David Butcher

Though of Bungay origins, my whole working-life - as a teacher of English - was spent in Lowestoft, at the Harris Secondary School for Girls (1965-9) and at Alderman Woodrow/Kirkley High School (1969-2002). My BA degree from Durham University was in English, Modern History & Latin (1964) and I also hold an MPhil in History, from the University of East Anglia (1989), for a study of Lowestoft’s social and economic development 1560-1730. I taught that university’s Certificate Course in English Local History for its Continuing Studies Dept., at Lowestoft College of Further Education, from 1990-2004 - this being via a two-year, weekly, evening class for adults. My interest in the town’s history, specifically, began when my wife and I moved to Corton in August 1971 -  beginning with its maritime activity connected to fishing, before moving on to other aspects of its fascinating past. 

My main focus in the study of Local History generally (beginning, perhaps, in boyhood with an interest in the countryside around me) has always been rooted in what a particular environment enables its inhabitants to make of it. For me, starting with surface geology and major topographical features is the basic building-block (including a maritime setting, in the case of Lowestoft) on which to base study of a community. Added to this, wherever possible, is full family reconstitution of parish registers, in cases where the documentation allows this to be done, with manorial and probate records acting as valuable supplementary back-up. Other contemporary sources - such as parish tithe records, account rolls and land rentals, poor law accounts, settlement certificates, legal  indictments and decisions, and old maps - can all help to create some sense of the past which goes beyond the merely superficial and creates an idea of “life at the time”, in so far as we are able to represent it.

In specialising mainly on the Early Modern period of English history (loosely, that stretching from the early 16th century to the end of the 18th), one of my main concerns has always been to show Lowestoft within the context of its own local area - as well as within a national one also, wherever possible. Too much “Local History” begins and ends with the first word: local. Events referred to are often merely a statement of what happened, without any attempt at either analysis or placing them within a wider framework. Context is everything, in the study of history, and every effort must be made to reflect this - something which is made easier today by the amount of national government documentation (e.g. Calendar of Patent Rolls, Calendar of State Papers Domestic etc., etc.) and other material which is now available online via the process of digitisation.

The pioneering work of W.G. Hoskins, during the 1950s and 60s, in establishing English Local History as a legitimate field of academic study, was a most important development within the world of university teaching and learning. It is to be regretted that it hasn’t managed to find its way as yet, in some form or other, into secondary-level education in England at either GCSE Ordinary or Advanced levels.   

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