Agricultural History Review, Volume 51 Part 2 (2003), p. 229

This book, one of a genre of local parish studies produced to celebrate the millennium, covers the history of Kirtling and Upend and its inhabitants over the last 1000 years. The text runs to just 64 pages, divided into six chapters, and is furnished with maps, ‘special features’ and an album of well-chosen photographs portraying village life from the 1860s. A friendly feel is combined with genuine scholarship as the author develops various themes, familiar to more academic accounts. Central to the story is the impact of the Norths, the leading landowning family, on the lives of the people, the landscape and physical fabric of the parish. Their experience was unusual in that having established themselves in the sixteenth century, with a great estate, mansion and park, they left in 1677 and resided elsewhere for some 150 years, 230 the agricultural before returning to Kirtling Tower – all that remained of the house – in the 1820s. Without their presence in the formative years of the eighteenth century, Kirtling and Upend did not become a typical ‘closed’ estate village, but developed in more diverse ways. Enclosure was delayed, independent landowners survived and new influences, such as nonconformity, flourished. By the time the Norths returned they were powerless to reverse these trends. Despite an energetic programme of building new cottages, almshouses and schools, the social control they exercised was little more than decorative.

This tale of interaction between landowner and community is interwoven with themes on the development of farming, the changes in social structure and the cultural life of the village. The work is well organized, fully documented and supported by the several published accounts of the North family. The author also acknowledges his debt to the Victoria County History of Cam bridgeshire, which allowed him to use the material from the History of Kirtling ahead of publication. Nevertheless, it has been his task to present the story to a new audience in a manner which is crisp, convincing and relevant. A particular strength is the final chapter, ‘Within living memory 1910–2000’, which links the past to the present, and provides for the newcomers to the parish – many commuting daily to Cambridge and beyond – a rich historical context for their often transient lives in this burgeoning part of East Anglia.