Seventeenth-Century Lancashire Restored:
The Book
This book provides an account of the life and works of Richard Kuerden, a seventeenth-century Lancashire polymath who played an interesting, if perhaps marginal, role at the interface of the two cultures of seventeenth-century intellectual life, as a physician, antiquary, topographer, cartographer and perhaps even alchemist. Despite his plans for a comprehensive and well-illustrated five-volume history of Lancashire, announced in 1688, Kuerden never actually managed to publish anything during his lifetime; but his many volumes of manuscript notes justify giving him the accolade of ‘Father of Lancashire History’. However, his interests extended far beyond the merely antiquarian and it is perhaps with his work as a self-taught surveyor, mapping the roads of Lancashire, the town plans of Lancaster and Preston, and the boundaries of the parish of Cartmel, that he made his greatest contribution to our knowledge and understanding of the county’s past.
The Author
William D. (Bill) Shannon is an independent researcher in history, whose main research interests and published papers concern the landscape, agricultural and cartographic history of England in the early modern period, with particular reference to Lancashire and Cumbria. His first degree was BA (Hons) in Geography from the University of Liverpool in 1965, after which he worked in the commercial sector. Following retirement in 2002, he graduated MA in local and regional history from Lancaster University in 2004, and PhD in July 2009. In 2012, at the time serving as a Councillor on Preston City Council, he acted as one of the Guild Mayor’s Stewards during the celebrations of Preston Guild which occurs once in twenty years, was made a Guild Burgess, and was subsequently elected an Honorary Alderman of Preston City Council. In March 2017 he was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries.
Reviews
"A very important addition to the study of Lancashire’s local history." Lancashire Local History Federation Newsletter (Aug. 2020)
,"Shannon has painstakingly reconstructed each element of [Kuerden's] life, and by so doing his work is of interest to a great variety of people – so wide were his interests. ...
This is a wonderful piece of work, from which Dr Shannon should take much satisfaction as, at last, Preston’s ‘Great Doctor’ emerges from the mists." Preston Historical Society Newsletter, 13 (Autumn 2020)
"Bill Shannon has ... produced the first in-depth study of the man and his work which also describes in detail the contents of Kuerden’s papers and, in a wide-ranging introduction, meticulously sets his life in contemporary scientific, antiquarian and literary contexts, or ‘the networks of knowledge’ of the time. ... Kuerden’s maps were rediscovered in 1952 and quickly attributed to him by the Lancashire county archivist R. Sharpe-France. Although some recent revisionists have attempted to challenge this attribution Shannon rejects these views; with his own lifelong interest in the history of cartography and of early modern Lancashire he is ideally placed to do so and to explain the significance of the maps as artefacts, images and purveyors of information. ... The volume has much to offer historians of topography, antiquarianism, historiography, Lancashire, and the broader intellectual history of seventeenth-century England." The Local Historian (Jan. 2021)
,"this is an excellent and painstaking piece of scholarship that uncovers Kuerden’s considerable achievements, while also shedding light on many other aspects of seventeenth-century life in Lancashire and beyond." Imago Mundi: The International Jounal for the History of Cartography, 73 (2021), 96
,"This volume does a valuable job in describing Kuerden's legacy, and ought to be a stimulus to exploiting it to best effect.... Bill Shannon's text is excellent" Journal of the International Map Collectors' Society, 168 (Mar 2022)
,"historians of Lancashire will find this an illuminating tour through [Kuerden's] notes and papers" Agricultural History Review, 70 (1) (2022), 135-6
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