Vol. 2 has title: The Victoria history of the county of Middlesex; v. have title: A history of Middlesex.

This volume contains the histories of the 22 parishes in the hundreds of Brightwells Barrow and Rapsgate, extending from the Cotswold escarpment above Gloucester to the Thames at Lechlade and including much of the Churn, Coln, and Leach valleys. Although Cranham and Chedworth parishes had extensive ancient beechwoods and Kempsford and Lechlade wide meadows bordering the Thames, most of the area was formerly one of traditional Cotswold agriculture based on large open fields and downland sheep-pastures. After enclosure large sheep-farms grew turnips and grass leys, but the late- 19th-century...

VOLUME III contains the history of eccle-siastical organization in Cheshire, both before and after the Reformation, medi-eval religious houses, Chester cathedral, education before 1903, and the more historically important endowed grammar schools in the county. In the Middle Ages the organization of the church in Cheshire was based on parishes which in the east of the county were exceptionally large, while those of the west resembled more closely the nor-mal English parish. Between 1075 and 1102 Chester was the seat of a bishop; for the rest of the Middle Ages the county lay in the diocese of...

This volume describes the southern part of Bramber rape, the easternmost of the three rapes of West Sussex. It tells the history of 19 parishes lying along the coastal strip and over the South Downs. The rape takes its name from the castle at Bramber, which was the centre of the feudal honour and in whose shadow the de Braoses, the lords of the rape, planted a new town. Neighbouring Steyning, once one of the chief towns of the county, was a Saxon foundation with a college of secular canons and a port on the river Adur. The port gradually silted up and was replaced by that at New Shoreham,...

The volume covers a large area at the southern end of the Yorkshire Welds, lying west of the city of Hull and the town of Beverley. It is concerned with the history of fourteen parishes which comprise the greater part of the Hunsley Beacon division of Harthill wapentake. Though the rolling chalk hills of the wolds dominate the area, several of the parishes extend into the low- lying ground of the Hull valley to the east and the Vale of York to the west. In South Cave parish the reclamation of Broomfleet Island from the river Humber adds further variety to the agricultural history of the area....

The volume relates the history of Ossul-stone hundred and of the parishes of Friern Barnet, Finchley, and Hornsey, which form the outer part of the hundred's Finsbury division. The article on Hornsey covers Highgate village, including the half which lay within the county of London from 1889 until 1965, and a peninsular part of the parish, south-east of Seven Sisters Road, transferred to London in 1899. Before their inclusion in Greater London in 1965, Friern Barnet was an urban district, with 29,000 inhabitants, and Finchley and Hornsey were municipal boroughs, with populations of 69,000 and...

This volume contains the administrative and parliamentary history of the county, a chapter on its forests, and a table of population. As a County Palatine in the later middle ages Cheshire developed institutions which differed from those of other English counties. No justices of the peace were appointed there until the 16th century, and the palatine courts were abolished only in 1830. The first part of the volume describes Cheshire's government in the middle ages and its gradual assimilation to normal' counties, the work of the justices of the peace from the 16th to the 19th century, and that...

This volume is devoted to an account of Roman Cambridgeshire. It completes the general' articles on the county for the Victoria History, while the topography, on which four volumes have already been published, remains to be completed in three or four further volumes. Although in Roman times the county in no way formed a unit, and may indeed have been divided between the provinces of Britannia Superior and Inferior along the line of the Fen Causeway, and although only a relatively small part of the area looked towards the Roman settlement of Cambridge as its centre while the rest looked...

This volume contains the histories of 24 parishes in south-east Cambridgeshire, forming the hundreds of Chilford, Radfield, and Whittlesford. Traversed, and in part bounded, by the Icknield Way and the ancient Wool Street, they stretch from the neighbourhood of Cambridge to the Suffolk border. In the valley of the Cam or Granta the arable was cultivated in open fields until the early- rgth-century inclosures. On the south-eastern upland the medieval clearance of ancient woodland in the heavy clays produced much early inclosure, while the heathland lying along the Icknield Way encouraged...

This volume completes the general articles planned for Staffordshire and also contains the history of the county town. Four articles on agriculture survey a thousand years of farming. Cultivation gradually reduced the extensive woodlands recorded in Domesday Book. The progress of arable farming in the south was paralleled by that of stock-rearing in the north, while from the 17th century dairying became increasingly important. The water meadows of the Dove were famous. By the 19th century Staffordshire was a county of great estates noted for improving landlords and agents who encouraged new...