The Midlands are a part of England that broadly correspond to the Kingdom of Mercia of the Early Middle Ages, bordered by Wales, Northern England and Southern England. The Midlands were important in the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries. They are split into the West Midlands and East Midlands. The region's biggest city, Birmingham – often considered the social, cultural, financial and commercial centre of the Midlands, – is the second-largest city and metropolitan area in the United Kingdom.
The Victoria History of the Counties of England, commonly known as the Victoria County History or the VCH, is an English history project which began in 1899 with the aim of creating an encyclopaedic history of each of the historic counties of England, and was dedicated to Queen Victoria. In 2012 the project was rededicated to Queen Elizabeth II in celebration of her Diamond Jubilee year. Since 1933 the project has been coordinated by the Institute of Historical Research in the University of London.
Penkridge is a village and civil parish in South Staffordshire District in Staffordshire, England. It is to the south of Stafford, north of Wolverhampton, west of Cannock and east of Telford. The nearby town of Brewood is also not far away.
David L. Smith is a noted historian at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He specializes in Early Modern British history, particularly political, constitutional, legal and religious history within the Stuart period. He is the author or co-author of eight books, and the editor or co-editor of seven others, and he has also published more than seventy essays and articles.
The Shropshire Star is reputedly the twelfth biggest-selling regional newspaper in the UK. It is based at Grosvenor House, Telford where it covers the whole of Shropshire plus parts of Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Staffordshire, Cheshire and Mid Wales. It is printed by Newsquest at their Deeside office.
The Institute of Historical Research (IHR) is a British educational organisation providing resources and training for historical researchers. It is part of the School of Advanced Study in the University of London and is located at Senate House. The institute was founded in 1921 by A. F. Pollard.
John Stephen Morrill is a British historian and academic who specialises in the political, religious, social, and cultural history of early-modern Britain from 1500 to 1750, especially the English Civil War. He is best known for his scholarship on early modern politics and his unique county studies approach which he developed at Cambridge. Morrill was educated at Trinity College, Oxford, and became a fellow of Selwyn College, Cambridge, in 1975.
The Express & Star is a regional evening newspaper in Britain. Founded in 1889, it is based in Wolverhampton, England, and covers the West Midlands county and Staffordshire.
The Wiltshire Victoria County History, properly called The Victoria History of the County of Wiltshire but commonly referred to as VCH Wiltshire, is an encyclopaedic history of the county of Wiltshire in England. It forms part of the overall Victoria County History of England founded in 1899 in honour of Queen Victoria. With eighteen volumes published in the series, it is now the most substantial of the Victoria County Histories.
Christopher Charles Dyer CBE FBA is Leverhulme Emeritus Professor of Regional and Local History and director of the Centre for English Local History at the University of Leicester, England.
Francis Smith of Warwick (1672–1738) was an English master-builder and architect, much involved in the construction of country houses in the Midland counties of England. Smith of Warwick may refer also to his brothers, or his son.
Sir Edward Littleton, 1st Baronet was a 17th-century English Baronet and politician from the extended Littleton/Lyttelton family, the first of a line of four Littleton baronets with Pillaton Hall as their seat. He initially joined the Parliamentarians during the English Civil War. Having tried unsuccessfully to find a third way, he switched his support to the Royalist cause – a decision that led to his financial ruin, as large debts made it impossible to redeem his estates from sequestration after the victory of Parliament.
The History of Parliament is a project to write a complete history of the United Kingdom Parliament and its predecessors, the Parliament of Great Britain and the Parliament of England. The history will principally consist of a prosopography, in which the history of an institution is told through the individual biographies of its members. After various amateur efforts the project was formally launched in 1940 and since 1951 has been funded by the Treasury. As of 2019, the volumes covering the House of Commons for the periods 1386–1421, 1509–1629, and 1660–1832 have been completed and published ; and the first five volumes covering the House of Lords from 1660-1715 have been published, with further work on the Commons and the Lords ongoing. In 2011 the completed sections were republished on the internet.
Lilleshall Abbey was an Augustinian abbey in Shropshire, England, today located 6 miles (9.7 km) north of Telford. It was founded between 1145 and 1148 and followed the austere customs and observance of the Abbey of Arrouaise in northern France. It suffered from chronic financial difficulties and narrowly escaped the Dissolution of the Lesser Monasteries in 1536, before going into voluntary dissolution in 1538.
Sandwell Priory was a small medieval Benedictine monastery, near West Bromwich, then part of Staffordshire, England. It was founded in the late 12th century by a local landowner and was only modestly endowed. It had a fairly turbulent history and suffered considerably from mismanagement. It was dissolved in 1525 at the behest of Cardinal Wolsey – more than a decade before the main Dissolution of the Monasteries under Henry VIII.
William Page was a British prolific and pioneering historian and editor. For the last three decades of his life he was general editor of the Victoria County History.
The Cumbria County History Trust (CCHT) is a charity launched in May 2010 to coordinate and gather resources for the Victoria County History of Cumbria project, a collaborative community project created to research and write the histories of all parts of Cumbria, and to make historical information generally available, within the framework and standards of the Victoria County History of England. Any interested individual, history and heritage society, museum, or commercial organisation can join CCHT.
Marcus Felix Brudenell Fitch , was an English historian and philanthropist.
Margaret Bromleynée Lowe was a noted English Puritan of Staffordshire origins. She married Sir Edward Bromley, a noted lawyer and judge of the period. After his death she established a base for sheltering and supporting nonconforming ministers at Sheriffhales. Leaving the area during the English Civil War, she spent the final years of her life at Loughborough.
David G. Hey was an English historian, and was an authority on surnames and the local history of Yorkshire. Hey was the president of the British Association for Local History, and was a published author of several books on local history and the derivation of surnames.
