Francis Henry Molyneux
| Francis Henry Molyneux | |
|---|---|
| Years at BGS | 1959-64 |
| Departments | Geography |
| Subjects | Geography |
Francis Henry Molyneux was a teacher of Geography at Boston Grammar School from 1959 to 1964. He became head of the Geography department. Following his departure from BGS, he took up a position as lecturer at Nottingham University.
The history of Boston project
According to a document "What's the history of Boston Project?":
Initially, many people responded to the concept and it was decided to publish a number of booklets as the material became available. This resulted in the History of Boston Series which eventually (1970-1977) consisted of 14 booklets and The Atlas of Boston by Neil Wright and Frank Molyneux [making 15 in all].
In the summer of 1969 a doctoral thesis by Frank Molyneux, who had once taught geography at Boston Grammar School and had been a part-time tutor in Pilgrim College, was left lying on the table of Alan Champion, the then Warden, in his office. This Book, Boston in the Twentieth Century, was casually picked up and leafed through for a few moments. A few weeks later the book was again picked up by the same hands and noted a little more seriously. Indeed, the book was taken away and read over the next week or two, when it became evident that there was work recorded between the covers that would be of great interest to many present Bostonians, and of considerable value to historians of the town and district. (Some of the work in that thesis has appeared in the Atlas of Boston.
Number 8: Aspects of Nineteenth Century Boston and district (1972) contains:
Rural Boston a Century Ago. The Foundations of Contemporary Arable Farming by Frank Molyneux
Frank Molyneux is on the staff of the School of Education, Nottingham University. His thesis for the Master’s Degree was a geographical study of Boston’s development in this century and was based on research carried out during his residence in Boston between 1959-1964. This thesis, Boston in the 20th Century which is as yet unpublished but of which there are typescript copies in the Borough and Pilgrim College libraries, was the principal stimulus leading to the formation of the Hof BP and this series of publications. He acts as geographical and cartographic consultant to the Project and plans a single volume contribution to the HofBP series on aspects of Boston’s development since 1900. His current major writing concerns educational planning in the United States where he was a Research Fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies in 1969-70. He has been invited to produce the final volume in the 12 volume History of Lincolnshire series. ...
Number 10: An Atlas of Boston by Frank Molyneux and Neil Wright (1974)
A note on the atlas:
“So far as is known to those concerned in the production of this atlas, it is unique in its method of portraying the development of a town. The stimulus for it arose when one of the authors (Neil Wright) submitted an important paper to The History of Boston Project on ‘The Bounds of Boston’. That paper (which appear as Section III in this volume), interesting and important in itself, came at a time when the Project was considering the Possibility of making available reproductions of some of the rare maps of the town that were known to exist but copies of which were not easy to obtain. When these two concepts were placed before Dr. Molyneux he immediately, as a geographer, saw the possibilities of using the spatial viewpoint to produce a developmental study of the town. Subsequently parts of his own research into the socio-economic development of Boston in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were incorporated and the whole synthesized into a portrayal of the development of the town by means of the geographical idiom. As a tool for those researching into any aspect of the history of Boston, this atlas will be invaluable. As a prototype for the portrayal of other towns or districts it is likely to be of interest both to historians and geographers. To those who know and love Boston it is likely to prove a source of continuing fascination and enjoyment.”