Exactly one year ago today I wrote my first blog about my new one-place study of Oldnall End in Warwickshire. I had a double motivation. On the one hand, I wanted to capture the stories and histories of the lost hamlet of Oldnall End and its people. On the other, I wanted to share my own literal and archival journey as I traced the footsteps of my predecessors through Oldnall End’s fields and along its historic lanes. As I said then, it’s a bittersweet moment to be engaged in a project like this, as HS2 gouges through the land and property developers push on with their plans to build over the remaining fields. 2023 was a noisy, muddy year in Oldnall End.

I couldn’t have imagined a year ago all the things I would learn, and the beginning of a new year – for the blog and for the world – seems like the right moment to pause and reflect on some of those I’ve found most transformative.

I learned that while the historic landscape is fragile and always changing, it’s also immensely robust. Both in my walks and in my research I’ve been able to trace ancient field and estate boundaries, footpaths and even entire houses that have been lost, demolished, ploughed or built over, in some cases hundreds of years ago. I’ve also learned that not every proposed infrastructure project comes to pass, even ones that feel very real at the time.

I learned that houses and cottages have their own stories to tell, and I began to learn where to look for those stories. I put on my local history goggles and tracked down some lost cottages in our local park. I had my first encounter with manorial records and learned about court rolls and copyholds. I spent a worrying amount of time delving into probate inventories and mentally reconstructing 17th- and 18th- century rooms and their furniture (ok, there might have been drawings too). I even sat in Mary Watson’s front room and wondered what she kept in her corner cupboard.

I learned that for me, writing the history of a house is a creative process that draws together archival evidence, the material world and imagination. I learned this mostly by forcing myself to know when to stop researching and start writing! I also learned that it is in fact possible to write a house history in less than 20,000 words. So far I’ve shared the stories of eight of Oldnall End’s early houses: the Bates Farm (later Laburnum House), Cherry Tree Cottage, Emscot, Jasmine Cottage, Manor Cottage, Moat Cottage, the Moe House, and the Watson house (today’s Brickmaker’s Arms). My favourite thing is when I can match one of Berkswell’s hundreds of probate inventories to a specific house and begin to envision everyday life there.

I learned that every map is a gateway in time and space. The two cornerstones of my research are the 1802 Enclosure Act and the 1839 Tithe Apportionment. Between them, these two maps and their associated data helped me place each of Oldnall End’s dwellings, their owners and (in the case of the Tithe), their tenants. I plotted them all on a Google Map (above) and that helped me to see just how much ancient field patterns and estate boundaries have shaped today’s Berkswell and Balsall Common. I also learned to hand draw my own maps for research purposes (above). And I accepted that I will probably never be a cartographer.

Finally, I learned that although the professional me specialises in the long nineteenth century, the one-place studies me is an early modernist at heart. I can’t explain it. It’s just true. Reading Ruth Goodman’s wonderful How to be a Tudor unlocked some of the mysteries of early-modern daily life and helped put into context what I’m learning from wills and probate inventories. This year’s objective: learn to read 16th-century script properly.

Thank you to everybody who’s been a part of this so far, especially the wonderful folk at the Society for One-Place Studies who inspired me to turn ten years of unfocused research into something tangible, and the eternally patient staff at Warwickshire County Record Office who provided this glorious bundle of deeds to kick off the new year. I have much more to share about Oldnall End in 2024, so watch this space!