Wikipedia:Peer review/History of Hertfordshire/archive1

History of Hertfordshire

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I've listed this article for peer review because ~~I'm desperate for attention~~ I mean, because I'd like a fresh pair of eyes on it to suggest further improvements, please!

Thanks, —S Marshall ^Talk/_Cont 19:31, 7 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by Nev1 (talk · contribs)

"... forged in the Norse-Saxon wars and developed through commerce serving London": I'd recommend giving a rough date for the wars (ie: which century) as the average reader won't know, and by "Norse", do you mean Viking? I don't think the two are synonyms.
I noticed your removal of "AD" the reason for its presence was that it was in a section that mentioned prehistory and there was a chance of confusion: it could have meant either the first century BC or AD, although the convention is that without BC/AD it automatically means AD. If you don't like BC/AD, I'd recommend using BCE/CE, although MOS was never resolved on the matter of which should be used (unless there have been recent developments).
What is meant by "of Hertford" in the following extract: "with the establishment of the two burhs ... of Hertford"? Is it referring to the county town? If so, I think it's very unusual for two burhs to be established so close together, one year apart. For example, the Saxon burh at Eddisbury hill fort was superseded by one at Chester about 10 miles away. Cheshire is very far north compared to Hertfordshire and had a relatively low population and therefore required fewer burhs, but I'd be surprised if there were two in the same town.
When looking into the info about the planned town, I noticed that the source states it with some confidence however the article introduced uncertainty. If the source presents something as a certainty, there's no need to change that unless there are other sources that challenge it. As most of the sources are printed, I can't check this myself but you might want to double check that this doesn't happen anywhere else. I can understand why it did though. I think there may be a few more instances due to a few occurrences of words such as "seem", indicating uncertainty. That's not to say such words and phrases shouldn't be used, if the source is uncertain, then it's definitely correct to reflect that.
Do we have a (rough) date for the founding of Hertford?
What does the following sentence add to the article: "Hertford and several other areas in Hertfordshire are ripe for archaeological excavation"? It doesn't sound very encyclopedic, but if information is given about current and planned archaeological work it may be worth including.
Without explaining why minting coins is relevant (ie: it indicates Hertford was a high-status settlement) the reader is left wondering why the fact that Edward and Aethelred minted coins there is worth mentioning.
"It probably remained in royal hands into the tenth century": does "it" refer to Hitchin?
"...but because it had many small roads rather than a few large ones, the towns followed the same pattern": in my opinion, causation isn't clear. Were the towns and villages small because of the small roads, or were the roads small because of the small villages and towns? If this is the judgement the source makes, fair enough but a little more explanation would be helpful to the reader. Presumably the small roads impeded travel and therefore hampered trade.
The section on the 11th century sounded like someone's point of view, if describing Aethelred's reign as incompetent, it needs to be clarified who thought so (although since he's called Aethelred the Unready it would seem pretty much everyone). Another example if the judgement that it was fortunate for England that Forkbeard's son ascended to the throne. I've removed these examples, but it's something to keep an eye on.
"The Norman church at St Albans Abbey was finished in 1088": was this the foundation of the Abbey? It could be made a bit clearer.
After the mention of Edgar's surrender, could a sentence on the importance of the Norman Conquest be added for context? Something on the new administrative system introduced by the Normans and the introduction of feudalism.
"The Domesday Book lists a relatively sparse 168 settlements in Hertfordshire": relative to what or where? 168 is crowded compared to the northwest back then!
A couple of phrases such as "simply put" are a bit informal. I've removed a couple.
MOS:DASH means that either endashes (–) or emdashes (—) can be used for parenthesis as long as use within the article is consistent. The endashes need non-breaking spaces to the right. You fixed it before I realised I'd introduced inconsistency, sorry about that and thanks for fixing it.
"Relatively little commerce took place in Hertfordshire at the start of the [12th] century": considering it was implied earlier that trade was important to the county and Hertford was clearly important due to being a centre of coin minting in the 10th and 11th centuries, why was this? Had Hertford become less important?
The section on the 12th century is a bit disjointed, reading like a collection of facts. How important was Baldlock? Why was it established? Were the Templar's significant land owners in the county? Can the creation of the settlement be linked back to increasing trade in the county until 1349? Stephen holding court in the county also seems like evidence of the county's increasing importance, but this speculation on my part would need a source although it would nicely tie the section together. Not sure how to tie in Breakspear, may as well leave that sentence standing alone.
Hertford Castle is mentioned for the first time in the section on the 12th century, with no previous mention of its construction or purpose. If you could find something on Hertfordshire's castles in general, it would be great to add to the section on the 11th century after mention of the Norman Invasion. Castles were important institutions, not just military tools but constructs of social control, seigniorial residences, and even centres of administration.
Related to the above point, what was Dauphin Louis doing in Hertfordshire in December 1216?
Without context, the following sentence could probably be removed: "King Henry III wrote to the Sherriff of Hertfordshire in 1260 to complain of the "homicide, robbery and other lawless evildoings" in the county". Was Hertfordshire exceptionally unruly?
"The number of residents probably fell by 30%–50%: it would be nice if the estimates for England as a whole could be included for comparison (I think it was 1/4 to 1/3, but of course would need a source).
You'll want to make sure that serial commas are used consistently.
"Queen Mary granted the town of Hertford its first charter": some information on what the charter allowed would be useful to the reader.
Per MOS:QUOTE, quotes should not be in italics and short quotes (as a rule of thumb, less than four lines) doesn't need to be in a separate paragraph.
"Cromwell captured and imprisoned the Levellers' "agitators" and a number were sentenced to death, but only one actually shot": do you mean that only one was executed rather than shot? The current wording means that others could have been executed through different methods.
It's probably not necessary to mention that "The fire [of London] probably started by accident, but Catholics were blamed at the time".
"Their impact on trade and commerce in Hertfordshire is hard to overstate": true, but the sentence isn't quite encyclopedic in tine.
Per MOS:IMAGE, "Do not place left-aligned images directly below a subsection-level heading (=== or lower), as this sometimes disconnects the heading from the text that follows it. This can often be avoided by shifting left-aligned images down a paragraph or two". Also, MOS:IMAGE encourages images to be placed in the section they related to, so the flag in the references section is a bit incongruous.
"Of local interest, Stephen Austin of Fore Street, Hertford, published a newspaper called the Hartford Mercury in 1772": how is it of local interest? Was it the county's first newspaper?
While I agree with the following and the conclusion, the bit after the reference has the ring of original research and probably needs a source: "In 1795, one Dr Walker wrote a report on agriculture and forestry within the county. He said "Herts is justly deemed the first and best corn county in the kingdom",[76] an assessment that may not be entirely free from local bias. It nevertheless shows how more advanced farming techniques and soil improvement programmes had enabled farmers to work Hertfordshire's "heavier" soils to better effect over the centuries since the Saxon-Norse wars".
Why did the county's population expand so much in the 19th and 20th centuries? I would expect it to be related to the Industrial Revolution, however little in the modern era section explained why. The railways were important, but did residents come to the county for industry (if so was there other industry apart from paper? I doubt it could support that many jobs) or to escape industry? Or other reasons?
Were the boundaries of the county changed by the Local Government Act 1972?

On the whole, I like the article and in places there is a good amount of detail which shows a good understanding of the subject and source material. For example, "Thus Hertfordshire developed through commerce to a greater extent than normal, and less through the agriculture that drove most of England's economy during this period": this kind of context is very good and a something I would expect of a Featured Article. The article isn't up to Featured standards yet though and would require expansion so that's it's covers the subject in depth, but in places is very good. At the moment, it would take a hammering on criterion 1a. For the next step, I'd recommend taking this to GAN because I think this should pass even without the above changes. Afterwards, perhaps leaving it for a while before returning with fresh eyes. For someone who claims to be inexperienced with long articles, I'm impressed. Nev1 (talk) 20:35, 10 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very, very much for your patient work on this article and your comprehensive comments.
I do mean "Norse" and I chose the word with due care, but thanks for pointing it out.
I'll run with "first century CE", I think.
Two burhs were established in Hertford, one on each side of the River Lea, in 912 and 913 respectively. The sources do note that this was unusual and in some cases speculate on the reasons why this might have been done, but there's little agreement on the reasons, only the fact.
I'm probably guilty of POV about the 11th century. It's a period of particular interest for me, and the more you read about something, the more you build up a view. I think I should ask for an independent copyeditor to find my biases and cut them down to the facts.
Rook's pretty clear that Hertford is an early example of town planning. Not all the sources mention this, though, and I'm not comfortable stating it with as much confidence as Rook does. There are other possible explanations for why Fore Street is so straight!
On commerce in the 12th century, I was trying to say that commerce at the end of the century was much more prevalent than at the start. I obviously failed to say it very clearly, so I need to think about how to rephrase that.
I agree that the 12th century part of the article needs attention in terms of flow. I think I'll go back to the sources and rewrite it from scratch.
Yes, I need to find the date of origin and first owner of Hertford Castle. (Side note: Wikipedia's Hertford Castle article is totally wrong about it being on the site of the burhs.)
On Dauphin Louis, I see from my handwritten notes that he was at Hertford Castle but I've failed to record much else about him. Back to the sources again on that!
I don't know whether Hertfordshire was particularly unruly. On looking at it again, I'm with you: better to cut that sentence out completely.
I'll take a look for sources about fatality rates from the Black Death.
I'll standardise on the serial comma.
Only one was executed. I swapped "shot" for "executed" because I didn't want to paraphrase the source too closely, if I remember right. I'll find a way to make that less ambiguous.
I'll cut the ancillary detail about the Great Fire of London.
I don't know how to phrase that sentence at the moment. It'll need some thought.
I'll fiddle with the images.
The Hertfordshire Mercury is still our most widely-read free paper (which is something I would say in the article if I could find a source for it...) I do not know if it was Hertfordshire's first paper, but I rather doubt it.
Well, that sentence is "OR", if you like. I've got sources that say it was hard to farm with a medieval plough, and sources that say it's easy to farm with more modern tools. I've joined the dots there.
On the population expansion, I have the facts at my fingertips, but not the reasons.
Yes, there were several boundary changes (in 1972, and also with the 1938 Green Belt Act iirc). I didn't mention these things, but I can.
Thank you again for the comprehensive review and all your hard work. I'll see about the GAN when I've fixed the issues you mention to my satisfaction.
Cheers—S Marshall ^Talk/_Cont 21:04, 10 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]