Reviews

327 REVIEWS Death as a Process: The Archaeology of the Roman Funeral. Edited by John Pearce and Jake Weekes. ix + 300 pp., 106 figures (b/w), 10 tables. Oxbow Books, 2017. Paperback, £38.00. ISBN 978-1-78570-323-2. Appreciation for the complexity of the Roman funerary record has grown significantly in recent years, partly due to the considerable range of archaeological evidence for mortuary practices surfacing through development- and researchrelated excavations. Publication of new – and re-evaluation of older – site data has helped fuel more theoretically informed discussions surrounding the funerary process. In this regard, a major advancement over the last two decades has been the greater attention afforded the physical remains of the dead, particularly in relation to the whole burial context. This edited volume makes an important and timely contribution to addressing these key developments in the context of Roman funerary studies. Twelfth in Oxbow Books’ wide-ranging ‘Studies in Funerary Archaeology’, this volume continues to build on the series’ emphasis on integrating and evaluating methodological and theoretical approaches to the funerary record. Evolving out of a Roman Archaeology Conference session in 2007, the volume integrates eleven chapters focused on funerary evidence from Britain, France, Germany, Greece, The Netherlands, and Italy, and includes broad regional overviews, and individual and comparative case studies. That the sixteen authors are from a range of commercial and academic backgrounds, and represent diverse specialisms within archaeology and related subjects, is a strength of this volume, and the ser ies as a whole. Although the work’s gestation was longer than intended (prepared 2009, and 2012-13, but with revisions late 2014), this does not undermine its core value and contributions. The central themes and agendas for Roman funerary studies outlined within Pearce’s comprehensive introduction, and developed by the various authors, continue to grow in relevance, and the importance of international collaboration and shared expertise, well represented by the volume, are becoming ever more crucial. ‘Death as a Process’ refocuses attention away from the most visible remains of a funeral, the burial, to consider also the wealth of material evidence for identifying and reconstructing acts related to the whole funerary process. Through a more holistic and integrated approach as this volume asserts, we are better placed to untangle the diverse strategies and attitudes towards death and burial across the Roman world. Key themes crosscut many of the chapters: the relationship between the textual and archaeological records; the importance of detailed fieldwork methods, with due consideration afforded to non-burial, as well as burial, features; the value of studying both disarticulated and articulated skeletal material; and the significant opportunities that revisiting previously studied sites can offer. REVIEWS 328 Noteworthy is the variety of archaeological evidence and contexts considered. Funerary activity is studied within urban, rural, higher- and lower-status settings, and at multiple scales including the microenvironment of an individual tomb, to whole funerary landscapes. This has permitted variability in practice and experience to be approached at the level of both individual and community. Rife and Moore Morison (Ch.2) explore the multisensory experience of a higher-status subterranean funeral in Roman Kenchreai, Greece, aided by abundant material remains to reconstruct ritual processes. In contrast, Ortalli (Ch.3) applies a targeted microstratigraphic approach to examine the apparent ‘topographic voids’ within urban cemeteries in northern Italy. Here, sparse traces of funerary behaviour disguise the fundamental roles of such spaces as ‘connective tissues’ enabling the movements and activities of the living. Weekes (Ch.4) in considering funerary archaeology at St Dunstan’s Terrace, Canterbury, and Aarts and Heeren (Ch.5) in their study of the mortuary rituals of Batavian farmers, further demonstrate how a detailed, integrated approach can reveal diverse individual acts and sequences. They illustrate how both burial and non-burial elements, such as artefacts and remains of food offerings, to pyre materials and areas, enable us to envisage the roles of the various agents in space and time, and the shifting relationships between the living and the dead. Departing from a more traditional approach that affords funerary architecture primacy, the volume also foregrounds the physical remains of the dead, with one chapter in particular (Catalano et al., Ch.8) applying detailed osteological analysis to a comparative study of cemetery populations in Rome. Booth’s (Ch.7) chapter on recent work on Romano-British cemeteries, which complements the volume’s introduction, discusses the wide-ranging skeletal and cemetery evidence in Southern Britain, together with some key advancements in methodological approaches to their study. The chapters by Rost and Wilbers-Rost (Ch.6), Lepetz (Ch.9) and McKinley (Ch.10) illustrate this variability through three very different case studies: the intriguing post-mortem biographies of German victims of the Battle of Teutoburg Forest; the diverse roles of animals in funerary rituals in Rome and the provinces; and the interrelated acts and resulting deposits associated with the cremation process, explored through Romano-British sites. The importance of recording the smallest details in the field, and for close scrutiny of formation processes and taphonomic agents are variously demonstrated here, and throughout the volume. In this respect, a chapter focused on the ‘anthropologie de terrain’ approach – discussed by Pearce as a ‘significant innovation’ – would have made a valuable addition, demonstrating further the interpretative potential of placing the taphonomy of the body at the centre of enquiry. Weekes’ (Ch.11) afterword is important in integrating many of the volume’s key themes. Through the example of a single cremation burial in Kent, he explores process and polysemy, highlighting the multiple symbolic meanings of ritual actions – and objects – that can be read within each stage of the funerary sequence. This excellent, well-produced volume will be of great value to those interested in many aspects of Roman life and death, as well as theoretical and methodological approaches in funerary archaeology. Overall it challenges us to take a more critical, integrated, and theoretically informed approach to the Roman funeral. eleanor williams REVIEWS 329 Ragstone to Riches: Imperial Estates, metalla and the Roman Military in the South East of Britain During the Occupation. By Simon Elliott. 156 pp. Illustrated throughout in colour and b/w, 9 tables, 48 figures, 3 maps. BAR Publishing, 2018. Paperback, £32.00. ISBN 9781407316529. Ragstone to Riches is an account of the extractive industries of south-eastern Britain during the Roman period. Despite its title, the book deals almost exclusively with just two of the industries, iron smelting and ragstone quarrying, and focuses on two regions, the Weald and the Medway valley. Of the two industries, the iron industry of the Weald is the much better understood, production sites having seen large-scale excavations, long-term surveys and detailed archaeometallurgical investigations. Ragstone was quarried from the upper Medway valley in Kent on a vast scale during the Roman period. The walls of Roman London were built with the stone and the Blackfriars ship that sank in the Thames carried the stone as cargo, yet relatively little is known about the industry. Simon Elliott’s survey of both is hugely welcome, allowing the industries to be compared and placed in their archaeological and historical context. The book has its origins in the author’s doctoral thesis on the extractive industries of Kent, which is demonstrated not only in the (almost) comprehensive gazetteer of industrial sites in the Weald and the Medway, but also in the lengthy background chapter. While useful as a scene-setter, providing as it does a precis of the Roman occupation of Kent, the book would have benefited from some quarrying away of the chapter. Readers may prefer to pick up one of several synthetic works on Roman Kent already published and may in any case be impatient to get to the core of Elliot’s study. A chapter on the iron industry of the Weald presents a gazetteer of sites (alas, the discovery of a bloomery between Bexhill and Hastings in 2012 did not appear to make the cut) and offers discussion on the pre-Roman origins of the industry, what attracted the Romans to the region, the scale of output, the organisation of the industry, the character of the workforce, and the industry’s connection with tile production; tiles stamped with the mark of the Roman fleet or Classis Britannica manufactured in the Weald provide the best evidence for state involvement in iron production. The chapter that follows takes a similar approach to the ragstone quarrying in the Medway valley, but here it is clear where the author’s real interest lies, as readers are treated to a more extensive gazetteer and it could be said that no stone is left unturned to bring us a definitive list of ragstone-related evidence, and fuller discussion of the workforce, transportation, destination, and riverine infrastructure, among other themes. Of the five principal quarries described, Dean Street quarry, outside Maidstone, is a contender for the largest open-cast mine in the Roman empire. Remains of stone weirs, crossings and wharfs may be traces of riverine structures that improved the navigation of the Medway, allowing the stone to be transported down river to the Thames. Possible millstone blanks recovered from the river with heroic effort by the author with the help of an unusual entry in the annals of underwater archaeology, a Royal Engineers diving team, may mark the location of a Roman wreck. The concluding chapter presents an argument for what is the crux of the book: REVIEWS 330 who controlled the extractive industries in south-eastern Britain? While state involvement in the Weald is widely accepted, the role of the state in ragstone quarrying, and indeed other industries, such as pottery production and salt production, of which more could have been made, is less clear cut. Certainly, there are promising indications of state involvement, and it is possible to build an argument on factors such as sparsely-populated or marginal landscapes, the proximity and role of villa estates of which it is a shame that so many remain inadequately published, the demands of the army, and the obvious need for the outputs of the industries in state enterprises, such as public building. Epigraphic and other literary evidence from other parts of the empire can also be brought into the mix. Beyond the background chapter, the book is highly readable and thoughtprovoking. The ‘Medway formula’, the author’s theory of riverine transportation in relation to ragstone quarrying, is destined to be referenced in students’ essays and in synthetic works for years to come. A map or two at the front that better locate the industries and key sites and summarise the study area’s geological and topographical settings would have been useful. This reviewer also found image quality to be variable; grand theses deserve larger and clearer images! The question of state involvement is worth asking and Simon Elliot is to be congratulated in his efforts to bring together the principal extractive industries, or metalla, of south-east Britain into a single imperial estate. Ultimately, however, the answers remain elusive. edward biddulph Within the Walls: The Developing Town c. AD 750-1325, Canterbury Whitefriars Excavations 1999-2004. By Alison Hicks and Mark Houliston. xvi + 300 pages, 139 figures, 83 plates. Canterbury Archaeological Trust, The Archaeology of Canterbury New Series Volume VIII, 2018. Paperback, £35.00 (Friends of Canterbury Archaeological Trust £28.00). ISBN 978-1-870545-37-2. This latest monograph in the Archaeology of Canterbury series is volume two of a four volume series presenting the results of the five-year excavation project (1999- 2004) of the Whitefriars area of Canterbury. The four volumes will detail the archaeology recorded spanning the years ad 0-1700, with volume 4 publishing the finds in detail from across all periods, Roman to Post-Medieval. The volume under review here slots in at no. 2 in the series, covering the period c. ad 750-1325. It is the second to be published, following volume 3, which appeared in 2015. It seems clear that the approach is both a pragmatic way to publish economically and an effective eschewing of a conventional period-by-period approach. This helps to give the archaeology on the ground room to suggest the chronology and to engage with ideas of continuity and lacunae across the site. What is not made clear from this volume is why the part of Canterbury concerned is known as ‘Whitefriars’. This may be clarified in volume 3 but even so should be recapped here as not everyone will know that it is a misnaming of the Austin friars house established in the mid-thirteenth century. The evidence with which this monograph deals is drawn from a programme of REVIEWS 331 eighteen excavations and a series of watching briefs and prior investigations in the area, along with relevant documentary evidence. The account is arranged in nine parts. Parts 1-3 tackle the introduction, the excavated evidence for the site periods 5 (ad 750-1050), 6 (ad 1050-c.1250), and 7 (c. ad 1200-c.1300) together with an interpretive discussion. For the later Saxon period the area was a peripheral part of Canterbury, with the settlement pattern impacted by the partial survival of Roman remains. From the turn of the first millennium elements of this rural-feeling townscape begin to go out of use, including a grain store, other buildings and roadways. There is a suggestion of abandonment of at least parts of an industrial area, possibly in response to Danish attacks. Roman building remains continue to be reused as in-place structures or quarries. From the early twelfth century, developing around the Roman ruins, grew a settlement core of church (St Mary Bredin), roadway (Gravel Walk) and market, though their relative sequencing remains unclear. Adjacent to this ‘core’ was a ‘peripheral’ area of industrial activity abandoned by the thirteenth century. Particularly significant evidence was revealed concerning the pattern of roads in the Whitefriars area, between the early eleventh to mid-fourteenth century, with seven sections of road revealed establishing a pattern that endured into the late twentieth century (pp. 133-5). Between the eleventh and fourteenth century the boundaries of various tenements were established, also seemingly holding through to modern times, echoing a story seen in York, Norwich, Southampton, and Winchester, but also, one might add, in Perth. A detailed discussion of these plots (pp. 135-44) draws the evidence together to explore construction, form and function, lifespan and occupation. References to documentary sources – chiefly charters and rentals – are made throughout the volume and all are drawn together in the summary that comprises Part 4. Parts 5-8 deal with the artefactual and ecofactual record. In the main these are summaries of the fuller reports to appear in monograph 4. They include a fine piece of reworked Romanesque sculpture (a griffin-like creature originally a capital or springer; p. 149), the ceramic building material (pp. 150-3) and the ceramics and glass (pp. 155-77). Some 4,000 small finds were registered by the excavations, 1,530 of which are detailed in the forthcoming catalogue (monograph 4). Here, summary discussions appear of the metal-working evidence and the working of skeletal materials, notably in Period 7. A full account is given of a Henry II lead striking, which Anderson favours as a weight (pp. 182-4). The faunal assemblage includes a single Saxon, female burial (p. 259) and evidence for cetacean exploitation (p. 276). The book is rounded off with a couple of appendices (listing watching briefs and previous investigations in the Whitefriars area) and a useful index. The book, and by implication its companion monographs, is notable on several fronts, some already mentioned, including its integration of archaeological and documentary evidence, also bringing some named individuals into the story, the melding of the archaeological narrative with the wider historical narrative of Canterbury, including Danish raiding, Becket’s martyrdom and a series of fires in the late-twelfth/early-thirteenth centuries, and its canny incorporation of the topographical changes made necessary by the development served by the excavations into the longer topographical narrative of Canterbury. The book is to be commended for its clear layout and the accessible account it gives of a project 332 that has shed significant new light on the topographical development of Canterbury and of medieval urbanism more generally. mark a. hall Faversham in the Making. The Early Years: The Ice Age until AD 1550. By Patricia Reid, Duncan Harrington and Michael Fronsdorff. x + 166 pp. 16 colour plates, black and white maps, photographs and illustrations throughout. Windgather Pres 2018. Paperback £25.99 available from Oxbow Books, www.oxbowbooks.com. ISBN 978 1911188353. This welcome addition to the history of Faversham is an evidence and sourceled study of the development of the town from pre-history to the Reformation period. The majority of the volume has been written by Dr Patricia Reid in an engaging style bringing an acute, analytical academic approach to the geological and archaeological evidence in a way that makes it immediately accessible to the non-specialist reader. After a personal introduction to modern Faversham and the questions it poses about its past, she covers the unfortunately rather limited early written source material available to historians. The early history and archaeological record of the town have been rather too well obscured by its later history from 1550 onward, the end point of the current volume. Following the 1538 dissolution of St Saviour’s Abbey, founded by King Stephen and his Queen in 1148 and the consolidation of the power of the civic authority into a favourable form of government which lasted until 1835, ‘Faversham was set up as a miniature city state that lasted until the mid-nineteenth century ...’ (p. 154). These events preceded a period of successful farming, manufacturing, trading and, not least, domestic building, much of which survives to this day. The early modern town is seen clearly in the central layout spreading out from its current position by the Market and Guildhall, to where it had shifted in the later medieval period from the site of the earlier settlement at the Westbrook crossing near Tanners’ Street. The survival of so much of the central area and the lack of any significant major development archaeology since Brian Philp’s excavation at the abbey site in 1965 have severely restricted examination of the archaeological record. It is therefore a remarkable feat of careful analysis of the small excavations, often in back gardens, and comparison and debate with outlying and other Kent sites, that enables Reid to put together a convincing story of the development of the town and to draw a picture of the life of the people up to 1100. Chapters 2 and 3 cover the periods 600,000-8,000 bc and 8,000-55 bc up to the first recorded historical sources which are used to good, sometimes imaginative, effect in chapter 4 for the Roman occupation period, 55 bc - ad 410. With clarity and helpful black and white diagrams and maps, Reid explains the geology of the area, the climatic changes wrought on it and how all contributed to the everchanging topography. The variety of soils: Chalk, Clay-with-Flint, Brickearth and gravels, the impact of perma-frost but not ice cover during the ‘intensely cold periods’, and changing sea levels and waterways, established the conditions for early settlement. The archaeological debate is signalled with the first evidence REVIEWS 333 of human activity, a pointed flint axe excavated in 2011, which can be dated to 400,000-250,000 years ago, clearly before the most recent ‘uninhabited-by-man interglacial gap’. After this, evidence for humanoid existence in the Faversham area, Neanderthals 60,000 years ago and Homo Sapiens, 30,000 year ago, become more easily identified together with animals such as woolly mammoth, red deer and rhinoceros, until the ‘great warm-up’ of c.8,000 years ago. From here on Reid carefully details and analyses the finds within their context of identifiable areas of what became Faversham – the Davington Plateau, the Westbrook and Syndale/ Ospringe, together with Mackenade (which is arbitrarily spelt in four different ways throughout the book). With the coming of the Romans the historical record, starting with Julius Caesar’s De Bello Gallico, provides another context for the archaeological, but Reid clearly believes that the latter, properly considered, can tell us more about the lives of the local inhabitants. Chapter 5 considers the town’s place in the Kingdom of Kent in the early Anglo- Saxon period to ad 825, the Jutish occupation. Circumstantial evidence strongly suggests an industrial base, as well as an agricultural one with the 825 conquest of Kent by Wessex quickly followed by the first extant reference to ‘Fefresham’ (one of twenty alternative spellings, p. 1), but all based on the idea that this was a settlement of artisan workmen. With Michael Fronsdorff, Reid then looks at the Continental invasion period from 825-1100 in Chapter 6. The scanty excavated evidence is acknowledged, but the authors infer much from historical documents recording the progress of the invasions and the location of Faversham on the route between London and the coast. Later in Chapter 9 Reid once again looks at the archaeology of Faversham from 1100-1500 and finally in chapter 10 explains how the end point of the book is in fact neither an end nor a beginning just a break in the published story. The two intervening chapters by Duncan Harrington about the governance of the town, the power conflicts between St Saviour’s Abbey, St Augustine’s Abbey (Canterbury) and the civic administration and the background to the town’s role and vicissitudes as a royal borough, sit somewhat uneasily in the whole. They have to compress into a very short space and evaluate an enormous amount of source information, much of which has received far better treatment by Harrington and Patricia Hyde in their various studies of the wide range of sources on medieval Faversham, particularly in The Early Town Books of Faversham (2008). Compressing this material loses some of the clarity of the book, so well established by Reid. But what it does provide, through the selective evidence, is a fascinating overview of the individuality of this particular royal borough, with a dominant monastic presence and the pre-conditions for a strong economic base. In this study the authors have used an innovative approach to local history by a thorough investigation of the long formative periods to give a much greater understanding of the influences and pre-conditions of the development of a particular settlement. The book is enhanced with colour plates carefully chosen to follow the narrative of the research. There are also some very useful maps and period boxes explaining the climatic changes which had important influences on the town’s location and development. The sources are fully referenced, but an index would have been a useful addition. eli zabeth edwards REVIEWS 334 From Men of Kent to Men of the World: A History of the Lushington Family in the Eighteenth Century. By Sir John Lushington Bt. 260 pp. Abundant reproductions of paintings, sketches, prints, cartoons and original documents, together with photographs, maps and genealogical tables throughout. Published by the author, 2018 in paperback. £30 from jrclushington@yahoo.co.uk. ISBN 978-0-9573528-2-7. Tracing one’s family history has become hugely popular recently encouraged by television series, specialised magazines, DNA testing and a wide array of online sources. However to produce a book such as this, which covers such a wide range of sources and contains such a wealth of visual material, takes more than a passing interest in family history and demonstrates a dedicated long term commitment. Sir John Lushington has had far more material to draw on for this volume and it will perhaps appeal to a wider readership than the previous volume From Gavelkind to Gentlemen as it covers family involvement overseas including with the East India Company, the army and the navy, but also national involvement as Members of Parliament and as members of the clergy. This is the story of members of various branches of the Lushington family who, over the course of the eighteenth century, rose in status from landed gentlemen in east Kent to baronets and serving in Parliament. They travelled widely too as serving officers in both the army and navy. From South Carolina where Captain Richard Lushington was caught up in the war of Independence in 1775 to West Africa where Stephen Lushington who was a writer then factor for an overseas trading body called the Royal African Company and who eventually died in 1738. From Captain Franklin RN who was injured and died on board The Burford following an attack by a British expeditionary force on the port and garrison of La Guaira on the coast of Venezuela to Lt Col William of the 9th Dragoons who was stationed in Ireland. However perhaps it is the account of the involvement of the Lushington family with the East India Company which is the most fascinating part of their story starting with Henry Lushington’s departure in 1754 for Calcutta. He was just 15 years old and was employed by the Company at Fort William as a writer with a salary of £5 per annum. He was among the volunteers who fought to defend Fort William from attack by the Nawab of Bengal in 1756 though only aged 18 at the time. The author has unearthed a possible eye witness account by Mr Howell describing this attack, which lasted five days and resulted in the imprisonment of the captured English in the guardroom of Fort William – the infamous ‘Black Hole of Calcutta’. This graphic account describes how on release the appearance of Mr Cooke and Mr Lushington ‘struck everyone with amazement and horror’ … for ‘the events of one night had altered them almost beyond recognition’. Both the writer of the account and Henry were amongst 23 survivors out of the original 146 prisoners incarcerated in the Black Hole. The focus then moves to the West Indies where another member of the Lushington family, who had worked for the East India Company, also invested in sugar plantations in Grenada. The final chapters chart the rise of the Lushingtons in business and politics in England particularly in the House of Commons under the Pitt government, and emphasise the early attempts by William Lushington (yet another William) to abolish the slave trade. This volume ends with the life of Stephen who was born in Eastbourne in 1744, became a lawyer, was elected REVIEWS 335 MP and as a result of his chairmanship of the East India Company was created a Baronet in 1791. This was an honour that did not come cheaply as a clause of his appointment document stipulated that he must provide and furnish a troop of soldiers to serve in Ireland for three months and, in addition, he must pay 10s. 6d. a year for the privilege of displaying his coat of arms on any object. We have had to wait six years for volume two in this captivating history of the Lushington family to appear, and the meticulous research, the breadth of sources scoured together with the colourful visual impact has been well worth the wait. There is something for everyone to glean from this book: local, national and international historical events, photographs of structures and monuments with Lushington connections (churches and mansions), maps, reproductions of paintings (family portraits and sailing ships), facsimiles of archival documents and even Gillray cartoons relating to the period. Above all this book is a stimulating and informed read. The third volume, which is in preparation, will cover the next two generations of the Lushington family. On present evidence six years will be worth the waiting. susan petrie The Green Family of Papermakers and Hayle Mill. By Maureen P. Green. 292pp. Illustrations of papermaking in progress in the mill, advertisements of products, extensive index, bibliography, glossary of papermaking terms. The Legacy Press, 2018. $55.00 (available in UK through Alan Isaac Rare Books, Oxford). ISBN 9781940965093. The author leads the reader from when paper was first being made in China some 2,000 years ago, reaching England in the mid-late fifteenth century. This provides the historical context for the development of papermaking in England and of the Green family’s exceptional contribution to papermaking from 1812 until 1987. The first record of handmade paper produced in England was in 1498 when Henry VII visited Sele Mill in Hertfordshire to present an award for quality paper to John Tate. As the author notes, Sele Mill costs were soon too high for effective competition with continental paper manufacturers so was closed. Not until 1588 was a viable papermaking business established, by John Spilman at Dartford in Kent. Gradually the papermaking industry developed in the United Kingdom, with some twenty mills in the Maidstone area alone, known as ‘The Paper City’. There were natural advantages in Kent for papermaking, such as river water from a chalk soil, both available for processing basic materials and making the paper, for transporting rags and other raw materials, ‘let alone’ delivering the paper product. There was also a growing labour population within reach to work at the mills, and access to a large market in London. Hayle Mill in the Loose Valley near Maidstone, originally a fulling mill, was bought by John Pine, papermaker, in 1808. With Neil Edmeads, he produced quality papers but could not afford to maintain the mill. He let it to John Green in 1812 for papermaking and sold the mill to him in 1817. Despite the uncertainties in the early 1800s from the wars with France, poor harvests, pressure from a new papermakers’ trade union, and increasing restrictive legislation, the Green family REVIEWS 336 was determined to continue making paper by hand. By specialising in certain kinds of handmade quality paper, they cleverly avoided competition from which other mills suffered. At the time papermaking machines could not match handmade quality. Green describes in detail the variations of paper that were made at Hayle, particularly certain papers for artists, specialist paper for currency, and security watermarked papers. Cartridge paper was in demand in wartime. With literacy extending and postage cheaper, more fine paper was needed as people then sent postcards and greetings cards. When business generally improved, ledger books and printing papers were in demand. Inevitably there were problems and these are noted: when there were too many orders to be completed at once, especially when there were difficulties, in finding sufficient raw materials, or more equipment was needed and funds were insufficient to provide these. In 1838 the financial situation was dire and an auction notice posted on 31 October reflected Hayle Mill’s near demise. The auction was cancelled because John Green’s brother, Samuel, raised the funds needed to refinance and purchase Hayle Mill. It was to remain in the Green family for six generations until 1987 when it was closed by the current head of the family, Simon Barcham Green. Incredibly, paper continued to be made by hand at Hayle until the end. The author is a meticulous researcher using the extensive Green family archives, some local Kent records, some national records, and specialist record repositories such as the Webb Collection at LSE, London. Her listing of primary source material, the bibliography, terminology list, and other resources reflect her thorough and instinctive scholarship. This is a source for other researchers to follow and develop. Maureen Green provides the context for papermaking development in England in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the role of the Green family members in the handmade paper trade during that time and how they adapted to changing trade and business circumstances to keep a paper mill making specialist paper by hand in a mechanized era. She leaves us uncertain as to why Hayle Mill was closed in 1987 after being in the hands of the Green family for six generations. Was there insufficient demand for specialist handmade paper or was it no longer financially viable? Was it caught up in the general rationalisation of the paper industry that continues today? Since she had been a member of the family for many years and followed the business changes, perhaps it was too poignant to c ontemplate. jean stirk Disgusted Ladies. The women of Tunbridge Wells who fought for the right to vote. Anne Carwardine. 302 pp., Matador, 2018. Softcover, £12.99. ISBN 9781788032889. Revolutionary Tunbridge Wells. The remarkable role of Tunbridge Wells in the development of revolutionary politics in Britain 1884-1919. Julian Wilson. 305 pp. Royal Tunbridge Wells Civic Society, Local History monograph No. 14, 2018. Paperback £11.95. ISBN 9781999746216. These two splendidly researched books, each written with passion, address important and sorely neglected aspects of the history of Tunbridge Wells. Hereafter, no one writing on any period of the history of the town should have an excuse for REVIEWS 337 ignoring its vibrant political life. Both books are based on a good range of primary sources and a variety of newspapers and periodicals. They provide an original story replete with vivid biographies of activists who were prepared to promote causes to advance the welfare of their fellow towns-people, and whose struggles contributed to the wider picture of radical politics on the nat ional stage. The backcloth of these studies is the struggle to secure the parliamentary franchise, a political right denied to all women, and many working-class men without property or adequate income, until reform in 1918. The reasons advanced by many Tories and Liberals for excluding men and women from participation in the electoral process of a so-called democratic society, now seem risible, patronising, and ignorant. The socio-economic and welfare policies advocated by the ‘revolutionary’ socialist left at the start of the twentieth century, discussed by Wilson, are now main-stream policies of the Conservative party. One might argue that this reveals acute political prescience on the part of the early radicals and a grindingly slow acceptance of democratic realities from the political right. The earliest known suffrage action by women in Tunbridge Wells was in 1866 when Matilda Biggs and her two adult daughters signed the petition to parliament demanding female suffrage. Although the Municipal Franchise Act of 1869 gave women property-holders the right to vote in local elections, and from then on to be elected to local political bodies such as school boards and as poor law guardians, the battle to secure votes for all women and to stand for parliament was not achieved until 1928. It was a long drawn-out battle which demonstrated male obduracy and female persistence in enduring hours of campaigning, suffering physical abuse and imprisonment for the cause. Inevitably there were women and men on both sides who backed one view or the other. For the most part the campaigning was conducted peacefully with petition and protest, gaining tempo and becoming more militant at the start of the twentieth-century. A branch of the National Union of Women Workers (NUWW) was formed in Tunbridge Well in 1895, a body that brought together different women’s groups but without suffrage as a main plank. Rebuffs from both main political parties, the Liberals in particular were worried that enfranchised women might prove to be Tory voters, further stirred the demand for reform. Disillusionment at the failure of the Liberals to deliver votes for women, following their landslide victory in 1906, led to the NUWW, at its annual conference in the Opera House, Tunbridge Wells, sending a suffrage petition to parliament. Two years later, in October 1908, a branch of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) was formed in the town, chaired by the novelist Sarah Grand, ably aided by Amelia Scott. Suffragist policies were non-militant, ‘Gentle but resolute’, being one slogan of purpose. A rival organisation was the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), the ‘suffragettes’, founded by Christabel Pankhurst, at first moderate in policy but, increasingly frustrated at passive policies, adopting militant action in conformity with its watchword, ‘Deeds not words’. A branch of the WSPU, led by Olive Walton, was established in Tunbridge Wells in December 1911. Some of its members took part in violent protests, breaking windows, and stone throwing. Tunbridge Wells cricket pavilion was burned down in April 1913, and there was an attempt at arson at Penshurst Place, actions which invited arrest and imprisonment, followed by hunger strikes and women being forcibly fed. It was hard-won publicity for the women’s cause REVIEWS 338 which gained the WSPU notoriety but little public sympathy. In the years just before the Great War, the NUWSS had over 400 members in Tunbridge Wells, while the WSPU was a much smaller body. When war came in 1914, the suffragists suspended their campaign, only to restart it in mid-1916. Women’s war work and a changed political environment resulted in the successful passing of the Representation of the Peoples Act in early 1918 which gave women aged over 30 the vote. This added 8.4 million women to the electorate, 44 percent of the total. At the parliamentary election of December 1918, the total electorate in Tunbridge Wells numbered 37, 448, of whom 16,124 were women. (The electorate in 1889 numbered 3,594 men). Anne Carwardine with verve and energy tells this dramatic story of provincial political activity mainly by women. Are there monuments or streets in the town named after any of these women who fought hard and long to secure civil rights for their sex and turn the country into a democratic direction? If not, there ought to be! The same question could be asked about that persistent band of socialists who fought political battles in Tunbridge Wells, and beyond. It will probably come as a surprise to most people in the town to know that a small number of socialists were elected to serve on the local councils from the 1890s through to the Great War. Tunbridge Wells is particularly rich in radical history, which Wilson has brought to life from archives in London, Kew, Salford, Manchester, Reading, and Amsterdam, and from periodicals that range from The Anarchist, via the Clarion, Justice, The Social Democrat, to The Workman’s Times. The research is rigorous and methodical, the writing clear and revealing. This book is a valuable contribution to the history of Tunbridge Wells and adds to knowledge of the provincial and national workings of early socialist parties and factions. Some of the early social democrats in Tunbridge Wells were secularists and liberals, although over the years the cause of social justice and working-class welfare attracted Christians to the cause. Anglican and nonconformist clergy seated on radical platforms with socialists was a practical working-out of Christian faith. As with female suffrage, the prominent voices were bold men and women, such as William Wills-Harris and Constance Howell, who were prepared to speak up for working class welfare, and who led the early Social Democratic Federation (SDF) formed in the town in 1886. This was a large branch, numbering nearly one hundred members, one sixth of the national membership of the SDF. In addition, the town had several active trade unions with growing membership. National allies were the Fabian Society and the Independent Labour Party, both of which had local socialist members, and helped radicals and progressives to win seats on the Borough Council. The local causes that engaged the attention of the SDF and its allied Trade and Labour Council, were trade union rights, sanitary improvement, municipal enterprises, working-class housing, reform of poor law relief, and access to and preservation of open spaces. Electoral support for the SDF came mainly from the north and east wards of Tunbridge Wells. The different socialist factions in Tunbridge Wells, and the South-East, came together in the South Eastern Counties Federation of Socialist Societies in 1906. It was a temporary alliance of political convenience and conscience, succeeded in the town by a branch of the British Socialist Party in 1912. The Great War hit socialist internationalism and further divided the left in Tunbridge Wells. Despite REVIEWS 339 a short-lived Tunbridge Wells Soviet in 1917, by late 1918 the Labour Party had established itself in the town and thereafter provided the major voice of the left. There is an important lesson to be learned from these two studies by those who write local history, whether of region, town, or village. Most local historians have tended to ignore or marginalise local political activity. ‘Parish pump politics’ have often been discounted, but they engaged the passions and time of many people in the past, as well as in the present. At best parliamentary politics as they impinge on a locality may be mentioned, a familiar top-down view of the past. But the intricate organisation and conduct of party and faction in a locality is invariably overlooked as if it did not exist. This is inexcusable. Digitalised newspapers and numerous websites make it possible to thoroughly research local politics. It is to be hoped that there will be a wide readership for these two studies of Tunbridge Wells and that they will stimulate an interest to research and write on the history of local political activity. david killingray Searching for Ebony. A long-lost village on an inland island. By Paul Tritton. 92 pp. Colour, b/w illustrations, maps and figures throughout. Kent Archaeological Society, 2018. Paperback, £10 (£13.50 inc. postage) from the Kent Archaeological Society, c/o 2 Salts Avenue, Loose, Maidstone ME15 0AY. Since the nineteenth century members of Kent Archaeological Society have been fascinated with the mysteries of the deserted graveyard at Chapel Bank on a mound, ‘a hog’s back hill’, on Romney Marsh. In 1984 Sir John Winnifrith identified the site of St Mary the Virgin at Ebony (Arch. Cant., 1984). Paul Tritton, whose own personal ‘discovery’ in the 1970s led him to start researching the site, has drawn on the earlier studies including Arthur Hussey and Leland Duncan’s Testamenta Cantiana (1906). This short, detailed work is the result of Tritton’s investigation and the KAS excavations of 1977-87 (Arch. Cant., 1992). Both Winnifrith’s article and the 1977-87 excavation report are reprinted in full in Appendices 3 and 4. Records of Ebony start in the charter of Aethelwulf of Wessex in 832 and the village is mentioned in the Domesday Monachorum, with the first mention of a church/chapel in 1210. The Dissolution and a fire in 1560 led to the rebuild of the church as a small chapel of ease which was moved to Reading Street in 1858 when the hilltop site was finally abandoned. The first half of this book is a fascinating, personal record of the author’s researches into the history of Ebony. The second half is a more traditional local history of the nineteenth and twentieth century village with the focus on the people, well-supported with photographs. Discordant Comicals. The Hooden Horse of East Kent. By George Frampton. 235 pp. Colour and b/w illustrations throughout. Ōzaru Books, 2018. Hardback, £24.99. ISBN 978-0-0031587-7-3. Tradition and ritual, religious and secular appear to be an intrinsic part of human society and during the past hundred years, there has been increasing interest in REVIEWS 340 the revival, or re-creation, of rural ‘traditions’ as they become more remote from modern urban society, the technology of which does of course facilitate their rediscovery. Starting with the work of Percy Maylam on the East Kent hoodening, in the early years of the twentieth century, hoodening is described as a Christmas ritual unique to east Kent, which was clearly based less on religious than on secular (quasi-pagan?) traditions. George Frampton aims to ‘infuse “a little history into folklore”’ of this very local tradition, which underwent considerable revival in the period 1939-65. Frampton has left no stone unturned in his research of the topic from its possible origins identified during the seventh-century archbishopric of Theodore, or even earlier when Augustine of Hippo ‘inveighed against men who clothe themselves in women’s garments at the feast of Janus’ in the fourth century (p. 23). He includes a discussion of the etymology of the word, so close to the concurrently used ‘goodening’ which was an east Kent Boxing Day ritual. Appendices give, inter alia, the names of all known traditional performers, the words and music used in the rituals and the various ways the hooden horses were constructed and there is a very useful index, which helps make this a book to dip into profitably.