62 
In addressing the Topographers of a Field Club one has not in 
contemplation the writing the history of a monastic institution, 
this is not a matter of common Topography, and if you are so 
fortunate as to have such a foundation in the district you deem 
to be put in your charge you will find the work almost done for 
you. The annals and the catalogues of charters which were made 
by the religious afforded to the compilers of the large works on 
English Ecclesiastical History copious information of these places. 
Of their end and the immediate succession to their property the 
public accounts are fortunately abundant. 
There is more still to do to conclude our proposals for a 
Topography of a group of villages: the few post-reformation 
foundations, the grammar schools, almshouses, colleges, must all 
be examined and historically described. Lives of interesting 
persons hitherto unknown in print, records of visitations of the 
plague, the puritan conventicle, the rise and fall of manufactures, 
the drainage of great marshes, the mines, the changes of the 
means of intercommunication, the building of the church and 
manor house, the trees, woods and wells of ascertained date, 
the bells, the parish registers and churchwardens’ accounts, all 
these are usually matters which well bear comment. In all, 
printed matter, unless very rare, should be referred to and 
not reprinted, and let the difficulty which even the most ex- 
perienced feel in ascertaining whether an event is of interest, 
ephemeral or permanent, warn the tyro against attempts to 
“bring down,” as it is called, “the history to the latest dates,” 
And lastly I wish to say that the creation of a great Topographical 
volume must be the work of one mind, in which the natural 
propensity or taste is strongly developed. The work of our Field 
Club, as a club, is to collect, collect, collect, and when the due 
season brings to our noble county a worthy Topographer, he will 
bless and commemorate us. If slow collection seems a humble 
task, hasty generalisation is truly a vain one ; for appreciation 
the topographical collector must wait, in time he will get it. 
