Marilyn Palmer

P. S. Barnwell

Malcolm Airs

This research report examines the material evidence for the historical development, architectural characteristics and diverse uses of vernacular workshops. Up to the mid-19th century a large proportion of industrial output was not produced in the large, impressive buildings associated with the famous industrialistsùbut in small buildings built in local architectural styles that blended into the environment. The chapters of this volume look at the vernacular workshop as both a building type and as a workplace. They also analyze the significance of workshops for the industrial economy and process of the 18th and 19th centuries, and present the findings of recording programs carried out to document and evaluate the physical remains.

From Craft to Industry, 1400-1900

The Vernacular Workshop

The Hearth Tax (1662-89) is the only national listing of people between the medieval poll taxes and the 19th-century census returns. It was a property tax, measured by the number of fireplaces in the dwelling of each eligible household. The data provides valuable insights into national wealth, population and social structure. This study goes further than any before in linking these general questions to a full investigation of changing and diverse forms of domestic building and house use.

The Later Stuart House and Society

Houses and the Hearth Tax

Marco Mostert

Assembly is a central feature of the European political process between the demise of the Roman Empire and the rise of the bureaucratic state in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Historians have often neglected the crucial rule of political assemblies in their own right, concentrating instead on exceptional or extraordinary attention-catching events which occurred at assemblies. Earlier generations of scholars tried to discern in such assemblies the forerunners of later medieval parliaments and other forms of representative government. By contrast, the contributors to this volume present medieval assemblies in their own terms. Were political assemblies in the earlier Middle Ages convened to confirm decisions already taken elsewhere or were they genuinely deliberative? How, if at all, did political assemblies create consensus? At what level(s) of the political and administrative hierarchy were assemblies held, who attended such gatherings, how were they conducted, and where were they held? The main focus is on assemblies of emperors, kings, and princes, and on those of townsfolk, those some more local assemblies are also discussed. The over-arching thematic structure relates to the purposes of assemblies and how they worked, their practical and ritual or symbolic aspects, and the degree to which they were stage-managed, and by whom. The contributors bring archaeological, as well as historical, evidence to bear and present a range of geographical, political and historiographical approaches and traditions. The papers offer a coherent thread of analysis running from the immediate successor states of the Roman Empire to the High Middle Ages and range in geographic coverage from Scandinavia to Catalonia, and from Ireland to Russia.

P. S. Barnwell

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