Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice book in great condition. Pages in excellent unused condition. No notes or highlighting. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> The estate and family records of the great British landowners are probably of their kind unequalled in range and continuity. They form an extraordinarily rich source for the study of what used to be called the Ruling Families as may be seen from the recent works on the Townshends of Raynham and the Grenvilles of Stowe. But these families occupied until recently so central a role in national life that the records also illuminate the activities of most other groups in society from the suitors in manorial courts and the tenants of farms to the lessees who in the nineteenth century developed industrial and urban property. There is scarcely an aspect of social and economic history for which these family collections do not provide useful material. Before the last war few such collections were accessible and fewer still were listed and catalogued. Since then as a result of the generosity of owners and the interest many of them have taken in their records and as a consequence of the work of a generation of archivists this rich vein of material has become very much easier to mine. The records relating to any particular family or property have however by the accidents of history been widely dispersed among different locations many of them remote and unexpected; and students have found that tracking down the component parts in public and private repositories can be a frustrating and often unsuccessful enterprise. The present guide which when it is completed by a second volume will comprehensively cover the contents of 120 collections makes it possible to exploit these rich resources more fully than ever before. (LL)