Hannah Reeve

• History, Classics and Archaeology, Newcastle
• Email: h.a.j.reeve@newcastle.ac.uk

The parish church and churchyard lay at the heart of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century life, but have been neglected by social and religious historians. My thesis will transform our understanding of these spaces and their role in communal life. Using archival sources and the surviving fabric, it will study the maintenance and uses of churches and churchyards in the north east and Yorkshire; reconstruct how they were experienced and contested, how they functioned as places of community, religiosity and social display; examine how far they provided employment for parish servants and craftspeople; challenging the picture of England becoming secularized 1650-1750.

Supervisory Team: Dr Adam Morton, History (Newcastle), Prof. Jeremy Boulton, History (Newcastle).

Start Date: October 2018