Hampshire historians on show at national festival

As well as major national organisations, including the National Archives, the Historical Association and the Royal Historical Association, eleven other groups that had all run IHR centenary events were represented. HFC exhibited its Celebrating Hampshire’s Historians project, which is expected to form a model for other counties.

Other ideas that could be replicated elsewhere included a study of black slavery in Buckinghamshire, and Hidden Chester, which is highlighting little-known aspects of the town’s history, including ‘migration and refuge’.

Another interesting project is based on the Lancaster and Morecombe Bay area, but could be easily replicated elsewhere. It has used messages scribbled on the back of more than 3,000 Edwardian postcards to ‘flesh out’ the lives of the people who sent them.

The festival, which was attended by HFC exhibitors Dick Selwood, Dave Allen and Julia Sandison, ended with a discussion on the Future of History led by a panel of top historians, chaired by IHR Director, Professor Claire Langhamer.

It included TV presenters Michael Wood, who is Professor of Public History at the University of Manchester, and Janina Ramirez from the University of Oxford, as well as Emma Griffin, Professor of Modern British History at the University of East Anglia and President of the Royal Historical Society.

Other panellists included Valerie Johnson Director of Research and Collections at the National Archives, Olivette Otele, Professor of History of Slavery at the University of Bristol, and Rana Mitter from the University of Oxford, who specialises in the history of China.

Michael Wood reminded the audience that an interest in history in all forms is now the biggest ‘hobby’ in the land and still shows signs of growing further. Yet, the numbers of students who read history at university is static, despite a broad acceptance that as a subject it develops skills that are useful in virtually all professions – law, management, finance, journalism and many more.

On October 6 Michael will be in conversation with Professor Martin Biddle about ‘his long and extraordinary life in archaeology, and in particular his path-breaking project on Winchester’ for The Friends of Winchester Cathedral Annual Lecture (details from: www.winchester-cathedral.org.uk).

There was much discussion at the festival of digitalization. It has been a game-changer in terms of giving ready access to a huge range of historical sources. The downside is that storage of original records in digital-only form risks losing great chunks of history. Papyrus has lasted 2,000 years, whereas, as platforms change, many digital-only records may only have a life of a few years.

The assertion that only those with a particular identity – black, Jewish, French etc – can study particular historical subjects, which is often championed in the USA and elsewhere, was condemned. The objectivity of someone uninvolved in a subject, who carries out thorough research, is often invaluable. An example is Dr Edward Chaney, Emeritus Professor at Solent University, Southampton, whose work on Italian history is celebrated in the country itself.

Another theme explored was the richness of various approaches to history. There are so many facets of the subject – social, political, religious, cultural, military scientific etc – that everybody can find some area where their knowledge can contribute to research.

This is often the experience of new members of HFC – who come from all walks of life and all ages, A modest subscription provides a gateway to a satisfying and absorbing activity that takes them to places not normally open to public, in the company of others with similar interests.

The purpose and mechanics of the HFC Celebrating Hampshire’s Historians Project were outlined at the festival in a handout. It made the case for Hampshire as the ideal county to develop the idea. It has always been ‘part of the frontier towards Europe...[and] the Bishops of Winchester had a diocese that stretched from Southwark in London to the south coast and included Surrey’.

It went on: ‘Portsmouth and Aldershot are important military sites and Southampton an international port. The Solent has witnessed the Schneider Trophy, the Spitfire, the hovercraft, and even the wind-surfing board.’

HFC is creating a database of those historians who have contributed to this rich heritage – ‘not limited to amateur and professional historians, [but also including] antiquarians, archaeologists and archivists’. There is a cut-off point in the initial project, which includes only those who died before 2000, but this might be brought forward in the future.

Working with local history groups throughout the county, about 200 historians have been identified for the database, and ‘the number is still growing’. Profiles of nearly 100 of them have already been researched and posted on the HFC website.

To highlight individuals, HFC has recently started posting Historian of the Month. These have included Dr Joseph Stevens, who in 1888 published a pioneering history of the village of St Mary Bourne, where he was the local doctor. He later went on to become the first curator of Reading Museum. His achievements are the subject of a Hampshire Paper by John Isherwood (available from: www.hantsfieldclub.org.uk/publications/hampshire-papers.html ).

Someone else who has also been highlighted is Amy Audrey Locke, the daughter of the head porter of Winchester College, who won the first Charlotte Yonge Scholarship, which enabled her to study at Somerville College, Oxford.

Her main contribution to the history of the county was working as one of the team of young researchers – mainly women – who researched and wrote the first edition of the Victoria County History of Hampshire, published from 1909. She also wrote an anthology, In Praise of Winchester. Her life is told in the late Winifred Dawson’s The Porter’s Daughter (Sarsen Press, 2014).

Charlotte Yonge, who lived all her life at Otterbourne, has also been chosen as an Historian of the Month. In June 2023, the bicentenary of her birth is being celebrated by HFC and the Charlotte Yonge Fellowship, with the help of a grant from the Hampshire Archives Trust. As well as writing best-selling novels loved by millions worldwide, and editing The Monthly Packet, a periodical for girls, she wrote John Keble’s Parishes: A History of Hursley and Otterbourne and other works on history and other non-fiction subjects.

Key historian Professor Alfred Temple Patterson has also been highlighted in the project. He did much to pioneer local history after WWII, first at a hotbed of activity at the University of Leicester and later at the University of Southampton, where he was dubbed ‘biographer of the city’. He also wrote on Portsmouth and naval subjects.

One early outcome of the project is ‘a better understanding of the evolution of the ‘encyclopaedic county history’ (Chronicle, April 28, 2022). Starting with a disastrous attempt in the 1770s, which bankrupted its author, Sir Thomas Gatehouse, followed by more failures by the Rev. Richard Warner and others, it took a century before the editorial skills of William Page led to the VCH.

Amongst the archaeologists celebrated by the project are the country doctor J.P. Williams Freeman, author of Field Archaeology as Illustrated by Hampshire, published in 1915. In 1928 he liaised with O. G. S. Crawford who, with Alexander Keiller, produced Wessex from the Air. This trail-blazing publication laid the foundations of aerial photography, which continues to reveal the hidden landscapes of the county.

Overall, Celebrating Hampshire’s Historians is allowing reappraisal of the work of past historians, ‘often highlighting important studies that for long have been “hidden”. It is expected to lead to a number of papers on themes such as the history of local history’.

For full details of the HFC project, visit: www.hantsfieldclub.org uk, and for the IHR festival: www.history.ac.uk/our-century/history-past-present-future#history-festival.

A message from the editor

Thank you for reading this article - we appreciate your support.

Subscribing means you have unrestricted access to the latest news and reader rewards - all with an advertising-light website.

Don't take my word for it – subscribe here to see for yourself.

Looking to advertise an event? Then check out our free events guide.

Want to keep up with the latest news and join in the debate? You can find and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.