Will Wyeth has recently joined the Advisory Board of the IHR’s Centre for the History of People, Place and Community as an ECR member. In this blog he talks about how he came to be an historian of castles. Underwhelming Motorway Castle Quite early on in my Ph.D. I did a tour of two dozen or so castles in south-west Scotland with one my supervisors and his colleague. We set out early on a cold morning from Edinburgh heading south-west into upper Clydesdale. As we neared the nodal motorway stop at Abington, I was told to boot up: “We’re here.” I’d come to castles, indeed medieval British history ..read more

This blog post was written by Louise Ryland-Epton. The Victoria County History of Wiltshire are involved in an exciting new project recovering the lives of medieval women in Wiltshire. Louise Ryland-Epton tells us more about it. These monuments commemorate a medieval woman from Wiltshire, Maud Heath—one dates from the 17th century and the other from the early 19th. They celebrate the narrative that in 1474, Maud entrusted property to several trustees to construct and maintain a causeway (a footpath). Five hundred and fifty years later, the trust still maintains the 4 ½ mile causeway in north ..read more

In this blog, PhD student Phil Winterbottom reflects on the ways in which he has used BBIH as a tool to help him develop his historiographical knowledge and keep up to date with the latest research in his field.  When I began my PhD research in 2020 I had not studied in an academic environment for nearly 35 years. My working life as an archivist had on occasion involved historical research using other archives and secondary sources, and in the year prior to registering as a doctoral student I had also built up a familiarity with the core literature and journals relating to my period and s ..read more

The IHR’s Centre for the History of People, Place and Community has been carrying out some exploratory research on the potential of analysing London’s medieval customs accounts digitally. Detailed, or ‘particular’ customs accounts recorded immense detail about the goods and practices of trade, giving an unparalleled insight into the medieval material world and international networks. The challenge of these sources, however, is in their sheer scale, and their complexity. Eliot Benbow has been undertaking proof-of-concept work as part an IHR Internship. Above: A detail from the paintin ..read more

What’s new in BBIH?   The February 2024 update to the Bibliography of British and Irish History adds 4,115 new publications. The new update includes books, journal articles, book chapters, and edited collections covering all areas of British and Irish history, from 55 BCE to the present day.   These updates bring the total number of BBIH records to 654,285. The February 2024 update includes:   3,389 titles that were published between 2018 and 2024  194 publications relating to Scottish history   2,016 publications about the histories of England and Wales, including 11 ..read more

This blog post was written by Sophia Benko, Graduate Trainee Library Assistant at the IHR Wohl Library. At the core of LGBTQ+ History Month is a desire to celebrate diversity, and this is well reflected in the variety of resources available at the IHR. We hold an excellent range of primary sources regarding LGBTQ+ lives and issues across our collections, with a particular focus on oral histories and memoirs, as well as other works including historiography.  The collections have been strengthened by a variety of new additions on LGBTQ+ history in the last year, listed at the end of th ..read more

The IHR’s Centre for the History of People, Place and Community has been carrying out some exploratory research on the potential of analysing London’s medieval customs accounts digitally. Detailed, or ‘particular’ customs accounts recorded immense detail about the goods and practices of trade, giving an unparalleled insight into the medieval material world and international networks. The challenge of these sources, however, is in their sheer scale, and their complexity. Eliot Benbow has been undertaking proof-of-concept work as part an IHR Internship. The London Customs Accounts provide a weal ..read more

In this blog post Adam Chapman (VCH General Editor) and Ruth Slatter (VCH Architectural Editor) explore the VCH Westmorland archive and reflect on how it helps uncover the hidden (and often forgotten) labour of researchers who contributed to the production of early VCH volumes. Today the The Victoria County History (VCH) is one of the world’s longest-running research projects. However, when initially founded in 1899 the aim was to write an authoritative and encyclopaedic history of every county in England in 6–7 years. The plan was for each county to have a general introductory volume, includi ..read more

Activist, social, political, and insurgent movements are non-state actors who lack a state archive. Their networked activities craft a non-state archive, made up of their personal papers, films, and oral histories as well as those of the entities who interacted with them. For the research I carried out for my forthcoming book, States-in-Waiting, which I revised as a Past & Present Fellow at the IHR, I traveled to 39 archives in eight countries on four continents. In in the aftermaths of the COVID-19 shutdowns and in an environment of diminishing research funding, particularly in the humani ..read more

This blog post was written by Dr Stephen Gadd, Software Developer and GIS Consultant. The IHR’s Centre for the History of People, Place and Community has been carrying out some exploratory research on the potential of analysing London’s medieval customs accounts digitally. Detailed, or ‘particular’ customs accounts recorded immense detail about the goods and practices of trade, giving an unparalleled insight into the medieval material world and international networks. The challenge of these sources, however, is in their sheer scale, and their complexity. Dr Stephen Gadd has been undertaking pr ..read more