Surrey Hills' Friendly Societies (SIGNED)
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Good
Markings: Signed
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
Long before the welfare state, the working men and women of the Surrey Hills banded together in mutual aid organisations known as Friendly Societies — grassroots institutions that formed the backbone of Victorian and Edwardian social resilience. Ken James chronicles the rich and largely forgotten history of these local brotherhoods, detailing how communities across the Surrey Hills pooled their modest resources to provide sickness benefits, death payments, and a vital social safety net for their members and families. This meticulously researched local history illuminates the broader narrative of working-class self-help and collective solidarity in rural England, situating the Surrey Hills' societies within the wider national story of the Friendly Society movement. James writes with the quiet authority of a dedicated local historian, drawing on parish records, lodge minutes, and archival documents to reconstruct a world of lodge banners, annual feast days, and fraternal oaths. For anyone passionate about the social history of Surrey or the origins of the British welfare tradition, this work raises a compelling question: what might modern communities rediscover in the forgotten wisdom of those who came before?
Author: Ken James
Format: Paperback
Published: 2016
Genre: British & Irish history
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Good
Markings: Signed
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
Long before the welfare state, the working men and women of the Surrey Hills banded together in mutual aid organisations known as Friendly Societies — grassroots institutions that formed the backbone of Victorian and Edwardian social resilience. Ken James chronicles the rich and largely forgotten history of these local brotherhoods, detailing how communities across the Surrey Hills pooled their modest resources to provide sickness benefits, death payments, and a vital social safety net for their members and families. This meticulously researched local history illuminates the broader narrative of working-class self-help and collective solidarity in rural England, situating the Surrey Hills' societies within the wider national story of the Friendly Society movement. James writes with the quiet authority of a dedicated local historian, drawing on parish records, lodge minutes, and archival documents to reconstruct a world of lodge banners, annual feast days, and fraternal oaths. For anyone passionate about the social history of Surrey or the origins of the British welfare tradition, this work raises a compelling question: what might modern communities rediscover in the forgotten wisdom of those who came before?