Shaping the Past

Dr David Dymond is one of Britain’s most highly respected local historians. He is a Vice President of the British Association for Local History and of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History, President of the Suffolk Records Society, and an honorary fellow of the University of East Anglia. The author of several valued books about the practice of local history, notably Researching and Writing History, his contribution to the study of local history generally, and in his adopted county of Suffolk in particular, has been immensely influential. The essays in this Festschrift are offered as a token of esteem and affection by colleagues, friends and students of David. They consist of new research on aspects of local history from the medieval period to the twentieth century, with a particular focus on Eastern England. Taken together, they illustrate David’s philosophy of local history (that it should be ‘wide ranging, inclusive, integrating and interdisciplinary’). In his introduction, Professor Mark Bailey pays tribute to the breadth and depth of David’s scholarship and to his passion for teaching. These essays, in turn, aim to reflect the values that have always characterised David’s approach: a focus on primary sources meticulously interrogated and a concern to avoid the pitfalls of parochialism by remaining sensitive to the wider influences upon communities. From papers exploring aspects of medieval religion, the contributors move on to medieval trade and industry in Norfolk, Suffolk and Lincolnshire. Two studies of the structures of local elites provide fresh insights into communities at later periods, while the final selection of essays consider fascinating and wide-ranging aspects of nineteenth- and twentieth-century commerce, society and culture. The very varied contributions to this collection aptly reflect the breadth and depth of David Dymond’s own scholarship whilst offering a rich choice of material to anyone with an interest in local history.