Local publications have much to commend them and our only regret is that we do not receive enough of them for review (or have enough space ever to publish such reviews) as we would wish. They have their own local value, of course, but also have value as a source of welcome income for public libraries and others in these straitened times. But they have a wider significance too: many subjects are as much the sums of parts as of “big” studies, and industrial history especially might start in largely antiquarian studies of local specific installations, which can then become significant as contributions towards a wider picture.
From my own aeronautical history work I have been aware of the significant amount of aircraft production on the Clyde during World War II, often referred to as subsidiary shadow factories in histories of the major companies. But this production had a life of its own and made a significant contribution to the war effort, and so to technical and industrial history. The Dumbarton factory was set up to build Blackburn aircraft in 1937 through the efforts of Sir Maurice Denny, of the shipbuilding company of the same name, using skilled and semi‐skilled labour which was plentifully available in the region during the 1930s slump. In World War II the factory produced the unhappy and unloved Botha and the magnificent Sunderland; it continued after the war building components until its final closure in 1960. This small well illustrated book covers the history of the venture from start to finish, including the story of various aircraft built or worked on, but concentrating on the human story of those who worked there. It is a typically useful record of a local enterprise.
From a much earlier time we have a history of a once thriving colliery. Staffordshire may have its famous five towns, in Ayrshire we have our three towns: Stevenston, Saltcoats and Ardrossan. The remains of its earlier industry are still to be found littering the Ayrshire countryside and this is a useful and well compiled account of a once important colliery during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It also shows the value of local history societies, here using documents held by the local authorities since the 1950s but needing local insights to understand and interpret the information within an appropriate context.
Illustration and nostalgia offer a great market, again, especially in local circumstances. So a collection of excellent quality photographs of road transport in Sheffield can hardly fail. Nostalgic certainly, but there is also a valuable function in preserving and presenting to a wider audience a range of such fascinating illustrations.
We are delighted to hail such local work recording and, equally importantly, publishing the results of amateur work; taken altogether across a region or the whole country such works are of inestimable value in recording not only local history, but also wider industrial, economic and social history.
