Welsh Journals

has been reset with a larger typeface, which is more pleasant to read, though the resulting price increase (paperback £ 1.80 in 1973) will not encourage widespread personal purchase. Information on location of records has been brought up to date, and new works on source materials have been included. New material has been incorporated in appropriate sections on such topics as Saxon charters, land settlement, and insurance records, and an entirely new chapter has been written on houses, housing and health. On the other hand, the substantial examples of records which appeared as an appendix to the first edition have been entirely omitted. The houses and housing chapter, in common with other improvements made in this second edition, incorporates information and guidance on types of study which have grown rapidly over the last decade, notably vernacular architecture and oral and family history. The range of sources which might be of value to the local historian is clearly vast, and the next ten years may well see a further increase, with consequent problems not only for the student but for the custodians of records. A third edition of this work will, it is hoped, not be marred by the inadequate index suffered by its predecessors. Readers of the WELSH HISTORY REVIEW who have not ignored the book completely in view of its titular claim to be about English local history will find only one reference to Wales in the index, and will therefore either conclude that Welsh history has been ignored or that, as usual, Wales has to be sought within an all-embracing England. Wales has to be sought. Thus, on page 252 the reader will find that the parish returns from the dioceses of Bangor and St. Asaph are included in the Taxation of Norwich of 1254, though the index refers only to Taxation of Norwich. It might be argued in defence that the text and footnotes are littered with county and diocesan names, and that the index could not include them all. If so, why is the name of the obscure Devon parish of Upton Hellions thought worthy of inclusion, when it is only given as an example of the value of field-name study? This book is clearly not for beginners, but local historians, by definition, have a relatively small point of departure. The author often and most helpfully states what topographical areas are covered by the sources he is describing (usually English counties, but occasionally over the border), but the index does not consider such areas worthy of note. A random search for Welsh material produces a curiously diffuse collection of sources and materials: that Wales was in the Old College of St. Francis Xavier, one of the divisions of the English province of the Society of Jesus; that the Registrar of Companies for the United Kingdom has his records in Cardiff; that there are reports on the charities in most Welsh counties as late as 1907 among the printed Reports of the Charity Commissioners; and that the records of several Welsh Nonconformist sects are at least mentioned in footnotes. Undoubtedly Welsh local historians will find much of great value to them in the sources described in this book, but since the parent series already includes a study