MOSTLY WOOLGATHERING

Jethro Tull Agricultural Pioneer [1] Oil on canvas mural by Alfred Reginald Thomson, RA, 1955, commisioned by the Science Museum, London, showing the agricultural pioneer, Jethro Tull (1674-1741), demonstrating his most significant invention, the seed-drill. © Science Museum / Science & Society Picture Library As we begin a new decade maybe it is time to reflect once more. I sense a change in the agricultural field, if you pardon the pun.  For three centuries or more agricultural improvements have been driven by ‘Productivity and Output’ – the world needed feeding, land is finite, improved output was the way forward.  In a new paper by  Klerkx, L., Rose, D. [2]  their abstract outlines this change “Previous agricultural revolutions were, of course, radical at the time – the first seeing hunter-gatherers move towards settled agriculture (Agriculture 1.0), the second characterised by innovation as part of the British Agricultural Revolution which saw...

In the archives at Halifax is a fascinating little known manuscript. In the early part of the 20th Century Muriel M. Green, the daughter of the then archivist there wrote up many of Anne Listers letters from the Shibden Archive. She never published the manuscript thesis but a selection of letters were later published in a now very rare book "Miss Lister of Shibden Hall" Copyright West Yorkshire Archive Service In 1813 Anne Lister then residing in Bath wrote to her brother Sam. Anne and Sam were very close as siblings and from everything so far unearthed it very likely that his untimely and early death later that year had a profound influence on her future character. I find it profoundly moving to have transcribed and therefore read the entire letter from a sister to her brother, knowing that months later Sam would drown in a bathing accident while on active service with the army in Fermpy, Eire. Her longing to know how he was after months of not hearing from him i...

In a short essay by Peter Stearns he asks the question -  Why Study History?   [1] Why indeed?  Surely all that matters is the here and now. The present?  After all that is all I am, all any of us are, in the present.  In his summation of why people study history although as he states while there may be many facets and passages of inquiry, his basic thought is when we boil it all down there are two driving notions, relying on two fundamental facts. 1) History Helps Us Understand People and Societies 2) History Helps Us Understand Change and How the Society We Live in Came to Be  I'd agree with that. But for me that is all just a little too dry. For me, struggling to make sense of the world as an independent researcher, history has always been about connections. Connections are exciting. Connections send research down uncharted rabbit holes of adventure, often deviating widely from the planned path theoris...

There has been an upsurge of interest in the Yorkshire landowner and diarist Anne Lister (1790-1840), tumbling out of the recent HBO/BBC series called Gentleman Jack. This beautifully created and executed (based on real diary entries) fictionalised account of the seduction of Ann Walker, by Anne, brought the life of the latter to a global audience. Hitherto this remarkable 'Spireted Yorkshirewoman' as Muriel M Green described her in her unpublished PhD back in the 1930’s remained essentially a person of local or academic interest.  There is no doubt that Anne was, and remains almost 200 years later, a fascinating if somewhat troubling person to research. Today, her sexual encounters with women could be seen as controlling or predatory. On the wider sphere her manipulation of the people around her seems cold, often ruthless. Look back to the early 1800s and Anne was however a product of her time. This was the time of class, social rank, ancestry and money; men ruled, women...