and the professional has been created by the political need to convince ‘real’ historians that local history is a ‘real’ subject’. Co-operation rather than conflict is the key to the survival of the discipline.⁵⁶ As Alan Rogers pointed out ‘the validity of the differing perspectives of local history is equal … these differing views of local history are needed because only in that way can professional and amateur alike develop critical reflection on our views of the past of any local community’.⁵⁷
   As the millennium approached, a furious debate was sparked in the pages of The Local Historian by George and Yanna Sheeran. In an article entitled ‘Reconstructing local history’, they argued that professional local historians, by focusing almost exclusively on methodological issues, had failed to develop a ‘philosophy of local history’.⁵⁸ In their view, this philosophy should develop from an engagement with the debates that had been considered by other branches of history concerning the tensions between the modernist and postmodernist approaches to historical research and knowledge. This broadside provoked a series of generally negative responses in subsequent issues of the journal. The general feeling was that professional historians could not have failed to be influenced by the postmodernist debate⁵⁹. They fully understood that history is not objective observation and implicit in the professional historian’s work was an awareness that ‘historians do not discover truths; they write narratives …’.⁶⁰
   Whilst many local historians might not have agreed with the general thrust of the Sheerans’ article, the level of response and the subsequent debate are indicative of the necessity to continue discussion of the discipline and its philosophy, if only to guard against complacency and isolation from mainstream academic history. As John Beckett stated in a recent review article, ‘good local history … needs to address the issues which are open to wider debate’, particularly if it seeks academic acceptance.⁶¹
   Against this background of continuing academic debate, the growth in interest in family history has encouraged more and more enthusiasts to find out more about the communities within which their ancestors lived and worked. Moreover, both amateur and professional are beginning to work together in an atmosphere of mutual respect, acknowledging that whilst aims, objectives and methodologies may differ, they share a common interest in recovering the past.

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To conclude, four very different types of local and regional history, all of which have been embraced, encouraged and in some cases, funded by the Kent Archaeological Society, can be cited as recent and current examples of both the practical co-operation and the intellectual sharing of experience.