Staffordshire landed estates and the development of urban communities - Keele University
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Staffordshire landed Estates and the development of urban communities

Keele University has started a studentship that will explore the impact of the social and economic policies of two major Staffordshire landowning families on the development of urban working-class communities in the nineteenth century.

The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Collaborative Doctoral Award, "Staffordshire landed estates and the development of urban communities in the long nineteenth century", will be a collaboration with Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent Archive Service.

The PhD student will research a thesis over three years that explores and compares the impact of the social and economic policies of two major Staffordshire landowning families on the development of urban working-class communities over the 'long nineteenth century', looking at the relationships between the Leveson Gower family (Dukes of Sutherland from 1833) and the emerging industrial town of Longton (one of the six towns of Stoke-on-Trent) and between the Bridgemans (Earls of Bradford from 1815) and the industrialising medieval borough of Walsall.

In both cases urban expansion occurred mainly on land owned by these families. The Sutherland archive has been well catalogued and publicised following a campaign to prevent its sale but it has not yet been utilised for these issues, while the study of Walsall will be based on the archives of the Bradford solicitors that are not yet publicly accessible.

This Collaborative Doctoral Award provides privileged access to a currently uncatalogued archive, the Bradford Collection. Working from a provisional list of the solicitors’ papers, forming a significant part of this collection, the student will develop a properly structured, hierarchical catalogue which will be published by the end of the studentship. The student will be given thorough training in the principles and methods of archival cataloguing. There will also be an opportunity for sustained public engagement by contributing to the Archive Service web-pages, regular 'road-shows' and other events.

Picture of Trentham Hall, Home to the Dukes of Sutherland, reproduced courtesy of Staffordshire Record Office and copyright Staffordshire Record Office (D593/H/13/6).

Image of Weston Hall, home of the Earls of Bradford, reproduced courtesy of Staffordshire Record Office and copyright Staffordshire Record Office (D1287/M/407)