Informative, vivid and richly illustrated, this volume explores the history of England's northern borders – the former counties of Northumberland, Cumberland, Durham, Westmorland and the Furness areas of Lancashire – across 1000 years. The book explores every aspect of this changing scene, from the towns and poor upland farms of early modern Cumbria to life in the teeming communities of late Victorian Tyneside. In their final chapters the authors review the modern decline of these traditional industries and the erosion of many of the region's historical characteristics.

Wordsworth's romantic critique of industrial life and society was backward-looking. His 'Golden Age ideal' of pastoral life and rural relationships falls within the scope of English 'populism' as found among the middle ranks of small independent producers and their idealogues. Furthermore his rural education and up-bringing in the remote North of England explain his long-term shift from radical and whig reformer to tory placeman in the years 1789 to 1832 as well as his relative demise as a poet.

A 'grass roots' cultural history of the English parish from the earliest times to Queen Victoria.

The twenty-five papers in this volume arise from a conference jointly organised by the British Archaeological Association and the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya in Barcelona. They explore the making of art and architecture in Latin Europe and the Mediterranean between c. 1000 and c. 1250, with a particular focus on questions of patronage, design and instrumentality. No previous studies of patterns of artistic production during the Romanesque period rival the breadth of coverage encompassed by this volume – both in terms of geographical origin and media, and in terms of historical approach. Topics range from case studies on Santiago de Compostela, the Armenian Cathedral in Jerusalem and the Winchester Bible to reflections on textuality and donor literacy, the culture of abbatial patronage at Saint-Michel de Cuxa and the re-invention of slab relief sculpture around 1100. The volume also includes papers that attempt to recover the procedures that coloured interaction between artists and patrons – a serious theme in a collection that opens with ‘Function, condition and process in eleventh-century Anglo-Norman church architecture’ and ends with a consideration of ‘The death of the patron’.

"The volume provides a detailed account of the Symson family, and an appendix profiles some 200 correspondents, including many north west families."--BOOK JACKET.