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The ‘Open-Closed’ Settlement Model and the Interdisciplinary Formulations of Dennis Mills: Conceptualising Local Rural Change

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 September 2012

ANDREW J. H. JACKSON
ANDREW J. H. JACKSON*
Affiliation:
Bishop Grosseteste University College Lincoln, Newport, Lincoln, LN1 3DYandrew.jackson@bishopg.ac.uk
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Abstract

This article is an examination of the value of the ‘open-closed’ settlement model. The model has endured as a helpful point of reference in historical investigations of local rural change in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and in particular in the study of property and class relations and their influence on the evolution of settlement form. The article is also a consideration of the significance of the work of a chief architect of the model, the historical geographer and local historian Dennis Mills. The model and the contribution of Mills are discussed in relation to initiatives seeking to develop local history of the twentieth century, including the promotion of engagement with interdisciplinary historiographies.

Type
Research Article
Information
Rural History , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , October 2012 , pp. 121 - 136
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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References

Notes

1. A bibliography brought together to inform a festschrift to Mills identified 127 publications: Shirley Brook, ‘Bibliography’, in Brook, Shirley, Walker, Andrew and Wheeler, Rob, eds, Lincoln Connections: Aspects of City and County since 1700: A Tribute to Dennis Mills (Lincoln, 2011), pp. 12–15Google Scholar.

2. Among his earliest publications are: Mills, D. R., ‘Regions of Kesteven Devised for the Purposes of Agricultural History’, Lincolnshire Architectural and Archaeological Society: Reports and Papers 7 (1957), 80–2Google Scholar; ‘Lincolnshire Farming Regions’, East Midland Geographer, 9 (1958), 41–3; ‘The Poor Laws and the Distribution of Population, c.1600–1860, with special reference to Lincolnshire’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 26 (1959), 185–95. His most recent to date are: Mills, Dennis, ‘Local Studies in Sanitary Reform: The Importance of the Engineering Aspect, Lincoln, 1848–50’, The Local Historian, 39 (2009), 207–17Google Scholar; ‘St Giles Avenue’, in Walker, Andrew, ed., Uphill Lincoln II: The North-Eastern Suburbs (Lincoln, 2010), pp. 44–6Google Scholar; ‘Where were George Giles and Motherby Hill?’, The Lincoln Enquirer, 19 (2010), 2–5.

3. See, for example: Mills, Dennis R., ‘The Christening Custom at Melbourn, Cambs’, Local Population Studies, 11 (1973), 11–22Google Scholar; Mills, Dennis, ‘Canwick (Lincolnshire) and Melbourn (Cambridgeshire) in Comparative Perspective within the Open-Closed Village Model’, Rural History, 17 (2006), 1–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘“Recollections” of the Romans in Canwick Village’, Lincolnshire Past and Present, 59 (2005), 3–6.

4. On community, see, for example: Mills, Dennis, ‘Community and Nation in the Past: Perception and Reality’, in Drake, Michael, ed., Time, Family and Community: Perspectives on Family and Community History (Oxford, 1994), pp. 261–85Google Scholar; ‘Defining Community: A Critical Review of Community in Family and Community History’, Family and Community History, 7 (2004), 5–12.

5. Guides to the use of the population census and commercial directories include: Mills, Dennis R., Rural Community History from Trade Directories (Aldenham, 2001)Google Scholar; Mills, Dennis and Drake, Michael, ‘The Census, 1801–1991’, in Drake, Michael and Finnegan, Ruth, eds, Studying Family and Community History, Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, 4, Sources and Methods: A Handbook (2nd edn, Oxford, 1997), pp. 25–56Google Scholar.

6. Among the important texts on the development of the model are: Mills, D. R., ‘The Geographical Effects of the Laws of Settlement in Nottinghamshire: An Analysis of Francis Howell's Report, 1848’, East Midlands Geographer, 5 (1970), 31–8Google Scholar; Mills, ‘Has Historical Geography Changed?’, New Trends in Geography (Milton Keynes, 1972), pp. 58–75; Mills, Dennis R., Lord and Peasant in Nineteenth Century Britain (London, 1980)Google Scholar.

7. Jackson, Andrew J. H., ‘Process and Synthesis in the Rethinking of Local History: Perspectives Contained in Essays for a County History Society’, International Journal of Regional and Local Studies 2 (2006), 5–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mills, ‘Community and Nation’, p. 282; Sheeran, George and Sheeran, Yanina, ‘Discourses in Local History’, Rethinking History, 2 (1998), 66–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tiller, Kate, ‘Local History Brought Up to Date’, The Local Historian, 36 (2006), 148–62Google Scholar.

8. Mills, Dennis R., ‘Introduction’, in Mills, , ed., Twentieth Century Lincolnshire (Lincoln, 1989), pp. 12–15Google Scholar. See also: Jackson, Andrew J. H., ‘Researching and Writing Local Histories of the Twentieth Century: An Introduction and Review’, International Journal of Regional and Local Studies, 6 (2010), 7–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9. From the proceedings of the conference, see: Andrew Jackson, J. H., ‘Problematising and Practising “Community-Focused” Local History: On the Ermine, A Council Estate in 1950s and ‘60s Lincoln’, International Journal of Regional and Local Studies, 6 (2010), 48–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tiller, Kate, ‘Local History and the Twentieth Century: An Overview and Suggested Agenda’, International Journal of Regional and Local Studies, 6 (2010), 16–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10. Jackson, ‘Problematising and Practising’; ‘Rural Lincolnshire from the Mid-Twentieth Century: Landscapes and Settlements’, for A Century of Lincolnshire's Past: A Conference to Mark the Centenary of the Lincoln Record Society, Lincoln, 22 May 2010; ‘Open and Closed Settlements Revisited: Twentieth-Century Rural and Urban Change’, Lincolnshire Archives Research Progress Seminar, 21: Twentieth-century Rural Lincolnshire and Beyond, Lincoln, 13th November 2010, which was reproduced in the festschrift for Mills as: ‘Towards the Late Twentieth Century and Beyond: Rural and Urban Change and the Task of the Historian’, in Brook, Walker and Wheeler, eds, Lincoln Connections, pp. 136–43. I am grateful for the comments of Dennis Mills and others at the Lincolnshire Archives seminar, and from Dennis in pers. comm., 22nd April 2011.

11. For a general review of the evolving character of the community studies literature see: Harper, Sarah, ‘The British Rural Community: An Overview of Perspectives’, Journal of Rural Studies, 5 (1989), 161–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Susan Wright, ‘Image and Analysis: New Directions in Community Studies’, in Short, Brian, ed., The English Rural Community: Image and Analysis (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 195–217Google Scholar.

12. Taylor, Craig, Return to Akenfield (London, 2007)Google Scholar; Havinden, Michael, Estate Villages Revisited: A Second Up-dated Edition of the Study of the Oxfordshire (formerly Berkshire) Villages of Ardington and Lockinge (Reading, 1999)Google Scholar; Jackson, Andrew J. H., ‘The Shearers and the Shorn Revisited: Twentieth-Century Rural Devon through the Writings of E. W. Martin’, in Devon History Society, Devon People and Landscapes (Exeter, 2011)Google Scholar, forthcoming.

13. See, for example: Mills, D. R., ‘English Villages in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries: A Sociological Approach. Part I: The Concept of a Sociological Classification’, The Amateur Historian, 6 (1965), 271–8Google Scholar; Mills, Dennis R., ‘The Peasant System’, The Local Historian, 11 (1974), 200–6Google Scholar; ‘The Relations between History and Geography’, Cambridge Institute of Education Bulletin, 3 (1967), 2–5.

14. Tiller, ‘Local History and the Twentieth Century’. See Strathern, Marilyn, Kinship at the Core (Cambridge, 1996)Google Scholar; Steel, D. I. A., A Lincolnshire Village: The Parish of Corby Glen in its Historical Context (London, 1979)Google Scholar; Mills, Twentieth Century Lincolnshire.

15. Jackson, ‘Local and Regional History as Heritage: The Heritage Process and Conceptualising the Purpose and Practice of Local Historians’, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 14 (2008), 362–79; Nash, Catherine, ‘Local Histories in Northern Ireland’, History Workshop Journal, 60 (2005), 45–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Samuel, Raphael, Theatres of Memory, Vol. 1: Past and Present in Contemporary Culture (London, 1994), p. 158Google Scholar; Tiller, Kate, ‘“Local Historians Can Do This for Themselves” – A Personal View of 2008–9’, The Local Historian, 39 (2009), 324–9Google Scholar.

16. Mills, Dennis, ‘Local History on the Council Agenda’, History Today, 43 (1993), 10–12Google Scholar; ‘Heritage and Historians’, The Local Historian, 24 (1994), 225–8.

17. Mills, Lord and Peasant, pp. 223–8.

18. Mills, Lord and Peasant, p. 223.

19. Mills, D. R., ‘The Development of Rural Settlement around Lincoln’, East Midland Geographer, 11 (1959)Google Scholar, in Mills, Dennis R., ed., English Rural Communities: The Impact of a Specialised Economy (London, 1973), pp. 83–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20. Mills, ‘The Geographical Effects of the Laws of Settlement’.

21. Mills, ‘Has Historical Geography Changed?’, pp. 58–75.

22. Mills, Dennis R. and Short, Brian, ‘Social Change and Social Conflict in Nineteenth-Century England’, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 10 (1983), 254CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23. Jackson, Andrew J. H., ‘Investigating the Break-Up of the Great Landed Estates of Devon: The Use of Commercial Directories, 1875–1939’, Transactions of the Devonshire Association, 136 (2004), 165–74Google Scholar; Mills, Rural Community History, pp. 94–5.

24. Holderness, B. A., ‘“Open” and “Close” Parishes in England in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries’, Agricultural History Review, 20 (1972), 126–39Google Scholar.

25. Mills and Short, ‘Social Change and Social Conflict’, 253–62.

26. Fuller, Heather A., ‘Landownership and the Lindsay Landscape’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 66 (1976), 14–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27. Rawding, Charles, ‘Village Type and Employment Structure: An Analysis in the Nineteenth Century Lincolnshire Wolds’, Local Population Studies, 53 (1994), 53–68Google Scholar.

28. Banks, Sarah, ‘Nineteenth-Century Scandal or Twentieth-Century Model? A New Look at “Open” and “Close” Parishes’, Economic History Review, 41 (1988), 51–73Google Scholar.

29. Song, Byung Khun, ‘Parish Typology and the Operation of the Poor Laws in Early Nineteenth-Century Oxfordshire’, Agricultural History Review, 50 (2002), 204, 224Google Scholar.

30. Mills, ‘Canwick (Lincolnshire) and Melbourn (Cambridgeshire)’, 20.

31. Snell, Keith and Ell, Paul, Rival Jerusalems: The Geography of Victorian Religion (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 274–394CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32. Snell and Ell, Rival Jerusalems, p. 367.

33. Mills, ‘Canwick (Lincolnshire) and Melbourn (Cambridgeshire)’, 5.

34. Tiller, Kate, Local History: An Introduction (2nd edn, Stroud, 2002), pp. 221–2Google Scholar. This ‘summary’ of characteristics is also in Mills, Lord and Peasant, p. 117.

35. Mills, ‘The Development of Rural Settlement’, p. 96.

36. Mills, Dennis, ‘Sustaining Rural Communities’, in Blunden, John and Curry, Nigel, eds, The Changing Countryside (Milton Keynes, 1985), pp. 175–6Google Scholar.

37. Mills, Lord and Peasant, p. 223.

38. Mills, Dennis, A Walk Round Canwick: The Lincolnshire Estate Village of the Sibthorps with the Enclosure Award Map of 1787 (Lincoln, 2003)Google Scholar; ‘Canwick (Lincolnshire) and Melbourn (Cambridgeshire)’.

39. Mills, Lord and Peasant, p. 223.

40. Bill Goodhand, ‘Changes in the Quality of Rural Life: A Case Study of Welbourn’, in Mills, Twentieth Century Lincolnshire, pp. 181–211; Mills, Dennis, ‘The Fall and Rise of the English Village: Or Rural Planning and Technological Change’, Lincolnshire Past and Present, 3 (1991), 18–21Google Scholar; Steel, A Lincolnshire Village, pp. 216–32.

41. Jackson, ‘Towards the Late Twentieth Century’; Mills, ‘Sustaining Rural Communities’, pp.174–9; Mills, ‘The Development of Rural Settlement’, pp. 92–97; Dennis Mills, ‘The Revolution in Workplace and Home’, in Mills, Twentieth Century Lincolnshire, pp. 23–6.

42. Newby, Howard, Green and Pleasant Land? Social Change in Rural England (Harmondsworth, 1979)Google Scholar; Newby, Howard, Bell, Colin, Rose, David and Saunders, Peter, Property, Paternalism and Power: Class and Control in Rural England (London, 1978)Google Scholar.

43. Marsden, Terry, Murdoch, Jonathan, Lowe, Philip, Munton, Richard and Flynn, Andrew, Constructing the Countryside (London, 1993)Google Scholar; Murdoch, Jonathan and Marsden, Terry, Reconstituting Rurality (London, 1994)Google Scholar.

44. Murdoch and Marsden, Reconstituting Rurality, pp. 94–124.

45. Harper, Sarah, ‘The Rural-Urban Interface in England: A Framework of Analysis’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 12 (1987), 284–302CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46. Brian Short, ‘The Evolution of Contrasting Communities within Rural England,’ in Short, The English Rural Community, pp. 37–40; Spencer, David, ‘Reformulating the “Closed” Parish Thesis: Associations, Interests and Interaction’, Journal of Historical Geography, 26 (2000), 85–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

47. For example, in Mills: English Rural Communities, pp. 18–19; ‘English Villages’, 271; Lord and Peasant, pp. 21–3; ‘The Peasant Tradition’, pp. 200–202.

48. Mills, ‘Has Geography Changed?’, pp. 70 - 71.

49. Short, ‘The Evolution of Contrasting Communities’, pp. 20–1, 36, 40–1; Short refers here to Giddens, Anthony, The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration (Cambridge, 1984)Google Scholar.

50. Spencer, ‘Reformulating’, 85, 90–3. Spencer refers to the evaluation, endorsement and application of actor network theory in: Marsden, Murdoch, Lowe, Munton and Flynn, Constructing the Countryside; Murdoch and Marsden, Reconstituting Rurality. I am grateful for the encouragement of Richard Munton, David Spencer and Brian Short during an earlier, if more fleeting, investigation of the significance of the open-closed settlement model and actor-network theory in the context of twentieth-century change; see, for a study in Devon, Jackson, ‘Rural Property Rights and the Survival of Historic Landed Estates in the Late Twentieth Century’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of London, 1998).

51. Spencer, ‘Reformulating’, p. 93.

52. Spencer, ‘Reformulating’, pp. 93–4.

53. David Spencer, ‘Oxford Collegiate Landownership and Rural Residential Development: Some Preliminary Considerations’, Discussion Paper No. 37 (Reading, 1995); ‘Oxford Collegiate Landownership and Rural Residential Development: The Case of Chalgrove’, Discussion Paper No. 38 (Reading, 1995); ‘Pulling Out of Landed Property: The Oxford Colleges and the Church Commissioners’, Area, 32 (2000), 297–306.

54. Mills, A Walk Around Canwick; ‘Canwick (Lincolnshire) and Melbourn (Cambridgeshire)’; ‘The Peasant System’.

55. Mills, Lord and Peasant, pp. 223–8. This urban perspective is the main focus of discussion in Jackson, ‘Towards the Late Twentieth Century’.

56. Mills, ‘Canwick (Lincolnshire) and Melbourn (Cambridgeshire)’, 2–3, 5.

57. Barry Holliss, ‘The Impact of the Royal Air Force’, in Mills, Twentieth Century Lincolnshire, pp. 151–4; Mills, ‘The Fall and Rise of the English Village’, 19.

58. Jackson, ‘Towards the Late Twentieth Century’, p. 138; ‘Rural Lincolnshire’.

59. Mills, Lord and Peasant, p. 13.

60. Rawding, ‘Village Type’, 53.