by Oscar Bond
This project has taken me from the Northern counties of Lancashire and Shropshire, to Somerset and Devon of the West Country and of course, the beautiful East Anglian; Suffolk, Norfolk and Essex. Yet, despite this area covered, I have not had to leave the library and been able to ascertain an in-depth knowledge of churches and parishes, hundreds of miles away, from the comfort of a desk-chair. This has been an exciting concept to me. Armed with Nikolaus Pevsner’s, “The Buildings Of England” and Nigel Lewellyn’s, “Funerary Monuments of Post-Reformation England,” this project has been enabled me to identify and family chapels in our nation’s churches.
More than anything though, it has given me an opportunity to see a different part of the practise of history, offering an insight into the lifestyle, pressures and excitement of being an academic. I have really enjoyed it and the positives have certainly outweighed the negatives, making this a very successful five-week endeavour from my perspective. Here, I wanted to take a moment to outline what I have been up to and why I have enjoyed it so much.
The pre-dominant positive has been the new research skills that I have learnt on the project. My ability to skim read chapters and books, but still pick up the crucial bits of information has certainly been improved throughout. Whether it was paging through Pevsner’s volumes, or the centuries periodicals that each county has produced, being able to read fast has been an important skill. Somewhat surprisingly, my camerawork has also improved throughout the project. The opportunity to use a proper digital camera was maybe not one I expected, but certainly one I have cherished. It has allowed me to take clearer photos of older texts in the Cadbury Research Library and now I am seriously considering buying a camera for my own dissertation and future research as I can understand the enormous benefits wrought.
But there have been challenges too. This project has been about covering a lot of material in a relatively short space of time. Sometimes covering (albeit only skimming) more than 1000 pages per day. This can be mentally draining, and frankly at times, reasonably boring and has required quite strong mental strength to endure.
Thus, to conclude, this project has been something different from anything I have ever done before. It has given me a freedom and independence from my normal work (on a local fish farm) and taught me new skills and improved upon existing ones. In short, I would recommend this opportunity to anyone and think that it is brilliant the department creates these programmes. I feel prepared for my dissertation now, which will be examining different themes of a similar era to this project and look forward to spending the money earned too!