The latest Ordnance Survey maps

The latest Ordnance Survey maps are of great value and, when related to those of earlier editions and tithe apportionment, commutation and estate maps of past centuries assist in the unravelling of the development of tenurial holdings, field boundaries, land usage and road layouts and the development of town and city centres and the linking of suburbs and all manner of things covered, in later years, by the umbrella term "town and country planning".
It is of benefit to compare all the very early maps one with another, as each will show something different, and there may be anomalies which lead to interesting studies and and quite possibly, new discoveries.
The Ordnance Survey maps of the Iron Age, Roman and other historical periods, are necessary references, and the specialist atlases " Anglo-Saxon England, Historical Atlas of Britain, etc., mentioned elsewhere in this book " may be considered essential.
For the dedicated, long-term researcher An Agricultural Atlas of England and Wales by J.T. Coppock (London and reprint 1982) is useful, and a further basic work is the Phillimore Atlas and Index of Parish Registers by Cecil Humphery-Smith (Chichester 1984), composed mainly of "genealogical maps "of the pre-1832 parishes on a county-by-county basis and topographical maps from Bell's Gazetteer of 1834, and a 283-page index of deposited registers at county and public record offices, plus copies noted in Boyd's marriage, Pallot's marriage, and other lists.
There is also a useful booklet Maps and Plans in the Public Record Office (PRO 1967).
Social structure
A good general introduction to the subject is A Social History of England by Asa Briggs (Pelican Books 1987), which also contains an excellent forty-page bibliography.
The Common People by J.F.C. Harrison (London 1984) is also relevant.
It covers the period from the Norman Conquest to the present day, and has a long section on suggestions for further reading.
Also useful in this area is An Introduction to English Demography , edited by E.W. Wrigley (1966).
As has been shown earlier and the records of social structure (and population) may conveniently be divided into three.
Those before 1538 (the point when Thomas Cromwell legislated for parish registers) and those after 1801 (when official censuses began), and those between the two dates mentioned.
For the first period, local historical societies or historians with local interests are increasingly publishing lay subsidy and other early records, which permit a (sometimes incomplete) picture to be built up of local populations and the relative prosperity of individual heads of family.
The information contained in the Domesday folios is, when used cautiously, also of value to the pre-plague period.
The following volumes are relevant:Rural England 1066–1348 by R.E.
Hallam (London 1981),Lay Subsidies and Poll Taxes by M.W. Beresford (1963),Parliamentary Taxes on Personal Property 1290–1344 by J.F. Willard (1934).
A valuable work, covering many aspects of social structure and population distribution, is that edited by R.E.
Glasscock,The Lay Subsidy of 1334 (1975).
Two articles of interest are "The Pre-Plague Population of England "by J.C.
Russell, which appeared in the Journal of British Studies vi(2) 1966, and "The Population of an English Village -1086–1801" by W.G. Hoskins, which was printed in his volume Provincial England (1963).
For the second of the historical periods mentioned (1538–1801) the following books (all available in paperback) are most useful background texts:Sixteenth Century England by Joyce Youings (London 1984),English Society in the Seventeenth Century by Margaret Spufford (1985), and English Society in the Eighteenth Century by Roy Porter (London 1982).
These are works in the Pelican Social History series, other volumes of which will be mentioned later.
Two valuable books on the seventeenth century (apart from the Oxford History mentioned in an earlier chapter) are those published as Open University set texts,Seventeenth-Century England " A Changing Culture (London 1980).
The first volume is edited by Ann Hughes and devoted to primary sources, and the second is edited by W.R. Owens and comprises a series of modern studies.
The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500–1800 by Lawrence Stone (Penguin Books and reprinted 1984) is a well illustrated book, particularly useful on matters of the changing relationships between family members.
Life and Labour in England 1700–1780 by R.W. Malcolmson (London 1981) and The Rural World 1780–1850 by Pamela Horn (London 1980) are two volumes in Hutchinson's Social History of England series, containing, in addition to the principal text, a number or pages of academic commentary and reference.
In recent years local societies have been active in publishing transcripts of, and commentaries on, a number of primary sources.
These include Tudor lay subsidies, muster rolls, protestation returns, and so on.
They are useful documents, not only for insights into such things as parish organisations, but also (when used cautiously) population movements, family prosperity and Christian and surname patterns.