The Chetham Society publishes work about Lancashire and Cheshire, and their new volume might be of interest to members:
Seventeenth-Century Lancashire Restored:
The Life and Work of Dr Richard Kuerden, Antiquary and Topographer, 1623–1702
William D. Shannon
The Book
This book provides an account of the life and works of Richard Kuerden, a seventeenth-century Lancashire polymath who played an interesting, if perhaps marginal, role at the interface of the two cultures of seventeenth-century intellectual life, as a physician, antiquary, topographer, cartographer and perhaps even alchemist. Despite his plans for a comprehensive and well-illustrated five-volume history of Lancashire, announced in 1688, Kuerden never actually managed to publish anything during his lifetime; but his many volumes of manuscript notes justify giving him the accolade of ‘Father of Lancashire History’. However, his interests extended far beyond the merely antiquarian and it is perhaps with his work as a self-taught surveyor, mapping the roads of Lancashire, the town plans of Lancaster and Preston, and the boundaries of the parish of Cartmel, that he made his greatest contribution to our knowledge and understanding of the county’s past.
The Author
William D. (Bill) Shannon is an independent researcher in history, whose main research interests and published papers concern the landscape, agricultural and cartographic history of England in the early modern period, with particular reference to Lancashire and Cumbria. His first degree was BA (Hons) in Geography from the University of Liverpool in 1965, after which he worked in the commercial sector. Following retirement in 2002, he graduated MA in local and regional history from Lancaster University in 2004, and PhD in July 2009. In 2012, at the time serving as a Councillor on Preston City Council, he acted as one of the Guild Mayor’s Stewards during the celebrations of Preston Guild which occurs once in twenty years, was made a Guild Burgess, and was subsequently elected an Honorary Alderman of Preston City Council. In March 2017 he was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries.
Price: £39-95 (including post & packing – contact the Society’s General Editor, Tim Thornton, via t.j.thornton@hud.ac.uk)
Historical Association Bolton Branch 