The Cotswolds and Regional History
The problem of writing local history, R.H. Hilton suggests, can seldom be solved on the basis of parishes or even of counties; regions with a distinctive character and economy, such as the Cotswolds, are the natural units for the local historian’s attention.
In modern times a much wider gulf has opened between the local and the general historian than existed in the early days of English historical research—the age of Dugdale, Tanner, Madox and Rymer. Until very recently, local history tended to be the work of enthusiastic amateurs, dominated by genealogical interests and lacking contact with the main trends of historical interpretation. One of the obvious reasons for the want of general understanding, evident in much work by local historians, has been the restricted area of their interests. There is, however, a new method of approach which may resolve this problem, and that is through the development of regional history. Regional studies have formed the basis of the historical work of some of our leading contemporary scholars (one thinks of Sir Frank Stenton’s work on the Northern Danelaw). There are, of course, some good examples of county histories—not the old-style histories, written parish by parish, but studies of a county as a whole during a restricted, and therefore manageable, period of time.
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