New Centre for the History of People, Place and Community - on Twitter!

The Centre for the History of People, Place and Community is the new home for metropolitan history at the Institute of Historical Research, bringing together urban history with other kinds of local history, and fostering new, connected conversations across disciplines and between researchers and practitioners.

A website is coming soon, but for now you can follow the new Centre on Twitter @CHPPC_IHR to stay in touch with news and activities. We look forward to welcoming you to events in the future!

British and Irish Furniture Makers Online (BIFMO)

The IHR and the Furniture History Society are delighted that the BIFMO database is now freely available online at https://bifmo.data.history.ac.uk.

The initial phase of the project has seen the construction of the BIFMO database comprising information on English furniture makers drawn from the 1986 guide to the trade, the Dictionary of English Furniture Makers, 1660-1940, as well as from the London Jouners' Company apprenticeship and freedom records, 1640-1720. The database contains detailed biographies of British and Irish furniture makers, providing a rich resource for historians of social, economic, political, art, furniture and material culture, as well as to collectors, connoisseurs and the art market. 

In addition to extending the chronological dates of the biographical data from the 16th century to the present day, the second phase of the project is undertaking new research to explore key historical questions surrounding the furniture making industry. Ongoing development of the BIFMO website will also introduce new ways of engaging with the data. If you would like more information about the project, or the database, please do get in touch: https://bifmo.data.history.ac.uk/contact.

Layers of London project

Supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and with partners including London Metropolitan Archives, Historic England, Museum of London Archaeology, The British Library, Senate House Library, and The National Archives, this project is developing a new interactive online resource in the form of a georeferenced multi-layered map of London containing data from the Roman period through to the present day. You can find out more from the project's website at: https://layersoflondon.blogs.sas.ac.uk/  and get the latest news by following @layersoflondon on Twitter.

The project relies heavily on members of the public getting involved and contributing.  We’d particularly like to hear from you if you are interested in contributing to the website’s historical content, or if you’d like to take part in the testing of the online platform. Simply complete the online form at: https://layersoflondon.blogs.sas.ac.uk/get-involved/ and the project team will be in touch.

Anita McConnell, A Survey of the Networks Bringing a Knowledge of Optical Glass-Working to the London Trade, 1500-1800

Ed. Jenny Bulstrode
Published by the Whipple Museum of the History of Science, Cambridge, 2016. ISBN: 9780906271285. Free pdf download 

Thanks to the work of Jenny Bulstrode and the Whipple Museum, Cambridge, this monograph by the late Dr Anita McConnell is now available as a free pdf download from the Whipple Museum's website. Originally drafted in the 1990s while Anita was a researcher at the CMH working on her 'Optical glass and the scientific instrument trade in London before 1750' project, this 183-page volume is now richly illustrated with images from the Whipple Museum's collections. Download

New book: Mobilising Housing Histories: Learning from London's Past

Eds. Peter Guillery and David Kroll
Published by RIBA Publishing. Price: £40. April 2017 ISBN: 9781859466315

The problem of creating affordable, adequate housing is not a new one. Arising from the CMH’s conference ‘Mobilising London’s housing histories: the provision of homes since 1850’ held in June 2013, this new book from RIBA Publishing, aimed at anyone with a professional or personal interest in improving housing provision everywhere, offers in-depth studies of London’s housing past and seeks to stimulate sustainable solutions for the future by linking to wider historical and contemporary social contexts. £5 off with the code mobilising5 when ordered online at: https://www.ribabookshops.com/item/mobilising-housing-histories-learning-from-londons-past/86033/

PASSAGE: writing on walking in London 1550-1950

This new interdisciplinary project - a collaboration between the CMH, Senate House Library and the School of Advanced Study - seeks to understand the process and experience of walking in London through literature published between the sixteenth-century and the early twentieth-century. The project takes as its approach a detailed investigation of a text or type of text (organised into 'Episodes'). Visit the blog at https://passagewalks.blogs.sas.ac.uk/ to explore the first text, A Sunday Ramble (1775).  

PASSAGE is also open to anyone who wishes to contribute an Episode on a particular theme.  

London and the First World War Conference podcasts

Podcasts of nineteen of the papers given at the CMH/IWM conference on London and the First World War (20-21 March 2015) are now available at: www.history.ac.uk/podcasts/london-and-first-world-war. They include the keynote lectures by Adrian Gregory (Pembroke College, Oxford), 'London: a wartime metropolis in comparative perspective', and Jerry White (Birkbeck, University of London), 'London in the First World War: questions of legacy', along with papers from sessions on 'daily life and institutions', 'enemy aliens', 'transport', 'the empire view', 'dissent', 'air war' and 'leisure'.

People, Property and Charity: The Clothworkers’ Company 1500-1688 (https://www.clothworkersproperty.org/)

Arising from a CMH project, funded by The Clothworkers’ Company, with research carried out by Dr Annaleigh Margey, this website was officially launched on 10 October. It provides the first detailed history of the benefactors, property acquisitions and other bequests of The Clothworkers’ Company in the City of London during the late medieval and early modern periods. Focusing specifically on the properties that came to the company through the bequests of several benefactors, it traces the company’s management of these properties and associated charities. The site provides biographies of the most significant property benefactors, as well as listings of benefactors who bequeathed silver, plate, and monies for charity and entertainment purposes, and histories of the properties granted to the Company.

Records of London's Livery Companies Online (ROLLCO) Project

The ROLLCO database has see three recent updates, which have included freedom and apprenticeship records from the Bowyers', Founders, Girdlers', Musicians', Salters', and Tallow Chandlers' Companies, and brings the total number of individuals contained in the database to over 350,000. The database can be searched at londonroll.org. The new records include a number of notable people. To read more about them and the updates, see the the ROLLCO blogs here.

Medieval Merchants and Money conference podcasts

Seventeen papers from our highly successful conference held last November in celebration of the work of Professor Jim Bolton (QMUL) are now online as free podcasts. We are very grateful to the speakers who have given permission to make their papers available.

Locating London's Past wins BSECS prize

We are delighted that Locating London's Past has won the 2014 British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (BSECS) Prize for Digital Resources. This prestigious prize, sponsored by Adam Matthew Digital, is awarded annually to the best resource supporting eighteenth-century studies.  Locating London's Past was funded by a grant from the JISC e-content programme 2011, and is a partnership between the CMH, the University of Hertfordshire and the University of Sheffield. Visit the website at: https://www.locatinglondon.org

CMH Publications

A number of our publications can still be purchased online from the University of London's bookstore. Bestsellers include: The Religious Houses of London and Middlesex; Guilds, Society & Economy in London 1450-1800 and London in the 1690s: A Social Atlas. Also available are IHR Conference Series volumes: London and Beyond: Essays in Honour of Derek Keene and A History of the French in London: Liberty, Equality, Opportunity.

Mobilising London's Housing Histories Conference Podcasts

Papers from the 'Mobilising London's Housing Histories: The Provision of Homes since 1850' conference, held on 27-28 June, are now available as podcasts on History SPOT

Life in the Suburbs Project

Datasets compiled by the ESRC-funded 'Life in the Suburbs: health, domesticity and status in early modern London' project are now available from the UK Data Archive: Study No 7244: Life in the Suburbs: Health, Domesticity and Status in Early Modern London, 1523-1720

Going Underground Conference Podcasts

The majority of papers given at the recent 'Going Underground: Travel Beneath the Metropolis 1863-2013' conference, marking the 150th Anniversary of the London Underground, are now available as podcasts on History SPOT

Book: London and Beyond: Essays in Honour of Derek Keene (ed. Matthew Davies and James A. Galloway)

The third title in the IHR's new conference series, London and Beyond arose from the CMH's 20th Anniversary conference in 2008, at which Derek Keene was guest of honour. Derek was the founding director of the CMH, from 2001 Leverhulme Professor of Comparative Metropolitan History (also based at the Centre) and, before his retirement in 2008, acting director of the IHR. The papers in this festschrift are written by internationally renowned and long-standing colleagues, postgraduate students, or researchers who began their careers under Derek’s guidance.  Chapters range from the effect of flooding around the Thames in the middle ages to railways in early 20th-century Paris and London. Buy

Book: Cities into Battlefields (ed. Stefan Goebel and Derek Keene)

Arising from the Centre's 2004 'Metropolitan catastrophes' conference on cities' role in warfare, Ashgate have just published Cities into Battlefields: Metropolitan Scenarios, Experiences and Commemorations of Total War.  The volume explores the cultural imprint of military conflict on metropolises world wide in the era of the First and Second World Wars and examines how the emergence of 'total' warfare blurred the boundaries between home and front. With contributions from Susan Grayzel, Peter Stansky, Patrice Higonnet, Eyal Ginio, Maureen Healey, Tim Cole, Antony Beevor, Lisa Yoneyama, Julie Higashi and Jay Winter, it is currently available at the reduced price of £58.50 (normally £65) from the Ashgate website.

Online mapping resource: Locating London's Past

The Locating London's Past website is now available at: www.locatinglondon.org. The website enables users to map information from a vast array of sources, including trial accounts from the Old Bailey, hearth tax, plague deaths and population data and even archaeological records, on to John Rocque’s 1746 map of London, now fully referenced to modern geographical coordinates. This new resource is the result of a collaborative project, funded by JISC, involving the CMH, the Universities of Sheffield and Hertfordshire, and Museum of London Archaeology (see CMH project page for details).

'The Last of the Jobbers'

Gazetteer of Markets and Fairs

Want to investigate markets and fairs? Take a look at our Gazetteer of Markets and Fairs in England and Wales to 1516 - the first systematic national survey of the establishment and operation of markets and fairs from c.900. It contains entries for 2,400 places and lists details for more than 2,600 markets and nearly 3,000 fairs.

Register of Research in Progress

The Centre's register of research in progress on the history of London has just been updated with information on theses completed in 2009, along with some thirty new topics currently being studied.  We would like the register to be as comprehensive as possible, so if you are actively researching an aspect of London history and you wish to be added to the list, please email the Centre providing details of your research and indicating whether you are willing for your email address to be included in the entry.