David McOmish

It is over one hundred years since the publication of the wide ranging archaeological field investigation undertaken on the Marlborough Downs by the Rev A C Smith. His work Guide to the British and Roman Antiquities of the North Wiltshire Downs in a Hundred Square Miles round Abury was originally published in two volumes in 1884 by the Marlborough College Natural History Society, then reprinted and bound into a single volume and published in 1885 by the Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society after half the original print run was destroyed in a fire. As in most works of inventory the volume has certainly stood the test of time and is still one of the basic reference texts for students of the area. Since then, apart from a few notable exceptions, archaeological literature about the area has been largely site-based and there has been little concerning the Marlborough Downs as a whole. In order to try and redress this imbalance, a day conference was organised in April 2002 at the University of Bath, Swindon, where it was possible to acknowledge and mark the ongoing validity of Smith's work and where a number of papers on various aspects of recent research on the Marlborough Downs were presented. The results of the conference are presented in this volume, together with a number of other commissioned contributions from individuals who have undertaken research in the area during the last decade or so. Each essay stands alone, but they are connected by a common theme, that of the land and how it has changed over millennia.

Although perhaps best known today as the home of Vauxhall Motors, Luton’s industrial roots run much deeper. Long before it became associated with motor cars, Luton was the centre of ladies’ hat production in this country – a success founded upon the earlier regional industry of straw-plaiting. Many surrounding towns and villages fed into the industry and helped to make the region globally renowned. At its peak in the 1930s, the region was producing as many as 70 million hats in a single year; however, it entered a rapid decline following the Second World War from which it never recovered. This has left Luton, Dunstable and a number of other local towns with a challenging inheritance of neglected and decaying fragments of a once vital industry. This book is intended to be an introduction and guide to the area’s historical depth and to its distinctive and varied character, seeking to explain the development of the region as the centre of the hatting industry in the south and exploring the lives of the people working there during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The historic links between the surviving building stock and the hatting industry are assessed and the book highlights the significance of the surviving fabric and the potential of the historic environment within future conservation and regeneration plans.