British Academy: The UK's National Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences

Proceedings of the British Academy, Volume 108

Provincial Towns in Early Modern England and Ireland

Change, Convergence and Divergence

edited by Peter Borsay & Lindsay Proudfoot

Published 2002
for the British Academy by Oxford University Press

234 × 156 mm; 296 pages
hardback, ISBN 978-0-19-726248-1
How to Order volume from OXB

Unique in its interdisciplinary and comparative approach.

Between 1500 and 1800 the development of England and Ireland became closely intertwined, and the urban systems of both countries underwent changes of great long-term significance. This volume brings together historians and geographers from both Britain and Ireland to examine the common themes affecting provincial towns.

The individual papers study economic growth, religious and cultural change, regionalization, landscape and planning, and the fate of different types of settlements (e.g. small towns, fair and market centres, county towns and regional capitals).

A substantial introduction reviews the historiographical context of the subject, and discusses whether the trajectories of English and Irish urban development converged or diverged during the period.

Readership: Scholars and students of urban history, landscape and architectural historians, historical geographers.

The volume is edited by Peter Borsay, Professor of History, University of Wales, Lampeter, and Lindsay Proudfoot, Reader in Historical Geography, The Queen’s University of Belfast.

The papers arise from a joint symposium of the British Academy and the Royal Irish Academy, held in Leicester in September 1998.

CONTENTS

1. Peter Borsay & Lindsay Proudfoot, The English and Irish Urban Experience, 1500–1800: Change, Convergence and Divergence
2. John Bradley, From Frontier Town to Renaissance City: Kilkenny, 1500–1700    (summary)
3. Alan Dyer, Small Towns in England, 1600–1800    (summary)
4. Lindsay Proudfoot, Markets, Fairs and Towns in Ireland, c.1600–1853    (summary)
5. W H Crawford, The Creation and Evolution of Small Towns in Ulster in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries    (summary)
6. Anngret Simms, Change and Continuity in an Irish County Town: Kells, 1600–1820    (summary)
7. Peter Borsay, A County Town in Transition: The Great Fire of Warwick, 1694    (summary)
8. Jon Stobart, County, Town and Country: Three Histories of Urban Development in Eighteenth-Century Chester    (summary)
9. Toby Barnard, The Cultures of Eighteenth-Century Irish    (summary)
10. Rosemary Sweet, Provincial Culture and Urban Histories in England and Ireland during the Long Eighteenth Century    (summary)
11. Susan Hood, The Significance of the Villages and Small Towns in Rural Ireland during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries    (summary)

• Index

REVIEW

“Provides much food for thought, and the comparative framework has much to commend it. Scholarly readers will find it a useful addition to the growing literature of the early modern town.”
H-Albion@h-net.msu.edu

Companion volume: