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Welcome to the 10th edition of the British Association for Local History’s e-newsletter.
We hope you had a restful festive period, and 2022 has started off well for you. This year is going to be incredibly busy in the local history world, and we’ve got lots of exciting things coming up.
BALH encourages participation from all our members and we welcome all your ideas. If you have a local history story you would like to share – be it a blog post, talk, article or project – please do get in contact with us. For those wishing to become a BALH member, information about what BALH has to offer is available on our membership pages. We hope to hear from you soon!
Last call to join us tonight: 1921 Census
The opening of a new census is always a landmark date in the calendar for local and family historians. We've marked this with some blog content (see below), but if you're reading this e-newsletter on its day of publication, there should still be time to join us tonight for our webinar The 1921 Census: opportunities for local history, with Jessamy Carlson of The National Archives.
This event is free for BALH members, or £5 for non-members (£3 for members of member societies).
Local History Day
Bookings for Local History Day are open! Join us online and in London on Saturday 11th June 2022 for a day packed full of local history.
Highlights include a keynote from Dr Janina Ramirez, a fascinating presentation on post-medieval manorial records from Mark Forrest and the highly-anticipated announcement of the winners of our inaugural Local History Photographer of the Year competition and the BALH Awards for Local Historians.
Historic Towns Trust
We are delighted to be partnering with the Historic Towns Trust to bring you four evening lectures in March.
These lectures cover a broad range of fascinating topics, and will be delivered by highly respected speakers from the Historic Towns Trust. These lectures will be broadcast across the first four Wednesday evenings in March via Zoom. The talks are:
‘Reconstructing London on the eve of the Great Fire’ with Professor Vanessa Harding (2nd March).
‘The invention of the Historic Town’ with Professor Rosemary Sweet (9th March).
‘Mapping Medieval Oxford’ with Julian Munby FSA (16th March).
‘Four medieval itineraries: maps and immersive history in Chester and Swansea’ with Professor Catherine Clarke (23rd March).
The webinars will last for approximately 1 hour and are free for BALH members, or £5 for non-members (£3 for members of member societies).
Read more:
Find out more, and book your place
Digital Webinars
Our Digital Skills webinar series continues with Effective Social Media for Local History (Wednesday 16th February at 7pm). Do you want to learn more about how to promote your research or society on social media? In this webinar, BALH Social Media Fellow Megan Kelleher will discuss some ways in which you can ensure you engage with a broader audience
This event is free for BALH members, or £5 for non-members (£3 for members of member societies).
Photography Competition
Could you be the inaugural BALH Local History Photographer of the Year?
Last month, we launched an initiative to find some great local history from around Britain. In addition to celebrating your local history photograph, we will be asking for a few words about why the subject means something to you.
The competition is open to all, with both junior and adult categories, and the winners will be announced, and prizes awarded, at Local History Day on 11th June 2022.
You have until 31st March to submit your entry, so get photographing today!
Read more:
Discover more and submit your entries
#PhotographyFriday
Are you interested in the BALH’s Local History Photographer of the Year competition, but want to practise with some photographs first? Why not join our new initiative, #PhotographyFriday. Each Friday, we will be sharing some of our favourite photographs of sites of local historical importance that we have visited. Tag us in your posts and use the hashtag #PhotographyFriday so we can share your posts.
Local History Hour
We have lots of exciting Local History Hours lined up for this year! After the success of our last Local History Hour on Thursday 27th January, we have two fascinating talks from experts in their fields.
From Front Parlour to Funeral Parlour: Looking After the Dead in England, c.1850-1950
(Thursday 24th February at 7pm).
The Magic of Chancery
(Thursday 31st March at 7pm).
These events are free for BALH members, or £5 for non-members (£3 for members of member societies).
Would you like to be part of a Local History Hour and share your research?
We’d love to hear from you! Email socialmedia@balh.org.uk to find out more about how you can get involved.
10 Minute Talks
Our popular Ten-Minute talk series continues to highlight a wide range of local history projects. These include:
Irish Language in the Black Country with Simon Briercliffe.
Indexing Local History with Dr Francis Young.
The Farmer’s Stocking Needle: How Vaccination Began with Patrick J Pead.
The Story of Josiah Gilbert: Grocer Baker and War Victim of Loughborough, 1866-1916 with Lynne Dyer.
First World War Lives of the East Riding with Hannah Stamp.
Read more:
See a full listing of our available 10 Minute Talks
Do you have a local history topic you could create a 10 Minute Talk for?
We’d love to hear from you! Details on how you can get involved can be found here.
From our blog
We’ve got lots of fascinating blogs on our website covering a range of topics and periods in history. Recently, we’ve had a piece from PhD Researcher Louise Bell about Queen Mary Convalescent Home at Roehampton, and a discussion about weird and wonderful New Years’ traditions in Yorkshire from our Engagement Fellow Catherine Warr.
We were also incredibly excited about the release of the 1921 Census, as we’re sure many of our supporters were! Our Trustee Joe Saunders recently wrote a blog piece about the history behind the census and its digitisation process..
For those discovering the excitement of local and family history, members of the BALH team have put together a list of useful resources to help you get started, in An Introduction to Local History Research.
Read more:
The BALH blog
We are always looking for new contributors to our blog, and welcome submissions particularly from different geographical regions, communities and backgrounds.
If you would like to write a piece for us, please check our guidelines. Once your piece is ready, you can submit it to socialmedia@balh.org.uk.
Publications
The latest issues of Local History News and The Local Historian are now out! In addition to the typical stories covered in Local History News, there is an article about our new Outreach Coordinator Stephen Miller. We also have some fascinating articles covering the length and breadth of the British Isles across different historic time periods.
Members should have already received their copies in the post; if you are interested in reading a digital copy, you can do so here.
Call for Interviewees: Petitioning and Campaigning in Twentieth-Century Britain
Are you someone who signed or organised a petition before the year 2000? If the answer is yes, then would you be interested in talking about your experiences as part of a research project on the history of petitioning and campaigning? The project, based at the universities of Durham, Leeds, and Liverpool, is undertaking oral history interviews with a range of people with different experiences of petitioning and campaigning to offer new insights into the history of democracy in Britain.
Read more:
See details and contact the project team
Reading Room Now Open!
The University of Edinburgh’s Virtual Reading Room is now a free service. You can book online appointments to view the wealth of documents that the University of Edinburgh include in their archive and collections. Some highlights include student records of matriculation and graduation since 1587, records from the Moray House and The Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies.
Read more:
See article for more information about the collections, and to book your visit
Are you or your organisation on social media?
We’d love to hear from you! We would love to interact with more of our members through our social media channels, and help you to share upcoming events that you are hosting. Furthermore, if there are groups or individuals you think we should be following, please tell us.
Our social media is as follows:
Facebook
Instagram
LinkedIn
Twitter
YouTube
More material is being added to our website all the time, so check back regularly!
The BALH Digital Team
digitalteam@balh.org.uk
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