A history of Lancashire (due in 2009)
Alan CrosbyThe historic county of Lancashire was the last in England to be created, at the end of the twelfth century. For a long time many considered the area to be one of the 'dark corners' of the kingdom, a land of impenetrable mosslands and inhospitable fells. Yet Lancashire was also quite an extensive county: its borders never really made sense, stretching as they did from Barrow-in-Furness and the county stone at the top of Wrynose Pass in the Lake District to the river Mersey in the south-west and the fells above Manchester in the south-east. And when the county was transformed by the arrival of industry the geography of the Lancashire looked odder than ever. The county town was in the north, yet the major centres of population were at the opposite end, in Manchester and Liverpool.
Geographical and landscape contrasts form one theme of Dr Alan Crosby's major new book about the history of Lancashire. Prominent, too, is that great historical shift which took place in the county towards the end of the eighteenth century. At this date huge tracts of southern and central Lancashire were transformed by the arrival of industry, including, of course, the cotton textile trade that in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries came to define the popular image of the county.
In this beautifully illustrated book, Dr Crosby looks at all of the varied and fascinating aspects of Lancashire's past and brings many new insights to bear on the story of one of England's most interesting counties.