Foreword and Acknowledgements

FOREWORD AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

THIS is the eighth volume to be produced as a result of the partnership between Somerset County Council and the University of London's Institute of Historical Research. That partnership is described in the Editorial Note to Volume III, which was published in 1974. The County Council's responsibility for the Victoria History of Somerset has been carried, during the compilation of the present volume, from May 2000 to March 2001 by its Community, Leisure, and Information Review Committee, and from March 2001 by its Culture, Inclusion, and Access Policy Panel. The University here records its most sincere thanks for the generosity with which the County Council has met and continues to meet the expense of compiling the History, for the active enthusiasm of successive chairs and portfolio holders, Paddy Macmaster, Sam Crabb and Justin Robinson; and for the notable support of Michael Jennings, Corporate Director, Education, Jane Murray, Corporate Director, Culture and Community, and Miriam Maddison, Corporate Director, Community.

The volume has been researched and edited by the County Editor, Mary Siraut, in succession to Robert Dunning. Many people have given valuable help in its preparation. Those who were concerned with particular parishes are named in the footnotes to those parishes: they are thanked most warmly. For more extensive help particular thanks are offered to Tom Mayberry, County Archivist and Head of the Heritage Service, to David Bromwich, Somerset Studies Librarian, to colleagues in the County Archive and Record Service, the County Museum Service, and the Historic Environment Service, to Philip Nokes, Assistant Diocesan Secretary, Wells, and to John Dallimore and other members of the Somerset Vernacular Buildings Group. Among the public libraries and record offices to whose staffs the thanks of the History are rendered for their support, special mention must be made of the Cornwall, Dorset and Wiltshire Record Offices.