Talk Given on Provincial England

Mr. Edward Porritt, who is this year conducting History 12b, gave an interesting talk on "Provincial England" yesterday afternoon in Emerson J. The object of the lecture was to enable men who intend to go to England to visit with appreciation the points which are of interest from a social and economic point of view.

The great population of provincial England is distributed very unevenly; the industrial centres, like Lancastershire, Yorkshire and Durham, are congested, while the rural districts are only thinly populated. The reason for this is that the more progressive of the rural population have abandoned farming and settled in the manufacturing towns. Although the people of these agricultural districts have advanced in learning, the physical appearance of the country is practically the same as in the eighteenth century. One of the most interesting parts of rural England is the Isle of Oxholme in Lincolnshire, which is the only part of the country where there are peasant proprietors. Hitchin, in Hertfordshire, is an interesting example of a typical farming town whose history dates from the eleventh century.