Those Places Thursday - Ludlow

I succumbed to temptation (as usual) today and bought a book in the Summer Sale in The National Archives bookshop. The book that I bought, Ludlow: an Historical Anthology, by David Lloyd and Peter Klein, isn't one of the online bargains, it was only available in the on-site shop, and there were only a couple of copies (sorry). I mention it because it's about Ludlow, a place I have only visited once, several years ago, but I just loved it.

Ludlow has a lot of history, which always tends to endear a place to me, and a lot of old buildings there are intact. The biggest of these is Ludlow Castle, and one of the most famous is the Feathers Hotel.

Thomas Wright's History of Ludlow (1852) is on Google Books, with some fine illustrations, and the Historical and Descriptive Sketch of Ludlow Castle and the Church of Saint Lawrence, Ludlow (1869) by the same author. You can find some gazetteer entries and a several travellers' accounts of Ludlow on A Vision of Britain Through Time.

As befits such an historic town, it contains many listed buildings - 402 of them to be exact. You can feast your eyes on these on the English Heritage Images of England site, and a collection of old photographs the related Viewfinder site.

The Feathers hotel

Records for Ludlow are held at Shropshire Archives, which has a good range of information leaflets and guidance on family and local history. They are also working on a series of Place Guides, which look very promising, although they are working through the alphabet and have reached the letter G, so no Ludlow yet, but it will be worth looking out for, judging by the standard of the guides they have produced so far.

The historic Feathers Hotel dates back to 1619, and as you would expect in a building of that age there is hardly a straight line in the place. It is reputed to be haunted, but I suspect this is the result of a combination of overactive imaginations and creaky floorboards. I didn't see any ghosts when I was there, and I loved it. Writing this has made me want to go back to Ludlow - and the rest of Shropshire, come to that, it's a lovely county.

Ludlow is dominated by its medieval castle, which has a fascinating history of its own. it is adjacent to the town, but is not part of the parish of Ludlow, it is an extra-parochial place.

Ludlow Castle

Those Places Thursday - The State of the Poor

This isn't about a particular place, but about a very useful source for family and local history. I was completely unaware of this until the summer school I attended last week in Oxford.

 'The State of the Poor, or An History of the Labouring Classes in England, from the Conquest to the Present Period; in which are particularly considered, Their Domestic Economy, with respect to their Diet, Dress, Fuel and Habitation; And the Various Plans which, from time to time, have been Proposed and Adopted, for the Relief of the Poor'  by Sir Frederick Morton Eden was published in 1797, in three volumes. I have only been able to find Volume III on Google Books, but original and facsimile copies are widely available in libraries, according to Worldcat.

It is not a comprehensive survey of every parish in England (and Wales - despite the title it includes some Welsh places), but Sir Frederick selected a few parishes from each county for detailed examination. The counties and parishes in Volume III are:

Surrey: Epsom, Esher, Farnham, Reigate, Walton
Sussex: Burwash, Chailey, Peasmarsh, Winchelsea
Warwickshire: Alcester, Birmingham, Coventry, Mollington, Southam, Sutton Colefield (sic)
Westmoreland: Kendal, Kirkby Lonsdale, Orton, Underbarrow
Wiltshire: Bradford, Seend, Trowbridge
Worcestershire:  Evesham, Inkborough, Worcester
Yorkshire: Bradford, Burton, Ecclesfield, Great Driffield, Halifax, Kingston upon Hull, Leeds, Market Wrighton, Settle, Sheffield, Skipton, Southowram, Pocklington, Stokesley, Thornton

Denbighshire: Llanferras, Wrexham
Pembrokeshire: Narberth
Radnorshire: Knighton, Presteigne

Winchelsea, Sussex

Although most of the parochial reports are concerned with describing the occupations and incomes of the inhabitants, there are some lists of names, too. The entry for Kendal includes a list of the 'out-poor' in 1795, amounting to several dozen individuals and families, as well as the amounts they received. There is an even longer and more detailed list for Bradford in Wiltshire, Epsom and Halifax.