The small market town of Bungay, situated close to the River Waveney on the Norfolk-Suffolk border, has been continuously settled by Iron Age, Roman and Saxon communities. The town achieved considerable prominence and prosperity when the wealthy Bigod family, Earls of Norfolk, established a castle fortress here in c. 1165. By the eighteenth century it had grown into a thriving market town and became known as 'Little London'. The river navigation increased with the supply of timber, coals, malt, and dairy products to British troops during the Napoleonic Wars. Brewing became an increasingly...

Colchester at Work is a fascinating pictorial history of the working life of the Essex town of Colchester in the last hundred and more years.

Wakefield was a prosperous market town in the Middle Ages, but it was transformed by coal mining during the Industrial Revolution. Mining dominated the local economy until the last pits closed in the 1970s and 1980s. Trade in cloth and cloth finishing were also cornerstones of Wakefield’s economy, drawing in merchants from across the north. Local families – the Milnes’s and the Naylors – dominated the trade until the economic depression of the 1820s and increasing mechanisation. Cloth production started on a small scale and many houses in the area had a weaving shed until the arrival...