Along with causewayed enclosures, the tor enclosures of Cornwall and Devon represent the earliest enclosure of large open spaces in Britain and are the earliest form of surviving non-funerary monument. Their importance is at least as great as that of causewayed enclosures, and it might be argued that their proposed associations with settlement, farming, industry, trade and warfare indicate that they could reveal more about the Early Neolithic than many causewayed enclosure sites. Yet, despite being recognised as Neolithic in date as early as the 1920s, they have been subject to a disproportionately small amount of work. Indeed, the southwest, Cornwall especially, is almost treated like another country by many of those studying the Early Neolithic of southern Britain. When mentioned, this region is more likely to be included in studies of Ireland and the Irish Sea zone than studies concerning England. Perhaps this is due, in part, to interpretations of Carn Brea and Helman Tor as defended settlements of people who relied upon agriculture for the bulk of their subsistence, conducted economic trade with other areas, and formed a quasi-political unity through warfare. This interpretation does not sit well with post-processual suggestions of a mobile, wild resource based early Neolithic, with the emphasis on cultural change, in neighbouring Wessex chalkland areas. The aim of this thesis is to re-examine the evidence from the southwest and to interpret it with reference to and in contrast with the potentially radically different interpretations of the Early Neolithic in nearby Wessex. By understanding the southwestern landscapes before the tors were enclosed, placing the tor enclosures in their cultural landscape contexts, using ethnographic analogy and re-examining the existing archaeological record, it is possible to achieve a better understanding of tor enclosures and to demonstrate their importance for understanding other elements of the Early Neolithic in Britain.

This thesis tested a methodology for tracing eighteenth- and nineteenth-century migrants, based on the Cambridge Group reconstitution methods. It began with a sample from Whitbourne parish in the under-researched county of Herefordshire, investigating the effect of regional urbanisation and industrialisation on migration choices. Longitudinal family dispersal patterns were traced, and comparisons were made with studies in other regions. The method focused on out-migration, setting spatial mobility in its wider context, and increasing its representativeness by incorporating additional search strategies for less visible groups, including married women. A high tracing rate was achieved, and the method is proposed as a viable tool for analysing migration from small rural parishes which are considered unsuitable for conventional reconstitution studies. The west midlands industrial areas were not apparently a destination for this population until the second quarter of the nineteenth century, but there were early migrants to Worcester, London, and later to Cheltenham, Cheshire and elsewhere, especially for domestic service and urban service trades. Some familial trends were observable, and others related to land holding, occupation and geographical propinquity. Marriage and dependent children did not prevent migration, but literacy and transport networks were found to be strongly associated with occupational options and distances moved.

This thesis seeks to explore the memorial texts that developed as a result of the First World War, composed primarily by those whose sons, husbands and fathers had died between 1914 and 1918. Visitors to the military cemeteries of the First World War are interested to read the inscriptions left by the bereaved at the foot of individual headstones, yet this aspect of post-war commemoration is still largely unexplored. This thesis seeks to explore these responses: by considering the process through which the bereaved were permitted to select inscriptions, the sources from which they derived consolation, and the narratives that they pursued throughout the post-war period to 1930. Parallel to these permanent headstone inscriptions are considered the ephemeral commemoration of the newspaper in memoriam column, a source of material that has received scant attention but which promises a rich glimpse into the conventions of early-twentieth-century mourning – conventions which are still resonant almost a century after the First World War broke out. To contextualise post-war responses, the thesis introduces commemorative practices used to remember those who died in the South African War and in the sinking of the Titanic, many of which were used again in the aftermath of 1918.

This thesis studies the ranks of secular clergy and their changing career patterns in the diocese of Hereford between 1400 and 1535. This diocesan study will contribute to the developing research of the late medieval English clergy. The printed episcopal registers of Hereford are examined as the major source for the present thesis. Other additional records, for example, the Valor Ecclesiasticus of 1535, are also introduced as supplementary evidence. The study consists of five aspects relating to the clerical career in the late medieval diocese of Hereford. The changing patterns of clerical recruitment during the studied period are analysed in virtue of the calculation of acolytes and priests which were included in the ordination lists. The clerical movement across the diocesan boundaries in the phase of ordination is demonstrated through the calculation of letters dimissory held by ordinands. Various titles presented by individuals during the ordinations are categorised and analysed to indicate the different economic resources in the early stage of a clerical career. The other two aspects concern clerical careers after the ordination. The admission to a benefice is discussed through the analysis of the exercise of patronage regarding the parochial advowsons held by various patrons. The actual economic status of a parochial incumbent on the eve of the Reformation is demonstrated by the information extracted from the Valor Ecclesiasticus. Based on the analyses of this thesis, the clerical career still had its attractiveness in the pre-Reformation diocese of Hereford, and secular clergy was a rank with the activeness and significance within the late medieval church and had close connections with the contemporary secular society.

This thesis evaluates cultural constructs of the courtier in Elizabethan England. It focuses particularly on Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier. The Courtier is generally recognised as one of the most influential texts in Renaissance Europe. It was originally published in Venice in 1528; the first English translation was produced by Thomas Hoby in 1561. This thesis aims to provide an integrated analysis of Castiglione’s contribution to English political culture throughout the second half of the sixteenth century. It considers the circumstances in which Hoby translated the Courtier, and his motives for doing so. It identifies two distinct models of courtliness delineated by the Urbino interlocutors, and assesses the extent to which these models influenced the self-presentation of leading Elizabethan politicians. The thesis also engages with negative characterisations of the courtier. In particular, it examines the adaptation of traditional anti-courtier discourse to voice new concerns about the nature and legitimacy of court politics towards the end of Elizabeth’s reign.

This thesis examines the impact of the First World War on the town of Wednesbury. Although receiving limited scholarly consideration to date, it is contended that this Black Country town played an important wartime role and this study, based upon extensive archival research, has investigated the key economic, political and social consequences and changes occurring during this period. Embedded within the broader contexts of time and place, it draws extensively on the experiences of the town's working-class community to demonstrate how a local history can enrich our appreciation of the lives of working people and inform our understanding of the national picture. Following the establishment of the rationale, methodology and the principal historiographical debates, life and society in Wednesbury on the eve of war are described. Reaction to the outbreak of hostilities, economic and manpower mobilization, and wartime industrial relations are assessed. Also charted are the main social and political developments. There is a chapter devoted to the locality's first air raid, when the German Navy's airships bombed Wednesbury, Bradley, Tipton and Walsall. In evaluating this community's patriotism, it is concluded that whilst the adjustment of attitudes was unavoidable, many aspects of Wednesbury's contribution should be viewed as truly unique.

In 1962, Reginald Ashley, the Secretary of the Scottish Allotments and Gardens Society, wrote that allotments are ‘the heritage of the tenement dweller’. He was writing at a time of great upheaval in the allotments movement; allotments had come under threat from post-war development and had largely lost their role in food production that had been vital during the Depression and both World Wars. In writing this statement, Ashley connected allotments to the idiosyncratic dwellings of Scottish city life; he made it clear that allotments are a part of, rather than an escape from, Scottish cities. For the Scottish Allotments and Gardens Society, allotments are not only there to grow food but they also improve the mental and physical health of tenement dwellers by providing them with their own outside space. This thesis will explore the role of the allotment within the city, using Glasgow as the location of study. It will use archival research and oral history interviews to answer five core research questions: how has the purpose of an allotment changed and developed from 1930 to the present day; how has the allotment movement advocated for these changing purposes; what has been the role of allotments in sustainable food production; how have allotments developed as places of community; and, what do allotments mean to individual plotholders. Through answering these five questions, this thesis will argue that allotments have developed as places of both individuality and community, a paradox that is needed for the health and well-being of plotholders. It will conclude that allotments are an integral part of Scottish cities that need to be included in long-term urban planning, providing protected green spaces for plotholders, communities, plants and animals in otherwise changing and developing urban environments.

This thesis offers new insights and understandings of the complexity and development of the operational and organisational forms of the Women’s Liberation Movement over the course of the 1970s and 1980s. Through focusing on the local groups of Aberdeen, Brighton and Hove, Edinburgh and Bolton as case studies of the broader movement, this research argues that there were complex processes of development at the grassroots in which women conceived of, implemented and continued to develop new feminist methods of political organisation and structure, and continued to debate issues of organisation, structure and political practice throughout the period. Furthermore, this thesis demonstrates that the development of new, alternative feminist organisational and political practices were central to the ways in which the WLM attempted to represent and manage the diverse opinions, positions, interests and socio-economic divisions within its membership from the very beginnings of the WLM. This study also explores the impact of local factors on each group and the extent to which these shaped and developed the organisation, structure and practices of local groups over the course of the 1970s and into the 1980s. In doing so, this thesis challenges a historiography that depicts the WLM as a ‘structureless’ movement and therefore as disorganised, and which outlines a simplistic ‘rise and fall’ chronology of the movement, from unity in the early 1970s to crippling division at the end of the decade. Rather, through the use of documentary evidence and oral history interviews with feminist activists, this thesis argues that attempts to solve and mange debate and disagreements between women were a significant part and purpose of feminist organisation and its subsequent development well beyond the supposed ‘end’ of the WLM in 1978.

This thesis represents an account of the experience of race in contemporary Britain. It adopts a ‘micro historical’ approach: the focus is on those of African-Caribbean descent in Handsworth, an inner-city area of Birmingham, during the ‘long 1980s’, defined roughly as the period from the middle of the 1970s to the start of the 1990s. This was a period of heightened racial tension. Popular anxieties about the black inner city were brought to the fore following rioting in 1981 and 1985, after which Handsworth was conceptualised by the media as the ‘Front Line’ in an ongoing ‘war on the streets’. The long 1980s was also a period in which inequalities in housing, unemployment and other areas continued to disproportionately affect black communities in Handsworth. These issues were an important contributing factor to the black experience. However, this thesis argues that the black experience was by no means reducible to them. Race, it is argued, was something that was lived in Handsworth, sometimes in relation racism and inequality, but also in what E. P. Thompson famously argued to be ‘the raw material of experience’. Race was a ‘structure of feeling’ in Handsworth. It meant having to deal with the effects of discrimination or high unemployment, for example, sometimes on a daily basis. But the thesis will show that race was also often re-articulated as a positive identity, and was lived out in routines, traditions, institutions and everyday practices. Taken together, this constituted what can meaningfully be described as a black way of life in Handsworth, something that represents a significant part of the social history of contemporary Britain.

This thesis examines the eschatological thought of Bede (673-735). Relevant content is drawn from a wide range of Bede’s exegetical and non-exegetical works. The world ages analogy, crucial to Bede’s perception of time, chronology and eschatology, is discussed in the first four chapters. These chapters explain the significant changes that Bede made to the analogy following an allegation of heresy that arose in 708. Chapters five, six and seven outline Bede’s beliefs regarding key eschatological concepts such as: Antichrist, the day of judgement and the post-judgement afterlife. Bede’s ‘eschatological perspective’ is the final major theme to be considered. Bede’s perceived proximity to the end of time is shown to be a variable factor that changed according to time and circumstance. The thesis reveals that Bede was an innovative scholar who re-worked the traditional theoretical models that he inherited from earlier Christian theologians. Bede is shown to be a commanding scholarly authority who played an important role in defining the eschatological beliefs of his contemporaries. Finally, this thesis distinguishes aspects of Bede’s early eschatological thought from his beliefs in the mature stages of his authorial career. This has implications for the dating termini of several texts.