(Chapters 1 and 2) In 1900 parties did not contest municipal elections in Wolverhampton nor compel their members on the Council to vote together as blocks. All candidates, save the few Labour representatives, called themselves Independents, despite their well-known loyalties to the major national parties. Parties were not involved in the Council's political process, because their purpose was to gain and sustain support for an M.P. and not to have the Council implement a distinctive party municipal policy. Conservatives and Liberals shared the Parliamentary representation of the town and therefore had no incentive to fight municipal elections to assist their General Election campaigns. Their Councillors were a fairly homogeneous group, not seriously divided by economic or social issues. The divisions which occurred in the Council did not produce a constantly recurring cleavage between the same two blocks. Over each controversy there was a fresh coalition of members. After 1900 parties impinged more and more on the Council. When it took over the responsibility for education in 1903, the partisan and sectarian strife which had split the School Board was transferred to the Council, and the alliances formed over this topic persisted for others. Then the sitting Conservative M.P. was ousted by the Labour candidate in 1906, the Conservatives began officially and systematically to contest municipal elections to aid their Parliamentary prospects. The local Labour Party evolved a municipal policy, end fought elections as a party and pressed its Councillors to act in concert to achieve its implementation. As the number of Labour members grew in the interwar years, the non-Labour members were forced to co-ordinate their tactics on the Council through an informal "caucus", which, after Labour had gained a majority in 1945, became more formal and committed to an alternative programme to Labour's. After 1948 the Conservatives urged that all non- Labour candidates should adopt the official Conservative label, and within 7 years all Independents had been eliminated from elections and the Council. In 1964 candidates at municipal elections are nominees of the major parties, and members of the Council are either Conservative or Labour. This involvement of parties in municipal affairs has increased the amount of public participation in local government. Because the franchise has been considerably widened, a higher proportion of the population are eligble to vote, and because more seats are contested, the electorate has more opportunities to use the vote. Growing party involvement has meant that even safe wards are fought to help the parties' Parliamentary chances. A far wider range of people become Councillors now than in 1900, for tht Labour Party has been the vehicle for bringing to the Council groups which had previously not been represented. (Chapter 3) In 1900 each ward had its own unique voting pattern. In 1964 the wards can be categorised into 3 types, each with a distinct socio-economic structure which correlates with its voting behaviour. Safe Conservstive wards have little industry and are inhabited by middle class people in private houses. Safe Labour wards are industrial, where the working class live in Council houses or pre-1914 rented property. Marginal wards are of mixed social composition. The swing in municipal elections is now remarkably similar over the whole town both in general direction and size, and the share of the vote gained by the parties is the same as in a General Election. In 1900 there was not such uniformity; local issues and candidates significantly affected the result; and voting did not correlate so closely with economic status; religion was also a determinant. Fewer Councillors now live end work in the wards they represent, and this is more true of Labour than Conservative members. Conservatives have nothing to correspond to Labour's Borough Party, responsible solely for municipal affairs and for drawing up a panel of approved candidates, to which Labour ward parties are restricted when selecting candidates. Conservative ward parties have more autonomy, and tend to select people from their own wards, while Labour ward parties, who have had the opportunity through the Borough Party of meeting people from other parts of the town tend not to select people from their own wards. Service to the party is the main criterion for selection as a Labour candidate, while Conservatives usually make their reputations in extra-party activities. These different selection processes have another significant consequence. Labour members are more devoted to their party than Conservatives to theirs, and they value more highly the involvement of party in municipal matters. In 1900 the conflict between wards produced many divisions on the Council; now the conflict has been subsumed by that between the parties. (Chapter 4) The polarisation of the Council into two parties reflects a polarisation of the occupational composition of the Council. In 1900 it comprised a fairly homogeneous group of manufacturers, professional men and shopkeepers. The latter have remained a constant element, but the first two have declined, replaced by working men, women and retired people, who are predominantly Labour, while the others are Conservative. (Chapter 5) These political and occupational groups occupy different social worlds too, for the members of each party belong to distinct sets of associations. There is less social intermingling of the Councillors than in 1900. (Chapter 6) Complaints that the calibre of the Councillors has declined are old and have not always blamed parties as is the case today. It is hard to find objective criteria by which to assess a Councillor's quality. Both good and bad are to be found in all occupations, age groups and types of educational experience. A personal assessment suggests that the number of first class Councillors has fallen, the usaless category has remained constant and the moderately competent has increased. The key factor determining whether a Councillor will be effective is the time he can devote to Council work. Generally, the more he can give, the more effective will he be. In 1964 more is demanded of a Councillor than in 1900, since the responsibilities of the Council have increased tremendously. A Councillor's work is harder now than in 1900. (Chapter 7) The Labour Party invented the Group, the meeting of members of the Council of the same party to concert their action in the Council. Before 1945 it was an informal meeting, but after the Labour Party gained a majority, it became a formal session before each full Council meeting. It is not so highly developed in Wolverhampton as in some other towns. It lives from Council agenda to Council agenda, devising its tactics for each Council meeting and determining the Group's attitude to policies drawn up elsewhere. It does not plot ahead, initiate or formulate policy. It arbitrates between committees, acts as an information centre for Councillors about the work of committees on which they do not sit, decides who will be Mayor, Aldermen and Chairmen and ensures that its members vote the same way. Attempts to transform it into a policy-making body failed because the Chairmen were reluctant to submit their committees' operations to the scrutiny of a strengthened Group. (Chapter 8) The Conservatives adopted the Group system as the only means to resist the Labour Group. It performs similar functions, but since it is an opposition Group, it has had less to do, and since its members are not Chairmen, it has been more eager to be forged into an instrument for making policy. Thus it is a more developed institution than the Labour Group.

Maria Graham is known as a travel writer, but she also translated works from French and German into English, wrote on history, painting, stories for children, and kept personal journals. My thesis centres on her travel journals and memoirs, published and unpublished. Graham is one of the first female travel writers to acquire fame as a writer shortly after publication, or to provoke controversy; in the cases of Brazil and Chile she actually is the first woman to write about those emerging states. She is outstanding as well for the authority of her narrative voice, her disregard of restrictions imposed on women’s text during her time, her complex approach to gender issues and for the changes experienced by her narrating persona. She begins by constructing a well informed but detached observer who reports her visit to India and the first visit to Brazil in a cold and distant voice, but who later allows another voice to filter through her text, an event that turns the narrator into a mere shadow in parts of the journal on Chile. It is in this journal that Graham begins to build up a contradictory persona who can be superior, ironic, and scathing when describing other women, but who can portray herself as a helpless heroine in a traditional romance when her script so demands it. In the second visit to Brazil this complex narrator becomes warmly eulogising of the country and its ruler, but this attitude does not last. The position is reversed in the third journal, which has elements of a spy thriller at times. The last chapter concerns the journals written in and about Europe regardless of chronology; they illustrate one of the main postulates of the thesis: that Graham evolved as narrator from detached observer to heroine up to the journals written at the end of her life, which become explorations into the narrator’s inner self.

The core theme of this thesis explores the evolving position of religion in the British public realm in the 1980s. Recent scholarship on modern religious history has sought to relocate Britain's "secularization moment" from the industrialization of the nineteenth century to the social and cultural upheavals of the 1960s. My thesis seeks to add to this debate by examining the way in which the established Church and Christian doctrine continued to play a central role in the politics of the 1980s. More specifically it analyses the conflict between the Conservative party and the once labelled "Tory party at Prayer", the Church of England. Both Church and state during this period were at loggerheads, projecting contrasting visions of the Christian underpinnings of the nation's political values. The first part of this thesis addresses the established Church. It begins with an examination of how the Church defined its role as the "conscience of the nation" in a period of national fragmentation and political polarization. It then goes onto explore how the Anglican leadership, Church activists and associated pressure groups together subjected Thatcherite neo-liberal economics to moral scrutiny and upheld social democratic values as the essence of Christian doctrine. The next chapter analyses how the Church conceptualized Christian citizenship and the problems it encountered when it disseminated this message to its parishioners. The second half of this study focuses on the contribution of Christian thought to the New Right. Firstly, it explores the parallels between political and religious conservatism in this period and the widespread disaffection with liberal Anglicanism, revealing how Parliament became one of the central platforms for the traditionalist Anglican cause. Secondly, it demonstrates how those on the right argued for the Christian basis of economic liberalism and of the moral superiority of capitalism over socialism. The next chapter focuses on the public doctrine of Margaret Thatcher, detailing how she drew upon Christian doctrine, language and imagery to help shape and legitimise her political vision and reinforce her authority as leader. Finally, the epilogue traces the why this Christian-centric dialogue between the Church and Conservative government eventually dissipated and was superseded by a much more fundamental issue in the 1990s as both the ruling elite and the Church were forced to recognise the religious diversity within British society.

Between 1933 and 1940 between sixty and ninety German architects arrived in Britain as émigrés fleeing from Nazi oppression. The Germany which they left had, until Hitler's intervention, been the centre of European architectural modernism. Making their passage into Britain, they encountered a country whose architectural climate was altogether more traditional. When the first German architects arrived in 1933, architectural modernism was only just taking root, but only a few years later Britain's architectural culture boasted a thriving modernist scene. This coincidence has led historians to draw a direct connection between the presence of German architects and the establishment of modernism in Britain. This thesis, however, advances the current historiography by showing that the role of German émigrés was, rather than to initiate British architectural modernism, to support a development which had taken root before their arrival. Through examination of a number of sources - including personal papers, drawings, photographs, archive material, buildings, and personal interviews - it explores processes of acculturation as evidenced by the work of the émigré architects. A number of in-depth case studies reveal that the new environment in Britain provoked a variety of responses among the German architects, whose work frequently digressed into the realms of British architectural traditions (taking particular inspiration from the architecture of the Georgian period). Looking beyond well-known figures such as Mendelsohn and Gropius, the thesis concludes that the story of architectural migration from Germany to Britain cannot be told in terms of modernism alone. It shows that responses to the émigré situation were highly dependent on the individual architect's background, his or her experience, age, standing and time of arrival, but reveals that, disregarding these differences, all émigré architects to some degree adapted to their new working environment, a tendency which has been described as New Contextualism. Although submitted in the field of History of Art, the scope of this thesis is methodologically and epistemologically wider than might usually be associated with this field. Despite being strongly visually based in its main analysis, the work is inter-disciplinary in approach, incorporating elements of biography, history, sociology, and exile studies, therefore expanding the boundaries of art historical study.

The focus of this thesis is the repair and maintenance of parish churches between 1603 and 1677. As such it represents one of the first systematic studies of this topic to contribute to a variety of debates touching on Jacobean rebuilding programmes, the more famous Laudian initiatives of the 1630s, the notorious iconoclasm of the 1640s, and the impact of the Restoration; debates hitherto all too often approached in isolation from one another. It commences with a brief summary of the prevailing situation based on reports provided for Archbishop Whitgift's survey of 1602 and concludes on the death of Archbishop Sheldon. The geographical location is that covered by James I's 1615 proclamation that 'all persons without a lawful occupation were to leave London, Westminster and Southwark, and all places within 30 mile compass and return to their place where they were born ... ' The thesis refutes the general perception of the period as one of gross neglect of churches. It highlights the importance of local parish pride and initiative over mere compliance with ecclesiastical orders in maintaining, restoring and building churches. Unlike earlier studies of London and Westminster, this thesis has compared and contrasted these two cities with the surrounding rural areas. While the prosperous capital may have led the way in overall expenditure and initiatives, this study shows how the hinterland too experienced constant concern for churches throughout this period. A key finding of this thesis is that the parishioners continued to care for their churches during the civil wars and general unrest of the 1640s and 1650s, when no overall authority ordered or monitored the condition of churches. This care continued after the Restoration, although the re-establishment of the Church of England had little impact on churches outside London and Westminster. The importance of parochial pride is well captured through study of the huge sums spent by congregations on bells and church towers. The thesis is based heavily on systematic study of churchwardens' accounts, the problems of which are discussed fully at the outset. This is another valuable contribution of the thesis, for it addresses current concerns about the reliability and usefulness of these sources and is based on a comprehensive body of material for 242 parishes which are fully representative of communities in the region. Moreover, the scope of this study has enabled the creation of a building cost price index - a valuable companion to the famous Phelps Brown Hopkins Price Index of consumables which should allay the fears of many historians concerning the impact of inflation in studies of this kind.

Human-animal relationships have long existed, across cultures, in many varied forms. The associations between the two are integral to the creation, form, use and perception of landscapes and environments. Despite this, animals are all too often absent from our views of ancient landscapes. Humans experience their diverse environments through a variety of media, and animals regularly play an important role in this type of exchange. Landscape archaeology commonly emphasises the influences of humanity upon the physical world. However, such engagement is rarely unilateral. Whether herding domesticated mammals, hunting quarry, or merely experiencing the range of fauna which populate the world, many of these interactions leave physical traces in the landscape: the form and location of settlements, enclosures, pathways, woodland, pasture, and meadows. Also, in more subtle ways, human and animal actors work together in performances through which people subconsciously generate their perceptions of landscape and environment. These physical and psychological animal landscapes have the potential to inform on human society and ideology. This thesis seeks to utilise zoo archaeological evidence to examine this concept. Animalscape research could be applied to any place or period but as a case study this project will explore, through animal bone analysis, how landscape and environment were used to negotiate cultural identity during the Iron Age/Romano-British transition, a pivotal but poorly understood period in British history. Research focuses on a c.200 km2 area of land bordering the West Sussex coast. This is a complex and singular locale, encompassing a number of Iron Age and Romano-British sites - most notably the elite settlement at Fishbourne which originated in the late Iron Age and developed, towards the end of the 1st century AD, into the largest 'Roman-style' domestic building north of the Alps. The site has been excavated a number of times in different areas since its discovery in 1960 until 2002; the various investigations producing a large quantity of animal bone. Yet this has, until now however, only been subjected to piecemeal analysis. The full re-analysis of the Fishbourne faunal assemblage is central to this project. To place these new data in their wider context, existing animal bone information from all pertinent published and 'grey' zoo archaeological literature is synthesised. The resulting datasets allow for a detailed examination of animal landscapes across the Iron Age/Romano-British transition at three nested scales: site and context; hinterland/region; and, Empire. Integrating the zooarchaeological data with evidence from landscape and environment studies, Iron Age/Roman archaeology, ancient history and, most importantly, social anthropology is key to this project. A new theoretical framework is adopted here, whereby animals are seen not simply as passive indicators of economy and environment but as active beings, providing visual, audio and physical experience, and it is through these novel approaches by considering the human-animal-landscape relationship, that a new insight into the cultural changes of the Iron Age to Romano-British transition will be obtained.

Small island dwellings in Scotland and Ireland, typically (and often problematically) referred to as crannogs, have experienced growing archaeological activity in the past three decades through survey, underwater investigation and excavation. This renewed activity has prompted a number of recent research projects, both field and desk based in nature. While the end result has certainly created a clearer picture of life on small islets from the Neolithic to the Post-Medieval period, particularly in Scotland there are several fundamental aspects that are long overdue for attention. First, rather than focussing upon niche periods such as the Iron Age, I have chosen to examine continuity and change over the entirety of the island dwelling tradition in Scotland. Secondly, this thesis also marks a departure from traditional approaches by integrating mainland crannog studies with those found in the Western Isles or Outer Hebrides. Despite having the highest density and longest chronology for occupied islets in Scotland, very little fieldwork has been carried out in the Western Isles. Ironically, examples in the Western Isles, generally referred to as 'island duns', have typically been viewed in isolation from their mainland counterpart the 'crannog', despite Hebridean activity appearing to embrace the concept more fully. Ultimately, it is the recognition in this thesis that both areas share the same core concept- living on small islets, and how the integration of Hebridean sites into existing discourses on mainland occupied islets can be mutually beneficial. This thesis wishes to reddress this imbalance while also examining how archaeological terminology can divide the common conceptual denominator of living on small islets. Another aspect includes an examination of the phenomena of prolific reuse amongst island dwellings, as almost every islet excavation in Scotland has provided evidence of reuse, often several centuries or more after initial occupation. Therefore, another aim of this thesis is to analyse use patterns over the long-term, and examine why people repeatedly went to the effort of living on small islets. This thesis also indicates how the motivations for islet use range from pragmatic to more symbolic concerns. These underlying motivations for islet use in Scotland are found to vary greatly, and extend beyond the typical defence hypothesis.

The overarching purpose of the thesis is to explore the interaction between the geological structure of the South Wales coalfield and the development of nineteenth century coalfield society. Through a detailed study of a single event, the 1893 Hauliers' Strike, and the use of modern 3D mapping and visualization techniques, the thesis aims to explore how the geology and landscape of South Wales influenced not just the geographical extent and nature o f the coal industry but also the experiences and responses of the human society which grew up around that industry. Although Welsh historians have been aware of the implications of the coalfield's geology for the economic conditions under which the industry operated they have paid less detailed attention to its implications for unity and co-operation amongst the workforce. The emergence of modern mapping techniques, more specifically Geographic Information Systems (GIS), allows testing for the presence of divisive geological influences on human action at a particular point in time. This thesis argues that the strike of 1893 and indeed the history of the coalfield generally cannot be fully understood unless geology is considered. It also argues that GIS offers a powerful way of reimagining past events and landscapes which enhance the historical research process. The thesis is divided into two parts. The first considers the challenges and potential benefits for historical research of the adoption of geological insights and GIS visualisation techniques. The second section will provide a detailed study of the 1893 Hauliers' Strike. Chapters in this section include: an overview of the strike and its historiography; an exploration of the traditional explanations of the strike; evidence for geology as a divisive force acting on the workers' behaviour; and the role of the landscape in the promotion and maintenance of the strike.

This thesis begins with a review of primary and secondary sources followed by an examination of theological and theoretical issues. The 1859 movement is then contextualized with an analysis of the politico-economic, social and ecclesiastical-spiritual situation/environment in which it occurred: in effect this tests the theories about the circumstances/conditions commonly held to precede and be conducive to the commencement of revivals. Perceptions of the revival are then presented with a consideration of stimuli, transmission, geographical coverage and duration, together with denominational opinions, popular responses, concerns, criticisms and evaluations. Research then focuses on the city of Glasgow, supposedly one of the localities most impacted upon. Confining the study to a restricted and well-defined geographical area applies a methodology unique to the subject. This approach permits a meticulous search of sources which have hitherto received only cursory attention. It also facilitates the introduction and utilization of unknown local sources, or sources not before considered relevant. These include local newspapers, kirk session and presbytery proceedings, police and prison reports, and the diaries, autobiographies, correspondence etc. of local people. An innovative approach to in-depth investigation of the impact and effects of revival at a local level is thus introduced. The adoption of this method results in the production of a highly detailed local chronology which provides for a much greater understanding of the operation of the movement in the city. It pinpoints more precisely the districts affected, identifies duration and different phases within it, and highlights the adoption by local revivalists of new tactics. A method of evaluating the impact of revival at a local level is then suggested, one made possible by the methodology initially adopted, namely a comparative analysis based on contextualization.

This study is concerned with the process by which community among working class people is defined and redefined in the course of collective political activity. Specifically it analyses the potential role of trade unions in the development of community in residential settlements where the labour market is shaped by a major workplace. The empirical research was carried out in two Yorkshire mining villages in the three years following the 1984/85 Miners' Strike. A range of research techniques were employed to investigate the nature of `community' in the villages before, during and after the Strike. The first part of the thesis provides the necessary historical and political context, investigating the development of the miners' union and the issues involved in the 1984/85 Strike. The second part consists of an ethnographic study of Armthorpe, a village with an open pit. I describe the process by which the union branch, as the vehicle through which the coalmining population collectively encountered their employers and the state, provided a core around which a democratic and dynamic village community could be developed. I outline the population's mobilisation in 1984/85 and analyse the effects of their strike involvement on the village community. A central platform of the NUM in 1984/85 was the defence of `jobs, pits and communities'. In order to investigate the impact of pit closures on community, the final part of my thesis consists of a subsidiary study of Moorends, a nearby village where the pit was closed in 1957. I describe the very different experience of its population in 1984/85 and analyse the nature of social relationships in the Strike's aftermath. I conclude by suggesting that the 1984/85 Miners' strike illustrates the potential of collective struggle for creating `community' among working class people on a variety of levels.