Blogroll
- BCNS
- Black Country Discovered
- Black Country Living Museum
- BrownhillsBob's Brownhills Blog
- Brumpic
- Centre for West Midlands History
- Distinctly Black Country
- Divergent Paths
- History & Today
- History Workshop Online
- Modern British Studies @ Birmingham
- Municipal Dreams
- Notes from 19th Century Birmingham
- Slowboat
- Staffordshire & Worcestershire Canal Society
- Staffordshire Bred
- The Many Headed Monster
- The Many-headed Monster
- The Trickster Prince
- Transition Stourbridge
- Unstable Praxis
- Walsall Life
- WAVE: Wolverhampton City Archives
- West Wulf
- WilliamGPooley
- Wyrleyblog
Follow me on Twitter
My Tweets-
Recent Posts
Categories
- Birmingham
- Black Country
- Block Capital
- Canal
- Cornwall
- Devon
- Digital
- environment
- Everyday Life
- Gloucestershire
- half baked theories
- Hampshire
- History
- Housing
- industry
- Irish
- lancashire
- Landscape
- London
- Maps
- Migration
- PhD
- Picture
- Politics
- Poverty
- Powys
- Public Health
- Public History
- Quantitative data
- Representation
- shropshire
- Slum
- Sources
- Space
- Staffordshire
- storypast
- Stourbridge
- Talking bout my generations
- Theory
- time
- tower blocks
- Uncategorized
- Wales
- Wolverhampton
- Worcestershire
Tag Archives: space
Black Country Irish: lies, damned lies and statistics
We’ve had a quick look at some of the stories and statistics behind the Irish in the Black Country, particularly focusing on the census data for 1851. Data is an essential part of the story, but it is just a part. … Continue reading
Posted in Black Country, Irish, Quantitative data
Tagged bilston, Black Country Irish, data, economy, GIS, industry, nineteenth century, oldbury, space, stourbridge, urbanisation, walsall, wolverhampton
2 Comments
That particular articulation of social relations which we are at the moment naming as… Doulton Brook
A break from the Irish this week. I’ve been mostly reading Doreen Massey this week – if you’re not familiar with her she’s an urban geographer of major importance, who died earlier in the year (2016 striking again). She was … Continue reading
Posted in Black Country, History, Housing, Space, Stourbridge
Tagged amblecote, black country, BSR, caparo, doreen massey, doulton brook, geography, housing, isaac nash, place, radical history, river stour, space, stour, stourbridge, stourbridge canal, sunrise, taylor wimpey, wollaston
3 Comments
Birmingham’s furthest outpost: Michel de Certeau and the strategies of Elan Village’s builders
I was very fortunate recently to get to camp in one of the most beautiful spots in the country, in the Elan Valley, Powys. It’s among the most sparsely-populated parts of the UK, falling within what John Henry Cliffe described as … Continue reading
Posted in Birmingham, half baked theories, Housing, Landscape, Powys, Space, Wales
Tagged aqueduct, birmingham, construction, elan valley, elan village, Everyday Life, frankley, housing, michel de certeau, mid-wales, navvies, Powys, reservoir, rhayader, space, strategies, tactics, the practice of everyday life, village, Wales, water
3 Comments
Foucault in Northfield: Birmingham’s reformed pubs
As I mentioned recently, apparently historians love pubs more than anything. I was particularly intrigued by a discussion with Nathan Booth at the Urban History conference in Cambridge about the internal layout of pubs in his recently-completed thesis on Stalybridge … Continue reading
Posted in Birmingham, Space, Uncategorized
Tagged 1920s, 1930s, architecture, birmingham, brewers tudor, crown green bowls, foucault, northfield, panopticon, pubs, rational recreation, reformed pubs, space
1 Comment
Doreen Massey (1944-2016)
I came into academia via a fairly circuitous route. After a degree in sound engineering (which I left pretty sure I never wanted to enter a recording studio again; although it did introduce me to some unexpected concepts like dada which, oddly … Continue reading
Posted in Space
Tagged cultural geography, doreen massey, feminist geography, geography, henri lefebvre, human geography, kilburn, space
1 Comment
Beauty is in the streets
The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it. Karl Marx, Theses on Feuerbach. I never realised that, like party politics, academia has a conference season. At least, March appears to be … Continue reading
Posted in half baked theories, PhD, Theory
Tagged art, detournement, Everyday Life, existentialism, graffiti, greil marcus, guy debord, henri lefebvre, jean paul sartre, martin heidegger, may 1968, paris, praxis, revolution, simone de beauvoir, situationism, situationist international, space, streets
2 Comments
“History breaks down into images not into stories”
On the night of 25th September 1940, a middle-aged German-Jewish academic took his own life with an overdose of morphine in the Hotel de Francia, Portbou, on the Spanish side of the Pyrennean border. He’d been hoping to flee to … Continue reading
Posted in Everyday Life, Housing, Staffordshire, Wolverhampton
Tagged arcades, arcades project, black country, capitalism, david harvey, geography, henri lefebvre, history, housing, maps, paris, space, walter benjamin, wolverhampton
2 Comments
Searching for Hulland
Yesterday I attended a digital tools workshop at the University of Warwick, and very worthwhile it was too. Sticking ‘digital’ in front of anything is a recipe for sexy-sounding academia at the mo – digital history, digital humanities etc. – … Continue reading
Posted in Black Country, Digital, Maps, Space
Tagged archives, black country, brierley hill, brockmoor, digital humanities, digital tools, history, holland, hulland, maps, place, space
Leave a comment
Camping, privies, and mapping the everyday
At the age of 33, I recently had my first proper experience of camping (my subconscious has all but blocked the ramshackle Cub camps of my youth, although a few excursions in a refurbished caravan a couple of years ago helped). … Continue reading
Posted in Everyday Life, Maps, PhD, Wolverhampton
Tagged camping, maps, oakham, privies, privy, shropshire, social history, space, toilet, wolverhampton
1 Comment
All the pieces matter
Disclaimer: I’m no expert on American history, not at all. I’m keen that any theory I want to study be portable though, so I’m attempting here to look at a TV series I’ve been re-visiting through a particular lens. No Black … Continue reading
Posted in environment, Housing, Space
Tagged baltimore, henri lefebvre, history, housing, maryland, natalie zemon davis, projects, row houses, space, spatial history, the wire
Leave a comment
