REWRITING THE LANCASHIRE WITCHES
churches, castles and cathedrals, drew up family genealogies, studied and interpreted heraldry, collected folktales and superstitions. The imprint of such activities is to be found in Ainsworth’s novels. The antiquarians’ interests were omnivorous. Charles Dellheim says of them: ‘It was antiquity itself, not just one era, that preoccupied them’.10 Their aim was ‘to marry the literary and material evidence of past ages’.11 Their method was one of collection, description and classification. Their activities were characterised by a strong sense of place and a strong sense of the visual. Again, this applies directly to Ainsworth. Much of the work of the antiquarians was directly stimulated by the impact on British society, culture and landscape of the Industrial Revolution. Historical sites were under attack by the railways. When the railways began to spread, there was no protection for landscape or historical antiquities and there were many examples of ‘vandalism’, such as the demolition of Trinity Hospital in Edinburgh and Northampton Castle, and the breaching of the ancient city walls of York, Chester and Newcastle to make way for the railways. The first building to get statutory protection from railway development was Berkhamsted Castle in 1833. It was the threat from the railways to the landscape of the Lake District that later led to the foundation of the National Trust.12 The movement to preserve, protect and in some cases restore the buildings of the past and to protect the landscape in its pristine state developed in those decades when Ainsworth was writing. Linked to concern about the destruction of buildings and environment by industrialisation was concern about the disruption of old patterns of life, old traditions, customs and celebrations which had bound together the community. This was linked to the growth of a class society marked by class consciousness, class divisions and class antagonism. Antiquarians sought to combat both these trends by recuperating a lost or disappearing past in all its colourful detail to emphasise the continuity of the industrial present with the pre-industrial past and to stress a shared national historical heritage and a tradition of community that transcended class. As Dellheim suggests: ‘The myth of historical continuity was a psychological necessity for Victorians in pioneering communities, who were anxious to find sources of orientation and stability after the initial phase of expansion was complete’.13 It was a means of combating ‘the existential insecurity’ that was the product of rapid social, economic, demographic and cultural change.14 Antiquarian research was a manifestation of provincial pride and regional consciousness. It established the newly emerged and transformed industrial north as historically as significant as the more secure and dominant south-east. The recuperation and preservation of the old helped to offset the shock of the new. One of the effects of the Industrial Revolution had been the economic differentiation of the towns of the north and each was anxious to establish its own particular history. Lancashire was as keen as anywhere to do 170