Agricultural History Review, Volume 54 Part 1 (2006), p. 168

John Joseph Briggs was of farming stock and lived at King’s Newton, a village located immediately north of the small south Derbyshire town of Melbourne. Both settlements had evolved within the 3,500 acre parish of Melbourne which abuts against the River Trent to the north and the Leicestershire boundary to the east. King’s Newton, overlooking the Trent floodplain, was always agricultural in function while Melbourne became more urban in character following the arrival of framework knitting towards the end of the eighteenth century and modest footware manufacture during the nineteenth. The parish population had reached about 3,500 in 1901.

Briggs was born in 1811, son of a well-to-do tenant farmer on the estate of Lord Melbourne of Melbourne Hall. He was sent away to school and then took up an apprenticeship at Bemrose printers of Derby. When ill health forced him to return to his family home at King’s Newton in 1837 he became a gentleman farmer. However, he was to spend much of the rest of his life developing his interests in travel, poetry, antiquities and local and natural history. His modest range of publications, which included histories of Melbourne, poems, essays and journal and newspaper articles, enabled him to achieve some standing in the local community.

The previously unsuspected diary was recently discovered by Philip Heath in a collection of Briggs’s manuscripts. The recording of events as they occurred, albeit intermittently, begins in 1845 and ends in 1875 while entries before 1845 are few and retrospective. We have therefore an extended record of observations on life in and around Melbourne from the perspective of a well-informed countryman. The entries touch upon many topics but there are a number of recurrent themes. Briggs consistently noted the progress of the seasons and the impact of weather on crops and farm work as an adjunct to which he monitored flood events on the Trent. He commented upon the growing specialization in market gardening around Melbourne favoured by the loamy soils, the impact of the cattle plague in 1866, and also illustrated and speculated upon local archaeological finds. Briggs recorded improvements in communications, not least the politics of railway projects which eventually linked Melbourne to the Midland network. He commented frequently on aspects of the lives and deaths of local personages ranging from tragic accidents to children to social gatherings of local dignitaries and the aristocracy. Local and national political events were of great interest to Briggs including the Crimean War with its days of humiliation and fasting and eventual triumphal parades.

The intrinsic interest of the Briggs diary is much enhanced by the manner of its editing. The introduction provides essential background material on the Briggs family and farm and King’s Newton and Melbourne. The significance of diary entries is elaborated through numerous explanatory footnotes and, in particular, by well chosen illustrations including line drawings, photographs and sixteen colour plates. The endpaper maps of King’s Newton are helpful but there is a need for a location map to clarify the internal and external relationships of Melbourne parish. In all Philip Heath and the Melbourne Historical Research Group have produced an attractively presented and priced publication. It is also commendable that the South Derbyshire District Council and the Derbyshire County Council have been able to support their enterprise.