News

Submissions are invited for the Joan Thirsk Memorial Prize offered by the British Agricultural History Society in memory of Joan Thirsk (1922–2013). The Thirsk prize is an annual award for the best book in British and Irish rural or agrarian history employing broadly historical methodology (so works of social anthropology, archaeology or of contemporary rural… Read more: Joan Thirsk Memorial Prize opens for 2024

Proposals for sessions at the biennial conference of the European Rural History Organisation (EURHO) are due by 30 September 2024.

Call for Papers: Historical Perspectives on Rural Economies, Societies, Landscapes and Environment

The Spring conference of the British Agricultural History will take place on 24th and 25th April 2025 in the lovely surroundings of the Guildhall, Bury St. Edmund’s (Thursday 24th April) and the Food Museum, Stowmarket (Friday 25th April).

This issue of Rural History Today features articles by Ollie Douglas on the Model Farming Gallery at the Museum of English Rural Life; Joan Dils on parish accounts as historical sources; João P.R. Joaquim on Redcliffe N. Salaman’s efforts to establish a nationwide system of virus-free seed potato production in inter-war Britain; Andrew Gilson on agriculture in… Read more: Rural History Today, Issue 47 (Summer 2024)

Highlights from the BAHS Spring Conference 2024 Huge thanks to everyone who organised, attended, and presented at our Spring Conference in April! Here are a few of our photo highlights. Clare Hickman, Maxwell Ayamba, Debra Reid, Gary Mills, Sarah Holland, Spike Gibbs, and Isabel Hughes discussed teaching and rural history. (The Museum of English Rural… Read more: Highlights from the BAHS Spring Conference 2024

Paperbacks of the 2022 Thirsk Prize winner ‘The Real Agricultural Revolution: The Transformation of English Farming, 1939-1985’, by Paul Brassley, Michael Winter, Matt Lobley, and David Harvey, are available now from Boydell & Brewer. Buy or recommend

Recent headlines about land-use conflicts between agriculture and forestry reflect a centuries-long history of compromise.

In May, the federal Australian government announced its intention to ban live sheep exports by 2028. As Alan Renwick reported for The Conversation, Australia’s ban followed UK and New Zealand bans in 2023. The historical precedents are many and varied.

Elections have badly impeded LIBRAL over the past couple of months, but good to say the scanner’s assistant was happily re-elected. Here, before the second election of the year, is the LIBRAL circulation you should have had before the last election containing the usual mixture of the known and unknown. We now have over 1,250… Read more: LIBRAL adds 15 volumes, spanning c.1800-1944

Like last year, two books stood out. The first, Spike Gibbs’ ‘Lordship, State Formation and Local Authority in late Medieval and Early Modern England’ (Cambridge University Press), is a book that the panel agreed will shape the historiography for many years to come. The second, Steve Hindle’s ‘The Social Topography of a Rural Community: Scenes from a Labouring Life’ (Oxford University Press), is a wonderful, illuminating microhistory of one early modern Warwickshire community.

Issue 46 carries articles on the diaries of Violet Dickinson; oral history and environmental land management; rural resistance to land dispossession in the Western Isles; and county magazines.

This issue features an article by Christopher Dyer on medieval peasants’ contributions to the countryside; Elizabeth Pimblett on women’s roles in the story of cider; Tony Pratt on the British cattle census of 1866; and Paul Warde on land valuation and surveying in mid-nineteenth-century Ireland.

Peasants were not rich or powerful, but they had a capacity, often when operating together in a community, to make decisions and change the world around them. The peasant contribution to the medieval countryside has emerged gradually in the thinking of historians and archaeologists.

Minutes of the 65th Annual General Meeting of the British Agricultural History Society held at Plumpton College, Sussex on Monday 3rd AprilThe meeting began at 4.15pmPresent: There were 24 members of the Society present. The Chair was taken by Prof Henry French. Officers of the Society present were Dr Nicola Verdon (Secretary), Prof Richard Hoyle… Read more: 2017 AGM minutes