A history of Yorkshire: 'County of the Broad Acres'
Prof. David HeyClick HERE to download some sample pages. The file is about 240Kb. The illustrations you see are extremely low resolution, but you will get some idea of how beautiful the book is.
‘A Triumph of Local History Writing’
This book is magnificent (there is no other word for it), fitting both in scale and quality its subject. Ranging from the Stone Age to the 1990s, it is no mean feat to have captured in 140,000 words the essential history of a county that comprises almost one-eighth of England. David Hey, however, rises to the challenge with a bravura performance that sets a new standard for popular county and regional histories. The book is also visually ravishing. Hey’s text is graced by around 500 carefully chosen illustrations, many of them high-definition colour photographs specially taken for the volume ...’ [review by Malcolm Chase]
The historic county of Yorkshire lasted for about 1,000 years and was by far the largest in England. Dismantled into five parts in 1974, its distinctive identity is still recognised by its own people and by outsiders. It covered more than 3¾ million acres and accounted for about an eighth of the whole of the country, stretching from the river Tees in the north to the Humber in the south and from the North Sea to the highest points of the Pennines.
In such a large geographical area we find a great deal of diversity of experience and history. Life on the Pennines or the North York Moors has always been very different from life in low-lying agricultural districts such as Holderness or the Humberhead Levels. In many ways, the farmers of the Vale of York have had more in common with those the Midland Plain than with the miners, steel workers and textile workers of their own county.
Until relatively recently people felt that they belonged to their own parish and to a wider neighbourhood which was bounded by the nearest market towns and which they called their ‘country’. Relatively few people travelled to other parts of Yorkshire or had any contact with the ‘strangers’ who lived beyond their own district. Although the Elizabethan and Stuart gentry were conscious of belonging to Yorkshire, and outsiders made comments (usually adverse) on Yorkshiremen as a breed apart, ordinary folk did not have this sense of belonging to Yorkshire until quite late in its history. The success of the Yorkshire County Cricket Club from the 1890s onwards seems to have been the great stimulus that united Yorkshire people, and which gave them a sense of their superiority.
The history of Yorkshire is more varied than that of any other English county. The changing fortunes of the many different regions of the county – from Pennine moors and valley towns to the flats of Holderness; from industrialised cities to quiet market towns – are a major theme in this important new book. Outsiders may recognise a Yorkshire accent, but local people can place a speaker much more precisely in a particular ‘country’.
It is this diversity of experience within the historic county of Yorkshire that David Hey seeks to capture in this important and fascinating new book.
This book has had terrific reviews. Order your copy today. Sumptuously illustrated
