What will I be studying?
Certificate in Local History II introduces students to the approaches historians take to local history, including landscape and architectural history, oral history, church history, and qualitative history (such as diaries), plus transcribing original documents. These approaches, and others, are further explored through the themes of the history of poverty, disease and medicine and the history of religious identities. Students will be introduced to a wide range of primary and secondary evidence and will be given instruction in document evaluation and essay writing skills.
Each unit is taught through a combination Sunday day-schools at Madingley Hall, Cambridge, the home of the Institute of Continuing Education, and field trips on Saturdays.
Unit 1: Approaches to local history
This unit aims to provide the skills, sources and historical contexts necessary for students to be able to undertake their own research into local communities, and to understand the work undertaken by others in this field. In this unit we will consider how local history links in with other academic disciplines and identify how local historians can use these to illuminate their own research and understanding. Presentations given in seminars will be reinforced through field trips to a local church and local town. In addition, students will be introduced to a range of sources and will be taught to transcribe a range of different handwritings and styles. This work will be supported by a visit to a local record office to explore some of the primary and secondary sources that are available to the local historian.
Teaching will take place on 3 Sunday day schools on 11 October, 22 November and 6 December 2020 plus a field trip on a Saturday 31 October 2020.
Unit 2: The people and the parish, c.1500-1700
This unit explores everyday life during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Although the parish was a initially a unit of church administration and organisation, under the Tudor monarchs it became a unit of civil government. Each day school will examine a different aspect of life in an early modern community: firstly, changes in religious practice and also the records that the parish generated, in particular churchwardens’ accounts which can provide a wide range of information about local inhabitants; secondly, secular early modern society, including the various levels of social status, and also the effects of population growth on resources; thirdly, the identities of the poor and local provisions for their relief, using records generated in the parish, together with those of charities endowed by individuals, to ascertain local attitudes towards, and responses to, the growing number of poor; fourthly, the relationship between the community and the law, including maintaining law and order, and also outbreaks of unrest and how the authorities might respond to them.
Teaching will take place on 4 Sunday day-schools : 17 January, 7 February, 21 February and 7 March 2021.
Unit 3: Competing identities and social change 1700-1900
From the cradle to the grave, religion was an almost inescapable element of Georgian and Victorian life, its influence extending far beyond rites of passage into education, welfare, politics, economics, even leisure and entertainment. This unit examines the way in which the near monopoly of the State Church gradually gave way in most localities to a multiplicity of competing identities - Dissenter, Methodist, Catholic and Jew - and explores how religious language and organisation were used to give expression to regional, ethnic, family, social and aspirational identities. Was this the engine that drove Britain's evolution into a diverse and democratic society?
Credit awarded by the Institute can also be transferred into the degree programmes of other higher education providers. However the amount of credit which can be transferred into degree programmes varies from institution to institution and is always at the discretion of the receiving institution.
Teaching will take place on 3 Sunday day-schools : 25 April, 2 May and 13 June 2021 plus a fieldtrip on Saturday 15 May 2021.
Additional information
As a student on this course you will be entitled to discounted accommodation should you wish to stay at Madingley Hall when your course is being taught. Accommodation will be on a first come first served basis. You will be provided with details of how to book accommodation in your course confirmation email.
