Early modern manorial court books have immense potential for local history. Where they survive for a manor with a significant proportion of copyhold land, they are in effect a register of property transactions, full of detail about changing patterns of land ownership and land use, the development of the built environment and much else besides. But their riches are barred and bolted against casual users: the records can be dauntingly bulky, the legal verbiage (in Latin until 1733) is prolix, and there is usually at best only the most rudimentary and incomplete index. It takes a local historian of uncommon dedication to quarry and disseminate their treasures. Very few have ever been published.

James Hodsdon now provides a valuable edition of the court books of Cheltenham, a manor which covered most of Cheltenham parish (including the small borough at its heart) and part of its neighbour, Charlton Kings. The records are contained in nine fat and tall ledgers at Gloucestershire Archives, compiled by successive stewards and deputy stewards to the Dutton family, starting with John Prinn. Dr Hodsdon has a deep knowledge of the history of Cheltenham, evident in his splendid historical gazetteer of the town (Hodsdon Reference Hodsdon1997). What he has done here is fillet the court books, discarding the legalese and providing concise, accurate, readable abstracts. The records cover some 4,000 property transactions, chiefly sales, but also detailing arrangements relating to wills, mortgages, family settlements and leases. Unusually, burgage tenements appear alongside the copyholds until 1729, when it was agreed locally to convert them to freehold tenure. The period covers the early years of the spa (when there was a spurt in transactions) and goes through to the time of parliamentary inclosure under an Act of 1801 which opened the way for rapid urban growth. Among the many topics on which the conveyances shed light are informal inclosure by agreement, outside investment in Cheltenham, the different trades and professions of residents, the physical fabric of the town, the layout of its rural environs and the histories of hundreds of families owning copyhold property.

A well-conceived introduction covers the composition and ownership of Cheltenham manor, the location, frequency and procedures of the manor court, types of business, gaps in the court books and the survival of related records, besides explaining the editorial approach and conventions and describing the nine volumes. Also printed are John Prinn's incomplete account of the ‘customs and usages’ of the manor, and the Act of Parliament of 1625 which still regulated many aspects of copyhold conveyance within the manor in the period under concern. There are two helpful maps, a useful glossary of technical terms and five thorough and well-designed indexes, covering persons, manorial properties and boundary features, places of origin of persons named, their occupations and selected subjects. The last, a hard trick to pull off, is commendably well done, an enticing list of topics to draw users into the volume.

The volume opens with a warm tribute to the help of Christopher Elrington (1930–2009), former General Editor of the Victoria County History (VCH) and Fellow of our Society, who as General Editor of the Gloucestershire Record Series from 1995 steered sixteen volumes through the press and had much to do with this one. Over a VCH career of forty years (eight as editor for Gloucestershire, twenty-six as deputy then general editor in London), Christopher made an immense contribution to the progress of the VCH and the intellectual development of its systematic approach to local history, besides guiding dozens of younger colleagues towards attaining the highest scholarly and editorial standards. His influence through those colleagues has been widely spread into local history publishing and record society editing across England. Hodsdon remarks from his own perspective as editor of this volume on Christopher's ‘wisdom, kindness, and energy … unstinting help and close attention to detail’, and hopes that he would have approved of the volume in hand. He would indeed. This is a model of how to abstract and publish early modern court books, and it permanently opens up a rich resource for historians of Cheltenham which will be used by generations to come. Christopher Elrington would have been delighted by how well it has been done, and in his characteristically modest way pleased to have given a guiding hand.