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Nature, the past and the English town: a counter-cultural history

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 February 2016

PETER BORSAY
PETER BORSAY*
Affiliation:
Department of History and Welsh History, Hugh Owen Building, Aberystwyth University, Aberystwyth, Ceredigion, SY23 3DY, Wales, UK
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Abstract

In investigating urban culture, historians have understandably tended to focus on the man-made and the modern, and have paid less attention to the role of nature and the past, which seem the opposite of what the town stands for. This survey, which takes as its case-study England, argues that nature and the past have always been part of urban life, but as urbanization gathered pace, particularly from the eighteenth century, they became if anything an even more important element in city and town culture.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 44 , Issue 1 , February 2017 , pp. 27 - 43
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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