Local History at Loughborough

Abstract

ONE OF THE MOST interesting intellectual and cultural developments to have taken place in Great Britain in the years since 1945 has been the growth of interest in local history. Once the fad of country clergymen or of misanthropic squires, its study today flourishes in schools, colleges, and universities and has achieved academic respectability with the establishment of the Department of English Local History at the University of Leicester. It forms the mainstay of many Adult Education classes. Its devotees are to be found in every occupation and profession. It has its own periodicals and societies, even its own publisher. This is not the place to explore in detail the reasons for this quite remarkable growth in interest in the subject. Increased leisure among all sections of the community has undoubtedly contributed, and interest and enthusiasm among individuals have often been stimulated by radio and television programs, programs which in their turn have produced as a spin-off books which have proved to be important contributions to the subject.1 Libraries in Great Britain have both contributed to this development and been influenced by it. Individual public libraries were collecting materials books, pamphlets, maps, pictures, documents and the like of a local interest well before the end of the nineteenth century, largely as the result of the enthusiasm of individual librarians, and our debt to these pioneers can never be repaid. They built up their