Dr Sylvia Pinches

Since receiving my doctorate in 2001, I have held a number of posts. At first I did research for the Compton Verney House Trust, producing a study of the social history of the house and estate.  I was Curator of 78 Derngate, Northampton from 2002-2005, from the beginning of its restoration until the second year of being open to the public. My role combined historical and business skills. I researched the history of this house, remodelled in 1916 by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, presenting the material through display panels, the guidebook and training the volunteer guides. I was also responsible for implementing the day to day running of the house. Then I was employed by the University of Gloucestershire for four years on ‘England’s Past for Everyone’, a project of the Victoria County History Trust, in Herefordshire. This involved engaging local people in research, writing a history of the market town of Ledbury. I am once again a freelance researcher and writer, combining work for the Victoria County History Trust in Herefordshire with being a lecturer for the WEA and other freelance work. I am very involved with the Family and Community History Research Society Almshouse project.

Publications

• Ledbury: Parish and People Before the Reformation (Chichester: Phillimore, 2010)
• Ledbury: A Market Town and its Tudor Heritage (Chichester: Phillimore, 2009)
• ‘ “The Place of My Nativity”: Pride, Prejudice and the Rhythm of Charitable Giving in Warwickshire, c. 1500-1900’, Dugdale Society Occasional Papers no. 47 (2007)
• ‘From Common Rights to Cold Charity: Enclosure, Poor Allotments and Popular Protest’, in P. Shapely and A. Borsay eds, Medicine, Charity and Mutual Aid: the Consumption of Health and Welfare in Britain, c 1550 – 1950 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 35-53
• ‘Customary Rights and Charities’, in J. Langford. and G. Jones, eds, Forests and Chases in England and Wales c. 1500 to c. 1850: Towards a Survey and Analysis (Oxford: St. John’s College, 2005), pp. 33-36
• ‘Women as Objects and Agents of Charity in Eighteenth-Century Birmingham’, in R. Sweet and P. Lane, eds, Women and Urban Life in Eighteenth-Century England ‘On the Town’ (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), pp. 65-85.