Full Project Title: 'The landowning and landholding women of north-east Wales from ca. 1600 to 1800'
Doctoral Researcher: Lizzy Walker
Supervised by: Dr Shaun Evans and Dr Mari Wiliam
Research supported by: HEFCW Funded Scholarship, College of Arts, Humanities and Business, Bangor University. James Pantyfedwen Foundation.
Lizzy’s research delves into the roles and experiences of the landowning and landholding women of north-east Wales from c. 1600 to 1800 to investigate their place within the agricultural setting. The research will explore the roles of women, the nature and extent of involvement in land management and improvement, as well as general agricultural activity, and how these roles and the depth of involvement changed over time. She will show that although change took place, there was also continuity. She will also show that the involvement, aims and objectives of landowning and landholding women was no different to the involvement, aims and objectives of their male counterparts.
Lizzy is using estate papers, probate documents and Great Session and Quarter Session records for her research, with each collection forming a chapter. She has chosen to focus on specific document types to ensure there is a rounded approach to north-east Wales, rather than a bias to certain areas. This enables a comparative approach on the localities of the research area to take place, to highlight the complexities in continuity and change over time. By using specific document types, she is also creating a framework that highlights the document sets that can be used, and how to use them, to undertake future research into landowning and landholding women in Wales. This is because her research aims to encourage new historiographies on the history of women in Wales to develop, enabling comparative studies to take place across Wales and globally.
Recent activity: Paper entitled ‘Landowners and estate management on the Wales-England border: The women of Croes Howell estate, Denbighshire in the 18th century’ at the Welsh History Postgraduate Conference, March 2024, Cardiff University.
