First Steps in Local History

Page 6 of 6

• 1. Introduction
• 2. Learn as you go along
• 3. Questions answered
• 4. Types of evidence
• 5. The census as a source
• 6. A three-stage process
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A three-stage process

So what we are doing is a three-stage process. First, we look at the evidence to see what it tells us straight away - the basic facts. Then, we think about what lies behind that evidence - the more detailed analysis. And third, we place that analysis in the wider context of its time-period and its geographical area, using the work of others to provide our comparisons.

'People in the past were no more two-dimensional than their descendants today.'

This three-stage investigation of local history holds good whatever we are doing, and it produces a very satisfactory result, because we begin to see history in a three-dimensional way. History is not flat like a cardboard cut-out. History is about people and what they did and how they made their world and responded to their world.

People in the past were no more two-dimensional than their descendants today. They, too, lived and breathed and worked and played and loved and hated and died. They suffered and they enjoyed, they shouted and laughed.

The best local history always emphasises this point and always recognises that nothing happened without people and that people were central to everything. The most successful local history follows the pattern outlined above: it does not merely describe what is clear from the evidence anyway, but instead seeks to understand what was going on. It looks for explanations, answers questions, and is about real people in a real world.

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Published: 2005-03-02