Every century has experienced change. Some of these changes have profoundly influenced the lives of ordinary people in communities such as Irthlingborough. For example, it is doubtful that in the eleventh century an ordinary dweller in Erdinburne knew anything of the Battle of Hastings, but would not have escaped the social upheaval that followed. Equally when the Enclosures Acts were passed the ordinary residents of Artleborow may not have known who represented them in Parliament (They certainly had no say in his election.) but the effects on their life, their livelihood, their environment would have been all too plain. Many other changes would have gone largely unnoticed, not least because so few people were taught to read. But in the last one hundred years we have seen more social and technological changes than in the previous nineteen centuries combined and it has been impossible not to be aware of them. Most of the things we now take for granted would have been the stuff of dreams one hundred, fifty or even fifteen years ago. Many of the things which were part of the fabric of life a hundred years ago have disappeared and been forgotten.