About the book

“Fox has produced a scholarly and detailed study of one area of the country; and one which clearly has its own wider regional characteristics. He indicates how much there is still to say about Phythian-Adams' theories of regions and borders, and at how many levels it may apply. The obvious final thought is to call for more, similarly detailed, local studies, so that we can start to assess in greater detail how unique this area of the country was. This book will be of interest to those working in local social and economic history and, like the rest of this series, is priced to be readily accessible to all.” Alysa Levene, Local Population Studies

“Alan Fox's in-depth depiction of a social-spacial fault-line between Leicestershire and west Lincolnshire provides a highly methodical, meticulously researched, well-grounded and very welcome test of Phythian-Adams's hypotheses about regional 'societies'. It is based on rigorous and exhaustive parish-by-parish analyses, including a phenomenal family reconstitution of fourteen parishes in this border area.” H.R. French, Agricultural History Review

Even today, a traveller through the length and breadth of England is soon aware of cultural differences, some of which are clearly visible in the landscape. It is advocated by the eminent English historian Charles Phythian-Adams that England, through much of the last millennium, could be divided into regional societies, which broadly coincided with groups of pre-1974 counties.

These shire assemblages in turn lay largely within the major river drainage systems of the country. In this unusual and probing study Alan Fox tests for, and establishes, the presence of an informal frontier between two of the proposed societies astride the Leicestershire-Lincolnshire border, which lies on the watershed between the Trent and Witham drainage basins.

Many studies of rural landscapes tend to emphasise medieval and earlier times, but here the stress is on the early modern period.