ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book illustrates contemporary images of Earls Colne from the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, not published elsewhere, and which reveal different perspectives of that landscape that move beyond the written record. It uncovers and utilises new antiquarian records and archives, including the invaluable resources of the nineteenth-century Incorporated Church Building Society (ICBS) files held at Lambeth Palace Library. The book demonstrates how the physical traces of the early modern past are recoverable for historical enquiry. It addresses some of the aspects of the heterotopic landscapes that coexisted in the past, that leave recoverable remnants in the present. The book looks at the significance of the church, but also the former priory, converted into a domestic dwelling, and the Quaker Meeting House as places of continuity and change.
