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Anna Hallett £5.99 978 0 7478 0583 0 (Album 425) 64 pp, 119 colour and 12 b/w ills. There are around 2500 groups of almshouses in Great Britain, most of which were founded centuries ago. Some of them can trace their origins to the early Middle Ages when religious institutions were among the first to offer shelter to needy elderly people. Many others were initiated by individuals who left money for the erection of sometimes splendid buildings. Often picturesque, they can be found in towns, villages and remote country areas. Almshouses come in a variety of architectural styles and often have interesting features, including coats of arms, inscriptions, dedications, statues, clock-towers and sundials. Many have chapels and gardens. Anna Hallett has lectured for a wide range of educational institutions. Her interest in almshouses started in the Netherlands, where she was born, and has continued in Britain where she has enjoyed discovering the many fascinating examples to be found in the most unlikely places. |
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Jan Toms £6.99 978 0 7478 0643 1 (Album 452) approx 64 pp, colour and b/w ills. Memorials to animals are found all over the British Isles – to faithful companions, local heroes, renowned racehorses, military mascots, buried pets – and range from the famous terrier Greyfriars Bobby and the Duke of Wellington’s horse Copenhagen to the modest stones commemorating Giro, the dog of the pre-war German ambassador, in central London and ‘Goldie - God Bless our Bunny’ in a pet cemetery. Jan Toms was born in the Isle of Wight and owned her first pet when she was three – a black cat named Blackie. Beginning her writing career as a historical novelist, she found herself obsessed by the research involved; this book has given full rein to that passion. |
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Benita Cullingford £3.50 978 0 7478 0553 3 (Album 415) 32 pp, 44 b/w ills. Chimney sweeping is an ancient trade dating from the twelfth century. This social history, covering five centuries, draws on source material from original manuscripts and autobiographies by master sweeps. Reference is made to the origin, development, demise and subsequent reinstatement of the chimney, the sweeping of which became central to a controversy lasting one hundred years. The book deals with all aspects of the trade – the lives sweeps led, the difficulties their apprentices encountered, the way they worked and the invention of sweeping ‘machines’. Benita Cullingford is acquainted with prominent members of NACS (National Association of Chimney Sweeps) and her social history British Chimney Sweeps, Five Centuries of Chimney Sweeping was published in 2000 in Britain.
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Yvonne Bell £5.99 978 0 7478 0631 8 (Album 443) 56 pp, colour and b/w ills. Edward VII became king in January 1901, right at the start of the twentieth century. Britain was a very prosperous country after Victoria’s long reign, and now a new era began that would bring enormous changes. After the stuffiness of Victorian life, there was a desire for less clutter in the home, more fresh air and sunshine. The changes begun during the few years before the First World War in 1914 were to leave their mark on the whole century. This book looks at some of the varied houses of the period, including the homes of the wealthy as well as those of the middle and lower classes. The Arts and Crafts movement, the Georgian revival and a desire for ‘the latest thing’ were among the influences that contributed to an eclectic mixture of styles. The book will be of interest to those who live in an Edwardian house, and to many more who share the author’s fascination and nostalgia for this intriguing period. |
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Christopher Baglee and Andrew Morley £4.50 978 0 7478 0510 6, 40 pp, 230 colour ills. Enamel signs emerged as the jewel in the crown of British advertising in the late Victorian era, commanding public attention for over half a century before technological, economic and social change combined to render them redundant. Of the millions of enamel signs produced between 1880 and 1950 only a few thousand survived. By the early 1960s a few collectors began to rescue them as ornamental items. With the birth of the restored steam railway, some found their way back to original locations, lending ‘authentic’ atmosphere to station platforms, and many industrial museums have followed suit to great effect. The authors started collecting enamel signs in the 1970s and have since collaborated on many projects, including writing books, organising exhibitions and giving lectures. |
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The English Seaside in Victorian and Edwardian Times John Hannavy £9.99 978 0 7478 0571 7, 128 pp, 194 colour ills. Photography and the seaside holiday developed together. As holidays became increasingly popular, the number of photographs offered for sale as mementoes of the magical week by the coast grew enormously. When ingenious methods of colouring photographs became available in the 1890s, the coloured holiday photographic print, and later the picture postcard, defined the seaside memory. Through a wonderful collection of coloured photographs covering all the major – and several minor – resorts around England’s coast, this unique book celebrates the heyday of the seaside holiday. |
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Discovering Friendly and Fraternal Societies: their Badges and Regalia Victoria Solt Dennis £10.99 978 0 7478 0628 8 (Handbook 295) approx 200 pp, colour and b/w ills. Curious items of personal adornment such as sashes and collars made of silk or velvet, aprons and medals sometimes turn up in car-boot sales or are found in an attic or a shop selling bygones. Many of these objects are decorated with arcane symbols and bear inscriptions such as ‘Guardian’, ‘Past Arch’ or, even more cryptically, ‘PCR’ or ‘KOM’. Although often grouped under the misleading umbrella title of ‘Masonic’, these objects represent a vast range of friendly and fraternal orders that provided sociability, financial security and moral leadership for their members. Ranging from nationally organised orders to tiny village savings clubs, these societies were an essential part of life for the majority of people in Britain but, with a few exceptions, they have now disappeared. In this ground-breaking and richly illustrated book Victoria Solt Dennis describes the history of these orders and enables the reader to unlock this forgotten history by identifying many of these objects. This book will be of value to family historians, curators and dealers as well as to anyone who values the rich history of the ordinary people of Britain. |
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Guy de la Bédoyère £4.50 978 0 7478 0528 1, 40 pp, many colour ills. Life at home in Britain during the Second World War changed forever. Aerial bombardment destroyed families and homes in their thousands. Men and women worked harder than ever before in factories, as air-raid wardens, and in simply keeping day-to-day life going. Children found themselves evacuated far away from home. Meanwhile, the government exercised unprecedented control over everyday needs and concerns. In the face of all this adversity the Blitz spirit of defiant resilience was born, and its memory has endured right up to the present time. Guy de la Bédoyère is a writer, historian and archaeologist. He has written numerous books on aspects of Roman Britain, and on the archaeology of the air war of 1939–45, including Shire’s Aviation Archaeology in Britain and Pottery in Roman Britain. Other titles for Shire by this author are:
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Greg Stevenson £4.99 978 0 7478 0464 2, 40 pp,46 colour and 43 b/w ills. The way that people related to their homes and furnishings was undergoing fundamental changes in the 1930s. Many became homeowners for the first time, the provision of electricity became widespread, and interest in home décor was booming. The four million houses built in Britain between the wars introduced new architectural styles that have become a lasting feature of the domestic landscape. Greg Stevenson is a material culture historian who also lectures in Design History. Other titles for Shire by this author are:
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Allan Eyles £3.50 978 0 7478 0488 8 (Album 357) 32 pp, many b/w ills. No building type arouses more nostalgic affection than the traditional high street cinema. This book examines the rise and fall of the picture house in Britain. Hooked on films from the age of eleven, Allen Eyles decided to make a living from his passion for cinema. After he observed the destruction of several notable cinemas, he began documenting their history and has written books about the Gaumont, ABC and Granada circuits as well as editing the historical magazine Picture House. He is currently at work on a two-volume history of Odeon cinemas.
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Old Medical and Dental Instruments David J. Warren £3.50 978 0 7478 0257 0 (Album 308) 32 pp, 68 ills. This book should help to identify some of the unusual items to be found in markets and fairs and suggests a number of specialised fields which might be of interest to the new collector. Dr David Warren trained in medicine at Oxford University and is a keen collector of medical antiques and a member of the New York based Medical Collectors Association. He developed Wessex Medical Antiques and publishes a quarterly catalogue of antique medical and dental instruments. |
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Andrew Emmerson £3.50 978 0 7478 0367 6 (Album 337) 32 pp, 53 b/w ills. Television, the most immediate and up-to-date of the communications media, has nonetheless reached a ripe old age. This tradition embraces more than seventy years of progress, from the crude experiments of John Logie Baird in 1925, through the pioneering 405-line days at Alexandra Palace just before the Second World War, to the era when television entered most homes in the 1950s and the growing sophistication of the 1960s with the introduction of 625-line colour transmissions. This book explores, without sentimentality, the whole heritage of the black and white era of television. In it you will find receivers from imposing sets built like furniture to the first transistor portables, the story of the development of television broadcasting, and the whole culture of the television generation from the coming of commercials on ITV to today’s rediscovery of cult programmes. Andrew Emmerson is a writer and researcher on technological subjects. When he is not writing and broadcasting on the subject of today’s high-tech wizardry, he enjoys discovering the history of the inventions which came before this, also restoring and reviving equipment based on these older technologies. Other titles for Shire by this author are: Old Telephones (currently out of print) CLICK HERE FOR OTHER MECHANICAL AND ELECTRICAL TITLES
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Trevor May £3.99 978 0 7478 0658 5 (Album 459) 40 pp, 54 b/w ills. The Victorian clergyman is a familiar character in the fiction of the period, especially in the novels of Anthony Trollope and George Eliot. Through text and pictures, this book sets out to tell their story and to set them firmly in the context of the nineteenth-century Church of England, revealing how they differed from the clergy of the present day. Trevor May is an historian who retired from the University of Hertfordshire in 1993. His principal interests are in nineteenth-century economic, social and local history. He is the author of some fifteen books, including nine Shire Albums. Other titles for Shire by this author are: The Victorian Domestic Servant |
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The Victorian Domestic Servant Trevor May £3.99 978 0 7478 0368 3 (Album 338) 32 pp,53 ills. In 1851 there were over one million servants in Britain, making domestic service the second largest occupational group after agriculture. The range of people who kept servants was vast, from aristocrats like the sixth Duke of Bedford, who had three hundred, to the thousands of clerks and other lower middle class families who employed a single 'maid of all work'. This book covers the whole range of domestic service in the nineteenth century, describing the work and conditions of servants and giving an insight into the strict social hierarchy, which was as strong 'below stairs' as above. Trevor May is a freelance writer and lectures; he is the author of ten books on economic and social history. Other titles for Shire by this author are: Military Barracks
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Victorian and Edwardian Prisons Trevor May £3.50 978 0 7478 0641 7 (Album 450) 40 pp, 62 b/w ills. Although they have existed in Britain for over a thousand years, it was not until the nineteenth century that prisons became the cornerstone of the penal system. This was a period when great interest was shown in penal theory, and rival systems fought for supremacy. More than fifteen million receptions into prison were made between 1837 and 1901, the vast majority into small, local prisons. However, a national prison system was established during the Victorian period, starting with the introduction of convict prisons for those convicted of felony. This book looks at the development of prison buildings, at the life and labour of prisoners, and the position of prison officers. Attitudes to women and juvenile prisoners are also examined. Trevor May is a professional historian and freelance writer. He has written over a dozen books on social and economic history topics, including seven Shire Albums. Other titles for Shire by this author are: Military Barracks |
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The Victorian and Edwardian Sportsman Richard Tames £3.99 978 0 7478 0666 0 (Album 460) 40 pp, b/w ills. Traditional British sports were informal, spontaneous, regional, brutal and tainted by gambling, drunkenness and disorder. Victorian Britain made sport ‘sporting’ – respectable, rule-bound and a nationwide obsession. Competitiveness became codified. A novel cult of amateurism battled against the emergence of commercialisation. Ancient sports, such as archery and fencing, were revived. New sports, such as tennis and cycling, were invented. Foreign sports, including polo, judo and lacrosse, were imported. Scotland gave curling to Canada and golf to the world. England exported cricket as far as New Zealand. New materials and technologies, from rubber to railways, transformed the way sports were played and organised. New settings were devised – the enclosed racecourse, the cinder track, the swimming-pool, the ice-rink, the velodrome and the football ground. Brooklands was established as the world’s first purpose-built motor-racing circuit and the White City as the first purpose-built Olympic stadium. Sport became intrinsic to the weekend and the bank holiday, to the armed services and the popular press, to education and to empire. Sportsmanship came to represent the best of what it meant to be British. Richard Tames is the creator of the Shire Lifelines series, to which he has contributed titles on Robert Adam, William Morris, Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Josiah Wedgwood. He has also written The Public House for Shire (see below). |
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Adrian Jarvis £3.50 978 0 7478 0471 0 (Album 353) 32 pp, 50 b/w ills. It is common knowledge that during Victoria’s long reign British engineering faced a few challenges but, overall, reigned supreme. Most of the greatest works of the period were designed or made by British engineers and men like Stephenson or Brunel became household names. This book investigates the roles of the great men, and how they related to their subordinates, who actually did most of the work. It looks at how engineering evolved from a trade to the profession of engineering consultancy and from there to the neglected role of the salaried engineer. Adrian Jarvis is Curator of Port History at Merseyside Maritime Museum, Co-director of the Centre for Port and Maritime History at Liverpool, Secretary-General of the International Commission for Maritime History and President of the Association for the History of the Northern Seas. He specialises in the engineering and finance of dock and harbour construction. Other titles for Shire by this author are:
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Lavinia Mitton £3.50 978 0 7478 0487 1 (Album 356) 32 pp, about 50 b/w ills. Nowadays most seriously ill people would want to go to hospital. But the experience of a sick person in the 1830s was completely different. There were few hospitals and the treatment available was hardly an improvement on being nursed at home. However, during the Victorian period there was a massive expansion in the number of hospitals in Britain and they were increasingly the focus of health care and medical education. This book describes the different types of hospitals and the changes that took place to make them more like the establishments we are familiar with today. Lavinia Mitton is a graduate of the University of Oxford and specialised in the social history of medicine. She wrote this book while writing a doctoral thesis in the history of social policy. |
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Cecil A. Meadows £3.50 978 0 7478 0456 7 (Album 32) 32 pp, 33 ills. The Victorian ironmonger's shop was the nineteenth-century equivalent of the modern department store and a vast range of goods could be bought there. If the Victorian housewife needed knife-cleaning powder, candles, a saucepan or wallpaper she would visit the ironmonger. This book describes the Victorian ironmonger's varied stock and also explains the purchase of goods, keeping accounts, giving credit and the prompt delivery service. The late Cecil A. Meadows was apprenticed in the 1920s to one of the last of the great furnishing and general ironmongers in Norwich. He gave many talks and lectures on the subject and contributed to the Eastern Daily Press on bygones as well as to the Hardware Trade Journal.
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Victorian Photographers at Work John Hannavy £7.99 978 0 7478 0358 4 (History in Camera 11) 136 pp, 161 ills. This book seeks to capture and convey something of what it must have been like to have been a photographer between 1840 and the end of the nineteenth century. The earliest practitioners were pioneers in many respects. This book explores what the Victorian studio looked like, what it contained, and what equipment and processes the photographers used. It looks at the styles and formats of early photography and the people who bought it, from the early days, when photographers had to carry out every stage of the process themselves through to the 1880s, when mass-produced materials started to become available over the counter. John Hannavy has been collecting and researching Victorian photography, and writing about it, since the 1970s. He is the author of eighteen other books photography includingand is Head of Art and Design at Bolton Institute. Other titles for Shire by this author are: The English Seaside in Victorian and Edwardian Times
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Simon Dell £3.50 978 0 7478 0591 5 (Album 428) 32 pp, b/w ills. As Queen Victoria’s reign commenced the old watchmen were still patrolling the streets and Bow Street Runners were still investigating crime in London; the counties and boroughs were being policed by their own unpaid parish constables. This book details the demise of the old policing systems and the development of Sir Robert Peel’s ‘New Police’, or ‘Peelers’, their uniform, weapons, pay, working conditions and responsibilities. Simon Dell is a long-serving police officer in the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary and is a member of the Police History Society.
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Richard Tames £4.50 978 0 7478 0573 1 (Album 423) 40 pp, 60 colour ills. The Victorian public house evolved out of the traditional tavern and the humble beerhouse in response to the novel challenge of the garish but soulless gin palace. Incorporating such innovations as large plate-glass windows, gas lighting, the hydraulic beer-engine and the island bar, the reinvented pub became a central feature of working-class life. |
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Trevor May £3.50 978 0 7478 0451 2 (Album 351) 32 pp, 59 b/w ills. Railways quickly became one of the largest employers in the United Kingdom, giving work not only to those who ran the trains, but also to a wide range of craftsmen and ancillary workers. Some railway employees were seamen. Others were horsemen, for railway companies operated some of the largest fleets of horse-drawn vehicles in the land. There were also many women workers, mainly behind the scenes, and these included telegraphists and clerks as well as those who worked in railway laundry and catering services. This book looks at those who ran the railways - as well as those who built them. Military Barracks
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The Victorian Schoolroom Trevor May £3.99 978 0 7478 0243 3 (Album 302) 32 pp, 34 ills. There was a tremendous expansion of education in England and Wales during the nineteenth century. A combination of voluntary effort and government action led to the introduction of a system of elementary education for the working class. This book describes the development of Victorian schools and looks at the evolving role and status of the teacher. The emphasis, however, is on the schoolroom itself. Using contemporary sources, this book looks at what went on in the schoolrooms of Victorian England and Wales, at the way lessons were planned and taught, and at the equipment and teaching resources that were employed. Trevor May is a freelance writer and lectures. Other titles for Shire by this author are: Military Barracks
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David Nalson £3.50 978 0 7478 0460 4 (Album 352), 32 pp, 42 b/w ills The Duke of Wellington’s description of the early-nineteenth- century soldier as ‘the scum of the earth’ and his less famous continuation that ‘it really is wonderful that we should have made them the fine fellows they are’ could be applied equally to the soldiers of the Victorian period. Although lacking the sophisticated weapons of today, Victorian soldiers were basically no different from their present-day successors. This book aims to bring these soldiers to life through their uniforms, weapons, equipment and illustrations of them at war and peace. David Nalson is a member of the Victorian Military History Society and has visited a number of Victorian battlefields. For many years he has been fascinated by the army of Queen Victoria and the personalities involved in it. Now retired, he writes on military history and assists at The Queen’s Royal Lancers’ Museum. Click here for other military-related titles
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Trevor May £3.99 978 0 7478 0331 7 (Album 330) 32 pp. The Victorians were familiar with death and, while they did not welcome it, they felt relatively at ease with it. Sustained by their religious beliefs, the Victorians felt able to celebrate death and to accord full rites of passage to the deceased. This book looks at the background to Victorian ideas and at the way in which those beliefs were given substance in the funeral and through the practices of mourning. While one Victorian authoress was able to claim that ‘It is on the deathbed that the rich and poor are equalised’, this book sets out to show the extent to which funerals reflected the social divisions that were present within nineteenth-century society. There is much in this book to interest social -historians, those with a concern for historical costume, and transport enthusiasts, for there is a -section on the development of the horse-drawn hearse. Trevor May is a freelance writer and lectures; he is the author of ten books on economic and social history. Other titles for Shire by this author are: Military Barracks |
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Trevor May £3.50 978 0 7478 0355 3 (Album 334) 32 pp, 58 ills. Whether it was 'the bastille', 'the spike', 'the work'us', or simply 'the house', the Victorian workhouse was the cause of dread and shame for thousands of men, women and children. The workhouse was the last resort, and the authorities intended that it should be seen as such. This book looks at the principles which lay behind the New Poor Law of 1834; at the design and construction of workhouses; and at the lives of those who entered them, either as officers or as paupers. Trevor May is a freelance writer and lectures; he is the author of ten books on economic and social history. Other titles for Shire by this author are: Military Barracks
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Robin and Carol Wichard 978 0 7478 0433 8 (History in Camera 13) 112pp, 132 ills. In the early 1860s the craze for collecting cartes de visite photographs was at is peak. Between 3 and 4 million cartes were estimated to have been sold annually leaving a diverse and fascinating legacy today. This book attempts to introduce the reader to the world of cartes de visite photographs and the context in which they were producted. It also shows how to date the images and also how to start a collection. Robin and Carol Wichard have been collectors of cartes de visite for over fifteen years and have now built a up a collection over over five thousand examples.
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(Currently out of print - reprinting Spring 2008) Squadron Leader Beryl E. Escott £3.50 978 0 7478 0572 4 (Shire Album 422) 40pp, 81 b/w ills. The story of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force is a journey of exploration. This intriguing history tells the story of the wartime WAAF at work and play. They were no decorative adjunct to the RAF, but an integral working force that eventually saved the RAF 150,000 men, whose places they admirably filled. Debarred from flying, they nevertheless could be found in posts ranging from cooks to aircraft fitters. In secrecy they worked as codebreakers at Bletchley Park, in the Y Listening Service, as code and cypher officers in Churchill’s War Cabinet, as air interpreters, and as SOE agents in occupied France. Many others were posted abroad to work. This book provides a fascinating view of their many roles. |
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