Looking back: The Cotswolds and English national identity, c. 1890-1950

Journal of Historical Geography

Volumn 25, Issue 4, 1999, Pages 502-516

  Brace, Catherine ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF EXETER   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY; IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION; NATIONAL IDENTITY; NINETEENTH CENTURY; RURAL SOCIETY; TWENTIETH CENTURY;

COTSWOLDS; ENGLAND(GLOUCESTERSHIRE); UNITED KINGDOM;

EID: 0033212838     PISSN: 03057488     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1006/jhge.1999.0163     Document Type: Article

References (107)

1. S. Daniels, Fields of Vision: Landscape Imagery and National Identity in England and the United States (Cambridge 1993) 5.
2. S. Daniels, Fields of Vision: Landscape Imagery and National Identity in England and the United States 1993 5.Ibid.;
3. J. Taylor, Shakespeare Land: A Dream of England, (Manchester 1994);
4. A. Potts, 'Constable country' between the wars, in R. Samuel, (Ed.), Patriotism: The Making and Unmaking of National Identity. Volume 3: National Fictions (London 1989);
5. M. Chase, This is no claptrap: this is our heritage, in M. Chase and C. Shaw (Eds), The Imagined Past: History and Nostalgia (Manchester 1989);
6. J. Donald, How English is it? Popular literature and national culture, E. Carter, J. Donald and J. Squires (Eds), Space and Place: Theories of Identity and Location (London 1993);
7. P. Dodd, Englishness and the national culture, in R. Colls and P. Dodd (Eds), Englishness: Politics and Culture 1880-1920 (London 1986);
8. A. Howkins, The discovery of rural England, in Englishness: Politics and Culture 1880-1920 1986 Ibid.,
9. P. Brooker and P. Widdowson, A literature for England, in Englishness: Politics and Culture 1880-1920 1986- Ibid.;
10. M. Wiener, English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit 1850-1980 (Cambridge 1982).
11. Chase, English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit 1850-1980 op cit.;
12. Potts, English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit 1850-1980 op cit., 176.
13. Potts, English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit 1850-1980 op. cit., 165.
14. English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit 1850-1980 Ibid., 169.
15. Chase, English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit 1850-1980 op. cit., 128.
16. J. Lowerson, Battles for the countryside, in F. Gloversmith (Ed.), Class, Culture and Social Change: A New View of the 1930s (Sussex 1980) 258.
17. Class, Culture and Social Change: A New View of the 1930s Ibid., 259.
18. I. Brown, The Heart of England (London 1935) 67.
19. S. Edge, The Cotswolds, English Illustrated Magazine (November 1909) 160.
20. S. Edge, The Cotswolds, English Illustrated Magazine 1909 160.Ibid., 160-1.
21. S. Baldwin, On England (London 1927).
22. Edge, On England op cit.
23. Baldwin, On England op cit., 1.
24. H. Cunningham, The Conservative Party and patriotism, in Colls and Dodd, On England op. cil, 292.
25. R. Blake Brown, Mr. Prune on Cotswold (London 1938) 78.
26. H. Ditchfield, Rural England: Cottage and Village Life (London 1993 [1912]) 59.
27. Ditchfield was also general editor of the Memorials of Country History Series and editor of the Journal of the British Archaeological Association and three different county archaeological journals. Biographical information from Who was Who 1929-1940: Volume 111 (London 1947) 368.
28. Potts, Who Was Who 1929-1940 op eh., 165.
29. A. Murray, The Cotswolds (Gloucester and London 1930) 19.
30. A. Murray, The Cotswolds 1930 19. Ibid., 20.
31. C. Cameron, Green Fields of England: A Book of Footpath Travels (London 1930) 70.
32. Murray, Green Fields of England: A Book of Footpath Travels op cit., 94.
33. F. G. Richens, The unknown Cotswolds, Great Western Railway Magazine 47 (May 1935) 268.
34. M. Chase and C. Shaw, The dimensions of nostalgia, in M. Chase and C. Shaw (Eds), The Imagined Past: History and Nostalgia (Manchester 1989).
35. J. A. Gibbs, A Cotswold Village (Gloucester 1988 [1898]), 116.
36. J. Lewis, Introduction, in J. A. Gibbs, A Cotswold Village, (Stroud 1988) 10-11.
37. J. Lewis, Introduction, A Cotswold Village, 1988 10-11.Ibid., 42.
38. J. Lewis, Introduction, A Cotswold Village, 1988 10-11.Ibid., 122.
39. J. Lewis, Introduction, A Cotswold Village, 1988 10-11.Ibid., 19-20.
40. H. Branch, Cotswoldand Vale: Or Glimpses of Past and Present in Gloucestershire (Cheltenham 1907) 2.
41. George Gissing's Worker's in the Dawn (1880) dealt with the subject of vice, with the dire effect it produces on human beings, both physically and morally, when generation after generation lives and dies without a hope, or even wish, for anything better.
42. See P. Sieveking (Ed.), British Biographical Archive, Microfiche Edition, Sheet 458, Section 286.
43. A. Gissing, The Footpath Way in Gloucestershire (London and Toronto 1924) 3, 211.
44. Howkins,The Footpath Way in Gloucestershire op cit.
45. Ibid., 71.
46. Gibbs,The Footpath Way in Gloucestershire op cit., 164.
47. Howkins, The Footpath Way in Gloucestershire op cit., 71.
48. H. V. Morton, In Search of England (London 1927);
49. E. M. Forster, Havoc, in C. Williams Ellis (Ed.), Britain and The Beast (London 1938) 44.
50. R. Henriques, The Cotswolds (London 1950) 99.
51. The Cotswolds was published in the Vision of England series, described as a collection of personal books on the English scene.
52. See F. C. Roberts (Ed.), Obituaries from the Times, 1961-1970 (Reading 1975) 362.
53. G. Dawber, Some Cotswold villages and a few reflections, Architecture 1 (December 1896) 541.
54. Biographical information from Dictionary of National Biography 1931-1940 (Oxford 1949);
55. C. Gordon, The arts and crafts architecture of the Cotswold region, in M. Greenstead, (Ed.), The Arts and Crafts Movement in the Cotswolds (Stroud 1993).
56. Briggs, The Arts and Crafts Movement in the Cotswolds op cit., 216.
57. H. J. Massingham, Wold Without End (London 1932) 218, 269.
58. H. J. Massingham, Remembrance (London 1941) 67.
59. H. J. Massingham, Remembrance 1941 67.Ibid., 103.
60. W. J. Keith, The Rural Tradition (Sussex and Toronto 1975).
61. A. Garruthers, The guild of handicraft at Chipping Campden, in M. Greenstead (Ed.), The Arts and Crafts Movement in the Cotswolds (Stroud 1993).
62. Chase and Shaw, The Arts and Crafts Movement in the Cotswolds op cit., 34.
63. Chase, The Arts and Crafts Movement in the Cotswolds op cit., 129;
64. Lowerson,The Arts and Crafts Movement in the Cotswolds op cit., 263.
65. Potts, The Arts and Crafts Movement in the Cotswoldsop cit., 163.
66. Weaving a version of the national past into arguments about contemporary society is not a peculiarly English phenomenon. Chase and Shaw show how European writers and thinkers such as Weber, Tonnies and Durkheim saw that contemporary society was critically different from its predecessors and in that difference lay a loss. Chase and Shaw, The Arts and Crafts Movement in the Cotswolds op cit., 6-7.
67. Gissing, The Arts and Crafts Movement in the Cotswolds op cit., 209.
68. Gissing, The Arts and Crafts Movement in the Cotswolds ., Ibid., 209.
69. Massingham, The Arts and Crafts Movement in the Cotswolds op cit., 81, 72.
70. R. Williams, The Country and the City (London 1975).
71. R. Williams, The Country and the City 1975.Ibid.
72. Chase, The Country and the City op cit., 134.
73. E. Belcher, Rambles Among the Cotswolds (Evesham 1892) 12.
74. L. Lee, Cider with Rosie (Harmondsworth 1985 [1959]) 85.
75. L. Lee, Cider with Rosie 1985 Ibid., 104-5, 216.
76. Gibbs, Cider with Rosie op cit., 99.
77. Branch, Cider with Rosie op cit., 83.
78. H. W. Timperley, Introduction, in N. Carrington (Ed.), Broadway and the Cotswolds (Birmingham 1933) 15.
79. J. B. Priestley, English Journey (London 1984 [1934]) 45.
80. R. Wills, The Cotswold Country: An Illustrated Handbook describing the Glories of a Charming Countryside with some Notes on the Progress of the Cotswold Stores (Gloucester c. 1929) 7;
81. Gibbs, The Cotswold Country: An Illustrated Handbook Describing the Glories of A Charming Countryside with Some Notes on the Progress of the Cotswold Stores op cit., 77.
82. Baldwin, The Cotswold Country: An Illustrated Handbook Describing the Glories of A Charming Countryside with Some Notes on the Progress of the Cotswold Stores op cit., 6.
83. P. H. Ditchfield, The Charm of the English Village (London 1908) 47.
84. Ditchfield, The Charm of the English Village op cit., 1.
85. Ditchfield, The Charm of the English Village Ibid.
86. Ibid.
87. Chase has argued that in the interwar years real and imagined pasts were mobilized in pursuit of a hidden agenda: ultra-conservative in its implications and profoundly reactionary in its social agenda. Chase,
88. Biographical details from Who was Who 1916-1928: Volume II (London 1947) 443.
89. L. I. Guiney, Some account of Arcady, Blackwood's Magazine (1913) 274.
90. J. C. Squire, Introduction, in E. Blunden, The Scenery of England (London 1932) vii.
91. Edmund Blunden, who wrote Squire's entry for the Dictionary of National Biography, noted that Squire strove for a reunion in English life of the useful and the beautiful. See E. Blunden, Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford 1971) 917.
92. E. Blunden, in J. Giles and T. Middleton (Eds), Writing Englishness 1900-1950 (London 1995) 83.
93. R. Samuel, Theatres of Memory. Volume One: Past and Present in Contemporary Culture (London 1994) 6.
94. Gissing, Theatres of Memory. Volume One: Past and Present in Contemporary Culture op cit., 90.
95. H. W. Timperley, A Cotswold Book (London 1931) 124.
96. J. J. Hissey, A Leisurely Tour in England (London 1913).
97. H. A. Evans, Highways and Byways in Oxford and the Cotswolds (London 1905) 182.
98. Priestley, Highways and Byways in Oxford and the Cotswolds op cit., 48-9.
99. Edge, Highways and Byways in Oxford and the Cotswolds op cit., 161.
100. Gissing, Highways and Byways in Oxford and the Cotswolds op cit., 62.
101. S. P. B. Mais, Round About England (London 1935) 181.
102. Times Literary Supplement, 30 January 1937, 79
103. in Lowerson, Times Literary Supplement op cit., 263.
104. Though writing for different reasons and with different motivations, authors demonstrate a remarkable consistency of imagery in their use of the past in representations of the Cotswolds. What are significantly absent are voices or opinions which challenge the traditional, rural, pastoral images of the region; the exhaustive search for such voices may open up interesting new avenues of research.
105. D. Matless, Doing the English village, in P. Cloke, M. Doel, D. Matless, M. Phillips and N. Thrift (Eds), Writing the Rural: Five Cultural Geographies (London 1994) 24.
106. Samuel, Writing the Rural: Five Cultural Geographies op cit.
107. Samuel Writing the Rural: Five Cultural Geographies Ibid., x.