11/09/2024
We have had a great review of our book in the The Local Historian journal. Here are a couple of extracts....
This book had its origin as part of a community-engagement programme linked to a funded project dealing with Smithills Estate, an upland area lying to the west of Bolton, Occupying 1700 acres, the estate is the largest property owned by the Woodland Trust.
The objective of the project was to chart the history of the people who worked and lived on the estate. Those involved, who brought a range of interests and expertise in local history research to the project, became the Smithills Estate Research Group. Their endeavours, undertaken during the Covid lockdown, have resulted in the publication of an award-winning book containing 19 contributions by 11 contributors.
The chapters ...... adopt differing approaches. Some deal with local events, such as the murder of a young Scottish draper in 1838, relating what happened and evaluating the evidence to identify the person or persons involved, along with the underpinning motivation. Another provides details of the working and social lives of several families who occupied one of the farms on the estate from the early eighteenth century onwards. Other surviving sites are used to introduce themes, including cotton handloom weaving and its decline during the nineteenth century and elementary schooling in the decades leading up to the First World War. The major historiographical theme of women’s work is covered in several of the contributions, not only concerning farming and textile production, but also laundry work and bookbinding, In other instances, the surviving physical evidence provides the focus for discussion, as in the histories of reconstructed cairns on Winter Hill and of the restored Sixty-three Steps rising from the Dean Brook Valley.
The book is available from Smithills Hall, Horwich Heritage or Amazon, see the link above.
