Norfolk Origins Series

Roads and Tracks is a new and greatly expanded edition of a title first published in the Norfolk Origins series in 1983. Much has moved on since then - not least the amount of dual carriageway the county now has. But research and archaeology have moved on as well, with new finds and reinterpretations of what has already been discovered. With a click on his name, author Bruce Robinson introduces the book

The book looks at the development of transport by foot, horse, cariage and car across the centuries, investigates the origins of ancient highways and by-ways from Iron Age and Roman times and concludes with the arrival of the car and developments into the 21st century.

Hunters to First Farmers describes what prehistoric Norfolk must have been like - bearing in mind that the shape of the county didn't exist in prehistoric times. It looks at life in the Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic times, and the methods archaeologists use to understand those periods.

The second edition of Celtic Fire and Roman Rule is now available. Brought up to date by Chief Curator of the Norfolk Museums and Archaeological Service John Davies, it carries the story of Norfolk forward from about 500BC to the breakdown of Roman Rule circa 410AD. And what years those 1000 years were! There was great technical advancement and some of the most complex and eventful moments in Norfolk's long history. This is regarded as the standard introduction to Celtic and Roman times in Norfolk.

The North Folk: Angles, Saxons and Danes moves the story of the county on from the departure of the Romans to the coming of the Normans. The mysteries of the 'Dark Ages' in Norfolk are gradually unfolding with the developing techniques of landscape archaeology and the growing opportunities to investigate sites that are being redeveloped. This book takes us through the period of the coming of the Angles, Saxons and Vikings.

Deserted Villages in Norfolk returns to a thematic rather than a chronological approach. As the boundaries of England have changed, Norfolk has remained a county of towns and many, many villages. This book records those which have disappeared from the modern map, and explains why this has happened.

Changing Agriculture in Georgian and Victorian Norfolk takes the period from the begining of the 18th century up to the beginning of the First World War and looks at how Norfolk developed as an agricultural county. What made Norfolk such a centre of development? Was it the availability of labour, with little option but to work the land? Was it innovative landowners? How significant was the development of machinery made possible by the Industrial Revolution?

Susanna Wade Martins draws on traditional sources and new evidence to examine this great period of change in Norfolk’s story.

The Norfolk Dialect looks first at the linguistic history of the county, and at the many different languages which have been spoken there, to see what influences may have contributed to the distinctive nature of the dialect.

It then examines the dialect of Norfolk in the context of the English dialects of Great Britain, illustrates the links with Suffolk and demonstrates the division at the Fens. One of author Peter Trudgill's key points is to show that the Norfolk dialect is a form of the English language with a fascinating history and a unique structure that is worthy of respect and maintenance, not of ridicule and discrimination. Peter Trudgill recently retired as Professor of English Linguistics at Fribourg University, and is President of FOND (Friends of the Norfolk Dialect).

Exploring the Norfolk Village is the latest title in our Norfolk Origins series. It takes a selection of villages across the county of Norfolk, from Terrington in the west to Hickling in the east, from the southern border of Breckland to the exposed coastlands, to explain some of the ways in which we can understand the development of Norfolk's villages. In focussing on particular villages, each one represents a different area of the county, and every other village will share common features with at least one of those featured in the book.

The use of current and historical maps, the investigation of documents in local libraries or the Norfolk Record Office, the techniques of field walking or of more formal archaeological digging, are all illustrated in the pages of the book. Everyone with the slightest history in developing their understanding of their community, its history and its geography, will find this book the very best of starting places.