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HIST324: Everyday Life in Pre-industrial England: Studying Local Communities

Special Subject (60 credits)

This module offers an opportunity to gain hands-on experience of Local History. It aims to give you an understanding of the approaches, themes and techniques of local historical study, as well as the skills and knowledge required to carry out independent research on the early-modern history of an English local community. To that end, all students carry out a research project based on original archive sources and will need to master the handwriting of English documents of the 17th century. Please note that the module is not about the local history of the Lancaster area; rather, it is about how past societies operated at local level.

The syllabus covers the everyday experience of ordinary people in England in the period c.1550-c.1700. The course explores the concept of 'local community' in an historical context by examining the following themes: the nature of early-modern society at local level (families, kinship, social structure of communities; power and authority, etc.); culture at the local level (religion; education; popular culture; dialects, etc.); and change in the landscape during the 16th and 17th centuries (including farming, rural industry, traditional buildings).

The course also introduces you to the use and interpretation of the principal archival sources available for the study of English local communities between c.1550 and c.1700, including: probate records; local government records; parish registers; family and estate papers and religious records.

Teaching Arrangements: All Special Subjects in the History department operate on the basis of 66 hours of official teaching contact, equivalent to 3 hours per week over a period spanning 22 weeks (10 weeks in Michaelmas Term of year 3, 10 weeks in Lent Term of year 3, and 2 weeks [revision seminars] in Summer Term of year 3), plus individual consultations. Working within the 66-hour overall figure, teaching approaches will vary due to the specialist nature of the courses.

For further information on HIST324 visit the Lancaster University Online Courses Handbook.

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