Agricultural History Review, Volume 55 Part 1 (2007), p. 137

This engaging volume of essays on Essex themes by his pupils, friends and colleagues commemorates the life and work of a distinguished Essex historian, the late Dr Arthur Brown. During more than half a century’s association with the North Essex branch of the Workers’ Educational Association, with the collections of the Essex Record Office, and following his retirement from schoolmastering in 1974, with the departments of Sociology and History at the University of Essex, where he held a research fellowship, he made a seminal contribution to teaching and research in the social and economic history of eighteenth and nineteenth century Essex.

He came to local history, as did many of this generation, by a roundabout route. Welshman by birth and classicist by training, he became attracted to local history as a PPE student at Oxford in the 1930s. Having decided against joining the International Brigade, he chose instead to tutor for the WEA in the Rhondda, prior to taking up a Classics post at Colchester Royal Grammar School. His commitment to local history is reflected by the fact that, as a schoolteacher, he found time to author or edit some eight books on Essex subjects. Three publications in particular are of special interest to rural historians: Essex at work 1700–1815 (1969); Meagre harvest: the Essex farm workers struggle against poverty 1750 to 1914 (1990), Prosperity and poverty, rural Essex 1700–1815 (1996).

The volume reflects Arthur Brown’s own wide-ranging interests. It begins with a study of parochial clergy by Jane Pearson, based on a 1776 visitation questionnaire circulated to parishes by the Bishopric of London. The Essex clergymen, she concludes, were more ‘lone figures in the landscape’, rather than, as they tend often to be depicted, integrated members of the community. Jacqueline Cooper looks at town life in Saffron Walden through the eyes of a local gentleman and his involvement with contemporary issues such as allotments, poor relief, public health, the Swing Riots, and relations with the landowner, Lord Braybrooke. The biographical theme continues with an insight by Maureen Scollan into the character of the first Chief Constable of Essex, John McHardy, and the establishment of a full-time county police force. Rural protest is allotted two papers: Michael Holland’s scrutiny of the trial and execution of John Evans, the first Essex Swing incendiary to be prosecuted in 1830, and Valerie Pattenden’s rounded account of the ‘Chartist challenge’ in Chelmsford.

The functioning of the Poor Law is addressed by Pamela Sharpe in an examination of the treatment and effects of malaria in the low-lying marsh hundreds, as revealed by a bizarre and often intemperate correspondence concerning relief between poor law officials and John Thurtle, head of family, and prototype ‘Essex man’. The functioning and governance of the Waltham Cross Foundling Hospital, the duties of its trustees, inspectors and nurses, and the origin and ‘disposal’ of foundlings, are examined by Raymond Cassidy.

Some readers, and Arthur Brown himself no doubt, may be disappointed at the neglect of agriculture, which reflects perhaps a perceived lack of interest by local historians in technical and economic topics. It is touched upon by Brian Bourn in his review of the work of Thomas Churchman Darby of Pleshey, inventor of the much celebrated ‘Darby Digger’. This steam-powered Leviathan, reminiscent of the Martian machines in the film version of The war of the worlds, weighing up to 15 tons, and moving sideways across the field at one half of a mile per hour on ‘feet’ worked by ‘legs’, was arguably the most mechanically bizarre item of equipment ever used on British farms. Poor marketing rather than technical defects accounted for its disappointing sales, of just 20 machines.

Kevin Barnes’s study of the migration of farm workers from depressed clayland parishes in Dengie Hundred in the coastal southeast to the Durham coalfield in the 1870s, is an original contribution to labour history. The Durham census for 1881 identifies upwards of 257 former Dengie residents living in the county in 1881, many of them in the parish of Butterknowle where they formed a significant community and are still remembered today. Also to be commended is the study by Andrew Philips and Patrick Denney of the revival of domestic clothing manufacture in the Colchester area in the late nineteenth century. Upwards of an estimated 3000 outworkers were then employed on a piecework basis, many using sewing machines, making menswear for retail firms in London and the provinces.

The volume concludes with a contemporary incursion. Stephen Hussey draws on oral evidence collected in 1991 to assess the strength of tradition in rural Essex in the first half of the last century. Up to 1950, he b elieves, most villages had a distinctly rural culture – self-centred, land-based, and reflected in language – and a belief system rich in folklore and superstition. Thus to varying degrees, the old culture prevailed in the face of powerful modernizing forces which, from the 1950s, were to transform village life in the more rural parts of the county beyond the built-up areas of Thames-side and the metropolitan south-west.

In its choice of topics and contributors, editorial standards and, as Arthur Brown would have applauded, concern for the common man, this scholarly yet enjoyable volume is a model of its kind, and fitting tribute to the life work of a guiding light in the study and teaching of Essex history.