RHN 10/2025 | Event
Organisers: British Agricultural History Society
24 – 25 April 2025, Bury St Edmunds Guildhall, 79 Whiting Street, Bury St Edmunds and The Food Museum, Stowmarket, Suffolk, UK
British Agricultural History Society Spring Conference 2025
Historical Perspectives on Rural Economies, Societies, Landscapes and Environment
Thursday 24th April, Court Room, Guildhall Bury St Edmunds
1.00pm-3.00pm: Session One – Agriculture in East Anglia
Chair: Sarah Spooner (UEA)
Richard Glass (Suffolk): Memberships of Suffolk farmer’s clubs in the 1840s.
Jon Gregory (UEA): The limits of improvement: heathland and enclosure in Norfolk c.1750-1850
Harvey Osborne (Suffolk): Tithing and the Swing Disturbances of 1830 in East Anglia
Neil Wiffen (UEA/Essex Record Office): Where’s the War? The extent to which Essex farmers were ‘Digging for Victory’ c.1790-1820
3.00pm-3.30 pm: Break
3.30pm-4.30pm: Roundtable – Halls for All: A History of Village Halls
Louise Beaton (ACRE); David Clark; Charlotte Hursey
4.30pm-6.00pm: Session Two – Scottish Land Use
Irene Hallyburton (Dundee): Secession and improvement: The rental book of Culfargie
Alan MacDonald (Dundee): The lime boom in early 17th-century Scotland: a case study of the Dundas estate, West Lothian
Scott Macfie (Glasgow): Farmers’ societies and agricultural improvement in Ayrshire, 1750-1850
6.00pm-7.30pm: Reception
Friday 25th April, Food Museum, Stowmarket
9.30am-10.00am: Arrival and coffee
10.00am-10.15am: Welcome from Jenny Cousins, Director of The Food Museum
10.15am-11.015am: Keynote Lecture
Mark Bailey (UEA): Reconsidering serfdom in the Middle Ages: England and southern Germany compared
11.15am-12.15pm: Session Three – British Capital and Global Agriculture
Costanza Fileccia (Bern): The impact of railway expansion after the gold rushes on southeast Australian agricultural land use and climate adaptation
Adrian Zarilli (Quilmes): Environment, landscape and destruction. Transformations in the Argentine Gran Chaco and the role of British capital in a process of intensive deforestation (1890-1950)
12.15pm-12.45pm: Session Four
Robert Ashton, Ask the fellows who cut the hay
12.45pm-1.45pm: Lunch
1.45pm-3.30pm: Museum Tour
Optional tours of Alton Watermill or The Dairy Cottages or free time to visit the School Dinners exhibition
3.30pm-5.00pm: Session Four – Producing, Consuming and Traveling in Rural Landscapes
Charlotte Hursey: Travelling photographers: tracing the transient across rural Britain
Victor Morgan (UEA): Food for A Feast: The agricultural back story to the menu at the Norwich Guild Feast, c.1560-1700
Gregory Salter (LSE): Risk and value in 14th century leases on the estate of the Bishop of Winchester
5.00pm-6.00pm: Annual General Meeting (Society Members)
6.30pm: Conference dinner
Further information and registration here.