ABSTRACT
The middle decades of the nineteenth century constituted something of a ‘golden age’ for the serious amateur local historian. The field of local history could be clearly distinguished from that of the antiquarian. W. B. Stephens went on to exclude academic areas requiring specialist technical knowledge such as archaeology, geology, palaeography and the etymology of place-names. Local History was arguably a central feature of nineteenth-century middle-class culture and has been unjustly neglected by historians. The 1880s offer a vantage point from which to look back at the development of antiquarian and local studies in the nineteenth century. The formation of the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society marked the culmination of the era of amateur local history in Manchester. The local history culture of the middle decades of the nineteenth century depended upon more than the existence of several relevant societies, although these provided a necessary infra-structure for its survival.
