique emphasis was placed on leisure and sociability at the English watering-place, due to a belief in their medicinal benefits. In turn, this emphasis provided the privileged woman with opportunity to participate in public life at the resort; both in terms of a public sphere of leisure and sociability and a literary and discursive public sphere. In contrast to the suggestions of Alice Clark, Peter Earle and Lawrence Stone, who argue that elite and middling women were increasingly restricted to a sphere of idle domesticity, this study demonstrates that the urban, intellectual and associational developments of the eighteenth century offered genteel women access to socially, physically and intellectually active lives; and nowhere more so than at the resort. Adopting a dual case study approach, the thesis explores the leisured woman's experience of visiting and residing at Bath and Tunbridge Wells throughout the long eighteenth century (c.1680-1830). The study offers the first extensive prosopographical study of the eighteenth-century spa. It utilises the letters and journals of over sixty male and female visitors and residents, sourced from nineteen repositories, as well those published in edited volumes, to form an original collective history of the female spa experience. Contributing previously neglected manuscript evidence to the field, this thesis peels away the caricature of the spa-visiting woman, promoted in eighteenth-century print and argues that health was not a pretence (as suggested by Penelope Corfield, Phyllis Hembry and Roy Porter), but a genuine reason for female spa-visitation, colouring and shaping a woman's time at the resort. Whilst emphasising the presence of the female spa invalid, the study explores the range of romantic, leisure and intellectual opportunities presented to the leisured female visitor in the public and domestic arenas of the resorts.

This dissertation concentrates on the history of the festival and choral society in England from 1750 to 1900, seeking (i) to relate the development of each to the contemporary social environment, and (ii) to outline the changing relationship between them and the reasons for the dominance of first one and then the other at various points in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In Section A (1750 to 1795) the festival dominates England's musical life. From their beginnings as efforts designed to assist local charities, we watch several provincial festivals become, through increased attention to musical considerations, important social events and symbols of the cultural standing of their respective towns. The effects of the changed social environment brought about by the Industrial Revolution dominate Section B. The small and exclusive eighteenth-century festival of the nobility and gentry is eclipsed and replaced, in the 1820s, by a more exciting festival controlled and patronised by the new middle classes. The need for a permanent choral society as the mainstay of the festival chorus is recognised; early attempts to achieve this, and the gradual displacement of the earlier "assembly" chorus, are detailed. Music as a means to effect the moral improvement of the lower classes is advocated after 1830, and in Section C we see the various efforts thus inspired resulting in an increase of better qualified singers and an ever multiplying number of choral societies. The choral society becomes the national musical activity and the centre of attraction for the remainder of the century (Section D), while the festival becomes a more occasional event. Charity motives recede; and the thesis shows how a "civic" festival, principally designed for prestige and boasting massive forces and a formidable number of specially commissioned works, emerges.

The importance of late eighteenth century Rational Dissent has been rightly recognised by many contemporaries and subsequent historians. Yet the character of Rational Dissent has been less than fully understood, partly because of the overconcentration on Richard Price and Joseph Priestley, and on the politics, rather than the all-important theological ideas which underpinned the political ideas of Rational Dissenters. This dissertation adopts a new and prosopographical method of analysis. The Biographical Register of authors of published and unpublished material, and of prominent local figures demonstrates the highly varied range of the individuals, congregations and other groups amongst its adherents and reveals valuable insights into the wide areas of opinions within Rational Dissent, and key periods and forms of activity. This research, through its prosopographical approach, covers new ground in demonstrating that significant differences between Rational and Orthodox Dissenting theology led to the emergence of a Rational Dissenting identity which became sharply and increasingly divergent from that of Orthodox Dissenters. Through extensive analysis of the identity of Rational Dissent as a whole, it demonstrates considerably greater nuances in belief than have previously been recognised. It establishes that it was the specific theological ideas of Rational Dissenters which underpinned and drove their political concepts and notions as to the nature of society. Based on investigation of 19 lists of subscribers to Rational Dissenting published works and organisations, this study identifies a core of 444 multiple subscribers, the overwhelming majority committed adherents of Rational Dissent. These are substantial lists totalling 6,047 subscriptions. The 444 individuals as a group provide an essential basis for analysis of the social, geographical and intellectual appeal of Rational Dissent amongst its less visible adherents, notably women, laymen and ministers who sustained it at local level. Analysis of previously largely over-looked Unitarian Library records allows identification of the social and intellectual span of their readers and their particular areas of theological interest. This range of sources enables statistical analysis of the identity and appeal of the broad base of Rational Dissent in the late eighteenth century. This dissertation argues that Rational Dissent in England between c. 1770 and c. 1800, characterised by its own distinctive doctrinal identity, merits further investigation, and constitutes a primary motivation for this study. From this research emerges a fuller understanding of the place of Rational Dissent within society, its complex and evolving nature, and finally analysis of the legacy of Rational Dissent in the early nineteenth century.