This collection of 153 wills and inventories provides a vivid insight into the socio-economic life of the small Yorkshire market town of Northallerton during a time of growing prosperity, when its position on the main road to thenorth also enabled it to prosper from wider trading links. Trades and professions represented in the collection include yeomen, merchants, tallow chandlers, weavers, a maltman, innkeepers and a wide range of leather workers; the documents collected here provide a wealth of information regarding their houses and their contents, lifestyles and standards of living in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

The volume also contains an extensive glossary of obsolete and dialect terms; a substantial introduction, discussing the history of the town during this period; and comprehensive notes.

Christine M Newman is an Honorary Fellow in the Department of History, Durham University; Dorothy Edwards worked in teacher training at Northampton University, and is a local historian.