A Social History of the English Countryside

Traces the rise and fall of rural England from the Middle Ages to the Second World War and the nature of the changes which have occurred. The farms, villages, estates and the people that characterized the English countryside were once the mainspring of both the government and the economy. They supported and responded to the needs of the nation. Yet rural England has always been threatened: from epidemics and the famine to the ravages of the industrial revolution. From the end of the eighteenth century, weakened by enclosure and depopulation, the countryside battled with a rising industrial estate and inevitably succumbed. The village had become a relic, the symbol of a past age visited by those in search of `Olde Englande'. A fundamental change had occurred. G.E. Mingay traces the rise and fall of the rural England from the Middle Ages to the Second World War and the development of the countryside as a whole. He examines the people who owned and farmed the land, often regarded as a law unto themselves. The rural population was a centre of rebellion and discontent; riddled with class distinctions and social divisions; a threat to the society it supported in so many ways. The English countryside has changed: Mingay shows how and why this has occurred and the way it has affected the evolution of society in the twentieth century. Arts, Language and Literature Book Cover 1 Title 4 Contents 5 List of illustrations 8 Acknowledgements 9 Introduction 10 LORD AND PEASANT 16 THE PROGRESS OF THE PLOUGH 41 IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH: DISEASE AND FAMINE 71 PLENTY AND WANT 102 LANDED SOCIETY AND RURAL CULTURE 133 THE TWO FACES OF THE COUNTRYSIDE 156 THE COUNTRYSIDE IN DECLINE, 1870 1914 183 THE COUNTRYSIDE IN WAR AND PEACE 214 Notes 245 Index 256