Emma Griffin

This study looks at the relationship between popular recreations and the spaces in which they took place, and in doing so it provides a history of how England enjoyed itself during the long eighteenth century. Because the poor lacked land of their own, public spaces were needed for their sports and pastimes. Such recreations included: parish wakes and feasts; civic fairs and celebrations; football, cricket and other athletic sports; bull- and bear-baiting; and the annual celebrations of Shrove Tuesday and Guy Fawkes. Three case studies form the core of this book, each looking at the recreations and spaces to be found in different types of settlement: first, the streets and squares of provincial market towns; then the diverse vacant spaces to be found in industrialising towns and villages of the west Midlands and West Riding of Yorkshire; and finally the village greens of rural England. Through a detailed examination of contemporary books, diaries and newspapers, and records in over ...

It is a commonplace of any history textbook that the world’s first industrial revolution took place in Britain.  But why?  What was unique about Britain?  What qualities – political, economic, cultural, geographical, or ecological – did Britain possess that predisposed it towards early industrialisation? And when, why and how did other parts of the world start to follow suit?