Local History News Number 143 Spring 2022

By Alan Crosby

On an afternoon in early March we drove down from Crickhowell in Breconshire towards Newport. The weather was beautiful, and the low bright sunlight from the west illuminated the hillsides with glowing colours – there was the rich golden-brown of last year’s bracken, the dark red branches and white trunks of the leafless young silver birches, the purple-grey of heather, and the dull yellow of the dead grass. Autumn and winter shades predominated.

This is the valley of the Ebbw Fach, the ‘little Ebbw’ river, which rises near Brynmawr and Beaufort. Today much of its upper course is hardly visible because three centuries of industrialisation, mineral exploitation and urbanisation have concealed the stream. The very name of one valley community highlights that vanished era … Nantyglo, ‘the coal brook’. Indeed, part of Nantyglo is called Coalbrookvale, named in 1820 when Shropshire-born George Brewer opened an ironworks there.

As in all the valleys of Gwent and Glamorgan, most settlements are elongated and linear, with long and short rows of terraced housing contouring along the hillsides, linked by giddily-steep connecting roads that climb the slopes. Many houses are painted white or pale pastel shades, luminous in the afternoon light, defiantly erasing the memory of the dirt and soot and smoke of the mining era. Other equally distinctive housing is built in dark grey stone with sharply-contrasting pale stone for the window and door surrounds.

My 1954 one-inch Ordnance Survey map shows the single-track railway, threading down the valley from the junction at Brynmawr (1100 feet above sea level), southwards via Nantyglo, Blaina and Bournville Halt to Abertilllery, the main town of the ‘little Ebbw’. It also marks some of the many connecting mineral lines and tramroads which served collieries, ironstone mines, tinplate works and other industries, and a couple of the vertiginous inclines which hauled the colliery waste up from the valley floor (where flat land was too precious a commodity to be wasted) and dumped it higher on the slopes. The ridges which separate the valley from its neighbours (the valleys of the Ebbw Fawr and the Lwyd) are over 1800 feet high, and some of those waste-tips were not far from the summit. Twelve years after my map was made, five valleys to the west, the potentially catastrophic consequences were made starkly apparent.

Now the mining has long gone, but not before scarring this valley with tragedy. At the Six Bells Colliery in Abertillery, on 28 June 1960, an explosion of gas and coal dust killed 45 of the 48 miners working underground – one of the last of the great mining disasters which all too frequently punctuate the history of the South Wales coalfield. Now the site of the pit is a landscaped park with a commemorative monument, and woodland clothes the hillsides which were once blasted and denuded by pollution and mining operations. The tinplate works and the ferro-manganese works have gone as well – in a not untypical transformation, the site of the iron and tinplate works beside the bridge in Abertillery is now occupied by a Tesco store. North of Abertillery the railway is long gone, and new roads occupy some of its route.

A description of a much more famous mining valley, Cwm Rhondda, written at the beginning of the 1840s on the eve of its extraordinary coal-mining boom, extolled the delights of its landscape. It lauded the fast-flowing crystal waters of the rivers, the profusion of wild flowers and the verdant woodland on the steep slopes of the valley sides. Fifty years later the twin valleys of the Rhondda Fawr and Rhondda Fach were the home of 120,00 people, the waters ran filthy and black, and the hillsides were devastated.

The same story was repeated right across the coalfield. What had been a dramatically beautiful and highly distinctive landscape was sullied and ravaged apparently beyond recovery. But in 1990 the last pit in the Rhondda closed, and in valleys such as that of the Ebbw Fach mining had ended some years previously. A combination of deliberate landscaping and planting, and significant natural regeneration, means that the tree and scrub cover has returned, the waters are clear once more, and it no longer rains soot.

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Ann Vernau is Hon Secretary to both the Three Rivers Museum Trust and Rickmansworth Historical Society. After moving to Hertfordshire in 1993 she became a member of the Society, joined the committee and was appointed Hon Sec in 1998. Discovering the delights of the local Three Rivers Museum she volunteered as a Saturday steward, which she thoroughly enjoyed.

On retirement from her career in Government service she became a magistrate and intended to undertake some serious research into her 400-year old house. The latter project is still waiting. The then Hon Sec of the Museum died suddenly, and Ann agreed to take on that role, which, as so often with such things, is multi-facetted and proved very time-consuming. Ann is Company Secretary with responsibility for legal aspects of the organisation (the Museum is a company limited by guarantee and a registered charity). She co-ordinates the 35 or so stewards and other volunteers who staff the Museum, is editor of the Museum’s biannual Journal, and oversees collection documentation procedures. Enquiries also fall to her.

For the History Society Ann is a quietly efficient and thoroughly reliable organiser, and is responsible for the Society’s Review that is published three times a year.

Particularly important recently, for both organisations, is Ann’s knowledge of their membership and supporters. She has gone to great lengths to keep in touch, particularly with more vulnerable members.

In these many ways, Ann has made a huge contribution to the preservation and presentation of local history in the Rickmansworth area.

With thanks to Ann Vernau, Fabian Hiscock, Michael Collins and Brian Thomson

https://trmt.org.uk

https://riskmansworthhistory.org.uk

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Dr Roger Polhill’s professional expertise is in plants of tropical East Africa. After retirement from Kew, he moved to Aylsham in Norfolk where he took up local history and has been a volunteer for the Aylsham Town Archive for over twenty years.

Roger’s scientific background makes him a studious and accurate researcher, skills he has transferred to history. He was a very active Chairman of Aylsham Local History Society from 2009-2016, and is now Vice-Chair. Taking on the role of editor of their Journal, which he held from 2007 to 2020, he transformed it into a high-quality publication and encouraged wider contributions. With his wife Diana, who shared his editorial work at Kew, he has indexed all issues, making the content highly accessible. Under Roger’s leadership the society grew in size and in reputation.

He led a joint group project, with the University of East Anglia, on the history of the Aylsham Navigation; published as Sail and Storm it received two awards from The Railway and Canal Historical Society in 2013. He has edited several Society books and set the most recent, A New History of Aylsham’s Public Houses.

Roger Polhill is also an enthusiastic and hardworking supporter of the Heritage Centre in Aylsham and his work in the Aylsham Town Archive, where he continues volunteering into his 80s, is described as ‘invaluable’. His wide knowledge supports the work of the Society, the Centre and the Archive in sharing the history of the area with the community.

With thanks to Roger Polhill, Maggie Vaughan-Lewis, Geoff Sadler and Jayne Andrew

https://aylshamhistory.org

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Dood Pearce was one of the founder members of Newent Local History Society in the early 1980s; he served as Secretary, then Treasurer for many years, and is currently Chair, a post he has held since 2011.

Personally Dood has amassed a huge database of primary and secondary sources on Newent and district, including previously unknown material that he has persuaded the owners to allow to be copied and deposited or loaned to Gloucestershire Archives. He has published books and articles, speaks to meetings and on local radio, organises exhibitions and takes guided walks. As he says ‘hardly a week goes by without someone wanting information’ which he is able to supply in his role as ‘keeper of the archives’ at the society.

Dood is described as ‘the driving force’ of the society, always willing to step forward, and to encourage others to become involved. He has set up and led several research groups, such as one on probate records for which he arranged palaeography classes for the members. Another group transcribed over 100 Newent wills at The National Archives.

Under his leadership, a major project was researching the lives of local men who served in the two World Wars during which he found several missing names which are to be added to the war memorial. A book has been published with the findings. Others were the refurbishment of Newent’s ancient Market House for conversion into a Heritage Centre; recording monumental inscriptions in local churchyards and transcribing local Parish Registers.

In the difficult circumstances of the last couple of years Dood has regularly published fascinating short articles to stimulate and maintain society members’ interest, demonstrating what can be achieved even under lockdowns. The latest, on Newent’s Postal Services can be read on the society website.

An engineer by profession, Dood has a special interest in the local canal and railway network, and he is also a motorsport enthusiast, having written the history of Sixty & Worcestershire Motor Club of which he is President.

His knowledge and enthusiasm are the foundation for the nomination which was supported unreservedly, and representative of so many stalwart local historians today.

With thanks to Dood Pearce, Ian Cocks, David Smith and Martin Brown
http://newenthistorysociety.org.uk

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By Susan Moore

As many local history societies have discovered and reported to us, the expense of downloading information from the recently-released 1921 census via the Findmypast website, through individual household entries, has made the information contained within the census very difficult to access for local historians, or indeed for anyone seeking to analyse large volumes of data. As a member of the User Advisory Group (UAG) of The National Archives, I was able to bring up this question of access at our recent meeting, and made it clear that many historians are currently finding themselves unable to study this aspect of their localities without incurring huge expense.

The National Archives’ representatives replied that the only organisations to enter a tender for digitising the 1921 census were genealogical companies, whose emphasis was necessarily on individual people rather than places, and hence the final format of the current website. Under the terms of the commercial contract, the delivery of the census is now out of the control of The National Archives

In view of these responses, there seems little more that BALH can do, though our opinions, and those of our members, were made clear at the UAG meeting. Hopefully The National Archives will bear the needs of local historians and others in mind rather more for the next census release, but as that will not be until 2052, it is unlikely to be of much use to the majority of us conducting such research now!

Nevertheless, don’t forget that access to the 1921 census is free onsite at The National Archives at Kew, and also at the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth and the Manchester Central Library. As a freelance researcher myself, I was recently asked by a client to download all the entries for a Somerset village. Despite involving lots of separate downloads, this took just 2½ hours, so if you are keen to start your research, it might be worth travelling to one of those hubs and downloading all the entries relevant to your village or neighbourhood. You, and your colleagues, can then work on them at your leisure, for no cost beyond the expense of getting to Kew, Aberystwyth or Manchester, and however many cups of tea are needed to get you through the job!

Susan Moore is Chair of Outreach, BALH

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By Christine Gowing

January 2020 saw the launch of Project ’22 – a community initiative to research the properties that were sold in the 1922 auction of the Sarsden Estate, Oxfordshire.

A group of volunteers has been doing their best in difficult circumstances during the pandemic to discover the history and secrets of the properties that were included in the sale. The co-ordinator, Linda Devlin, has steered the group throughout and designed an exhibition that will be open until end-September in the Heritage Centre in Churchill to mark the sale’s centenary.

At a village meeting in 2020 to launch the project, Kate Tiller in a talk, Village and Estate 1914-1939: times of change, provided the context of the early twentieth-century wave of estate sales and the challenges to owners of landed estates of increased death duties, high taxation, and other incentives to sell land. Lady Eversley, aged 72, inherited the Sarsden estate following the death of her father, 3rd Earl of Ducie, in 1921, her only brother having predeceased their father. She had lived in Hampshire since her marriage, and she had no children. Why would she keep it? The personal reasons for selling appear to be no more complex than that.

The Sarsden Estate sale took place in August 1922 at the Randolph Hotel in Oxford, with 65 lots on offer. As with many of the larger properties in the estate, Sarsden House, the home at its heart, was sold privately. The present owner has provided material about its remodelling by Humphrey Repton and its subsequent owners, which is incorporated in the exhibition.

So, how did the project group conduct their research and what did they unearth about the sale of the properties? Several research sources were used, including census enumerators’ books, BMD documents, private contacts and social media, in order to explore the stories of the auction bids, purchasers and subsequent residents.

Many of the cottages continued with the same residents, including gamekeepers, molecatchers, farmworkers. They had either been acquired by speculators as investments, or by family members. For example, one cottage was bought by a Henley police sergeant for £72.10 - purchased so that his parents could remain there. His father was a shepherd. The family continued in residence for a couple of generations, and, thanks to social media, a current member of the family was traced and supplied old photographs that are included in the exhibition.

The village forge was bought by the original renter, a blacksmith, who was employed by the Sarsden estate. Some properties were purchased by the local council for renting out. One house, bought at the sale, remained in the family for 98 years. A single lot of seven properties were all bid for and purchased by a carpenter in the village and subsequently resold a few months later. Was he acting as agent or was he a speculator? That is a question that remains unanswered.

Many family stories have been revealed, but there are still secrets to be discovered and the project will continue in an informal way to uncover more of the stories and provide material to be archived in the village.

In the meantime, the exhibition ‘The Sale of the Sarsden Estate, 1922’ at the Churchill and Sarsden Heritage Centre will be open at weekends from April to September.

Further details at www.churchillheritage.org.uk

Christine Gowing is Secretary of Churchill & Sarsden Heritage Centre

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A Church Stretton Area Local History Group Research Project

Research on workhouses is extensive and there is a wide public interest in the subject, so it may seem odd that no-one in our town has previously looked at the inmates of the Church Stretton Union Workhouse in any detail. Perhaps one of the reasons is that the Workhouse no longer exists apart from one small section which is now incorporated – with no intention of irony - into the local leisure centre.

In a town which has changed from being the centre of a rural economy based on mainly smallish farms, Church Stretton is now a place of retirement and tourism. A large section of the town’s population had no relatives in the local workhouse and without the physical reminder of the place, it has largely disappeared from collective memory.

We had not heard of the excellent project More Than Oliver Twist when we decided to take this as our next project but even if we had, that also focused on workhouse buildings that survived or museums and archives – places that had a physical structure. Although we don’t have the building that once housed the people we are our enthusiasm is just as great as those that are fortunate enough to have some concrete evidence of the past lives of the poor people who ended up in a workhouse. Our remit, as it turns out, is exactly the same as that of the Workhouse Project, even though we’d come to it independently. This is reassuring – we are on the right track for the right reasons. We think that it is even more important to carry out research like this when no physical remains exist to keep the past alive.

So what does our project involve? Our aim is to produce biographies of the 83 inmates and vagrants and three staff members who were in the Church Stretton Union Workhouse on the evening of 3 April 1881 and to provide an analysis of the circumstances of those people to establish why they ended up there. It is our intention to mount a free display of our work in the town which will also set the context of the relevant law that governed workhouses and a brief summary of how society has dealt with the poor over the centuries, in order to relate everything to our own times. The work will be available on a website which we will then share with the Shropshire Archives in Shrewsbury.

There are nine researchers working on the project and an awful lot of ground to cover so, unusually, we have decided not to set a deadline at this stage for fear of compromising the quality of the research. It is wonderful to be able to call upon the extensive work that others have already undertaken on Workhouses and any project on the subject cannot fail but mention Peter Higginbotham’s extensive website and publications. Even at this early stage we have been struck by how helpful others who have worked on the same subject have been when we’ve made enquiries. Of particular note for us in addition to Peter himself are the authors of Masters and Matrons of Llanfyllin, John Hainsworth and Frances Ward.

What have we learned so far? Well, our inmates were typical of those in workhouses generally – not the work-shy pauper so entrenched in the minds of the Victorian rate-payers but the old, the infirm and unmarried mothers who bore the entire burden of childcare with little or no opportunity to work (most local single women were in service). By studying the individuals, it is also bringing to life the otherwise dry legal framework and societal norms of the time. While the idea that a man had to support the existing children (illegitimate or otherwise) of his wife upon marriage was not alien to us, the situation whereby grandparents were responsible for maintaining their grandchildren and children for maintaining their parents was more of a surprise.

We would encourage any local history group to carry out similar research, irrespective of whether or not the physical building survives. Every town and village would have had a Union Workhouse not far from them, if not in their town itself. Tracing people through the census data and births, marriages and deaths makes for a good start and if, like us, your local County Archives has some surviving records, for example the minutes of the Guardians’ Meetings, they can an absolute goldmine.

If anyone has any information on the Church Stretton Union workhouse, we would, of course, be delighted to hear from you. We would also be pleased to receive any thoughts or advice from anyone who has undertaken a similar project. Please contact us by email csalhg@hotmail.com or via the Contact Page on our website: https://www.churchstrettonhistory.com/contact

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Dr James Hodsdon died suddenly and unexpectedly of heart failure on 20 January 2022 aged 74. A leading authority on the history of Cheltenham, where he had lived since 1971, he was instrumental in continuing the Victoria County History in Gloucestershire and chaired the trust which oversees it. Until recently he was Chair of Council of the Bristol & Gloucestershire Archaeological Society and Honorary General Editor of the Gloucestershire Record Series. It is hard to think of anyone else who has played such an influential part in the county’s local history community, as leader, diplomat, scholar and advocate. With his unique brand of humour, wisdom and sincerity, we have lost a charming, gentlemanly colleague and a dear friend.

John Chandler

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We were delighted to hear from Langport & District History Society that following a ‘campaign of reasoned nagging’ of the British Library, their local newspaper, the Langport & Somerton Herald, is now available online in the British Newspaper Archive. The ability to search by keyword is an enormous advantage, and the boost this has given to their local history research is immeasurable.

Their three key arguments were:

• Why their area has more than local importance;
• That it’s unfair to expect places with small populations to gather large numbers of expressions of support [for a particular publication to be added to BNA];
• That many of the stories covered by local newspapers are not covered elsewhere, and yet are important to local communities, and yet are important to local communities

Here is an excerpt from ones of their emails:

Langport itself is a small community of just over 1,000, and even adding in the surrounding villages, the total population would be no more than 6,000, which makes it very difficult to compete with larger urban areas in gathering signatures of support. However, our argument is that, despite its relatively small population base, the Langport & Somerton Herald covered in detail some local people and events whose fame and significance reach far beyond the local area. Principally, we refer to Walter Bagehot, the Victorian constitutionalist and editor of The Economist, and Vincent Stuckey, founder of Stuckey’s Bank, one of the first joint stock banks whose banknote circulation at one time was second only to the Bank of England, which was later absorbed into what is now NatWest. We would also cite James Kelway, founder of the world famous (and still operating) Kelways Nurseries.

Far from being ‘negatives’ in any prioritisation consideration, we suggest that factors such as relatively low-density population and rural location should be regarded as ‘positives’.

Larger towns and cities are well served by newspapers, but they do not cover their local rural areas in detail. Where there is a local paper, it will often be the only source of detailed information for a large rural area, which may contain numerous small villages and hamlets whose ‘news’ may never reach the organs of their larger neighbours.

https://langportheritage.org.uk

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In a wayside hedge on a B-road at Southam below Cleeve Hill near Cheltenham this small memorial tells a sad story. George Stevens in fact rode the Grand National fifteen times and his mounts never fell. His horse, The Colonel, had won the race in 1869 and 1870 (though beaten in 1871), and bets on one of his earlier winners, Emblem in 1863, had enabled him to build Emblem Cottage on the top of the hill. Here, according to the 1871 census he was living with his wife, a servant, groom and two stable boys. He was 37 and described as a horse trainer. Riding up the hill on his way home one windy day, his hat blew off and was retrieved by a passer-by, who handed it back to him. But this action frightened his horse, which bolted back down the hill, stumbled in a culvert and threw George fatally against a gutter. The memorial is less than a mile from the perimeter of Cheltenham racecourse, but that was first laid out more than a decade after George’s death. He and his equestrian friends used to race on improvised courses over the hill, steeplechasing in the Irish tradition, and attracting large unruly crowds – much to the disapproval (at least from the 1850s) of the respectable, churchgoing population of the nearby town. An element of that old tension remains today. (Ref: Robin Oakley, The Cheltenham Festival (2011), pp. 14-15)

John Chandler

For anyone interested in horseracing, there’s an article about The Colonel here: https://www.thejockeyclub.co.uk/aintree/media/news/2020/02/the-colonel/ JH

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By Derek Coombes

Redditch suffers from the tag of “New Town” despite a history that stretches back nearly one thousand years. Although we have the Forge Mill museum, Redditch’s history is so much more than needles, fishing tackle and Bordesley Abbey which is the focus at Forge Mill. This was first identified by local historian Alan Foxall back in 2002 when he first raised the topic that a town centre museum should be created to represent this diverse scope of our history that made the town what it is today. Despite numerous attempts to create such a facility a second museum never emerged.

The Redditch Local History Society, founded in 2009, became the latest organisation to pursue this ambition to provide facilities to safely store and give public access to its artefact collection.

As the archivist for the society, I looked at all the alternative options in term of location, cost and access to store the society’s collection and came to the conclusion that the only option we had was to take matters into our own hands and create the long proposed town centre museum. After much debate by the societies Management Committee it was agreed that a separate organization should take on the project to protect the society from the risks involved.

This was ratified at the AGM of the society in 2019 and in November 2019 the Redditch Local History Museum was established as a registered charity. The decision to go with a separate organization seemed to be vindicated as we were quickly plunged into the implications of the Covid pandemic and the activities of the society ground to a halt.

However, the museum trustees were not deterred and proceeded to create business plan for the museum and in November 2020 those plans were published and the team set about obtaining funding and a permanent site for the museum, the two major challenges to the museum’s creation. Within six months of concerted effort both of these objectives were met, and funding was raised that covered the cost for the first two years operation but we still have the challenge of long-term financing to address.

The other key requirement was to secure premises from which to operate. Such premises need space in which we could establish an Archiving facility as well as an area where exhibits based upon these artifacts could be displayed. The trustees were all conscious that the location should maximize visitor accessibility.

We were again fortunate to identify that an empty shop at 5 Market Place in Redditch Town Centre as a very good fit to our requirements as it has, in addition to the ground floor exhibition area, a basement in which to create the archiving facility and a first floor meeting and exhibition room.

This has turned out to be a very shrewd decision as the owners of the property are also the owners of the Kingfisher Centre and they have been very supportive of the decision to create the museum. Commercial lease negotiations were bit of an eyeopener for the trustees who had never previously had any experience of this topic but again the Kingfisher management have been very helpful. We were also pleased to be successful in obtaining a grant of £17,500 from the Heritage Lottery Fund specifically to support the building of the archiving facility.

We took possession in late September 2021 and set about recruiting volunteers to help build and run the proposed museum. Since then we have worked tirelessly to create exhibits and fit out the property. To do this we have begged, borrowed and scrounged fittings and services from local businesses and have, through Facebook and some good coverage in the local press, also attracted a pool of volunteers who are helping create the initial museum offering.

We opened to the public on the 3rd November and are currently open three days a week on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays from ten ‘til four. Feedback from visitors has been very positive, the essence of which is “Much needed, so much to see, we’ll have to come back”.

We are now planning our outreach activities for 2022 and are very pleased to have the support of the Art Fund who have awarded us a grant of £22,500 to support our proposed programme.

We are well located in the Church Green Conservation area in Redditch town center and we look forward to welcoming visitors from both the town, and the wider West Midlands area, to whom we can show that even New Towns can have an interesting local history.

Derek Coombes is a Trustee, RLHM

Visit us at 5 Market Place in Redditch, B98 8AA

or on-line at rlhm.online

or email us at contact@rlhm.online

or telephone 07486 882181

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The Norton Community Archaeology Group (NCAG) has just published its fourth book, entitled 'Further records of Norton 1007-1681'. This follows three books of manorial court records of Norton, covering the period 1244-1916, the first of which was published by the Hertfordshire Record Society.

In this latest book NCAG has sought to provide transcriptions of every document it could find relating to Norton, in Hertfordshire, excluding those manor court records already published. Documents in the book include transcriptions (and where necessary, translations) of Feet of Fines, the St Albans chronicles, legal documents of property transfer, extracts from Equity Court cases, lists of parish officers, a large collection of wills, inventories and probate accounts and many other sources.

NCAG was founded in 2007 as a community group, mentored initially by local archaeologist Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews. A historical documents section was set up with the aim of helping to identify where the group might focus its activities, such as archaeological digs or geophysical surveys. With this in mind a potential medieval site at a crossroads in Church Field was the first target for an extensive excavation. Later the group had tremendous success in uncovering a Neolithic henge site (initially highlighted by aerial photography) - a dig involving over a hundred people.

Meanwhile the historical documents section had been fortunate in receiving grants from the Heritage Lottery Fund, the Letchworth Garden City Heritage Foundation and North Hertfordshire District Council for their manorial records project. A professional translator was used for the manor court records which were written in Latin, and he also ran workshops to teach NCAG members to interpret those records. More recently, local historian Kate Thompson has also taught members to read and transcribe sixteenth and seventeenth century documents, such as wills. Although only recently formed, there is now a small core who have the skills to do accurate transcriptions. And when it comes to publishing books, tasks such as that of compiling indexes of person names and place names, providing a glossary and proof reading were made much easier by working as a team.

Much of what has been transcribed provided the group with fresh insights and occasionally paints a different view of Norton's history from that given in previous historical accounts. A good example of this is the manor house named Norton Bury.

Documentary evidence gives the earliest mention of Norton Bury in a will of 1543. Yet, it is known from the archaeological evidence that the site at Norton Bury is much older than Tudor in origin. Reading of pre-1543 documents suggests that the most likely building was that named Hall Orchard (its last mention being in 1533 in a lease of the rectory rights and land - see photograph below). The name had changed with the dissolution and the introduction of a different lord of the manor.

An archaeological dig in 2003 had uncovered medieval pottery sherds of fifteenth century origin underneath demolished floor tiles near to the current house at Norton Bury. This fitted well with accounts from both the St Albans chronicles and the manor court records which mention a significant investment in a house, 'newly built' for the rectory farmer, at Hall Orchard in the 1400-1430 period.

It is always pleasing for an archaeological group to align evidence on the ground with what was recorded in the documents. Previously, historians had suggested there might be a link between Norton Bury and Hall Orchard, but there is now robust evidence of that link. Additionally, these newly transcribed documents verify that Norton Bury can no longer be considered the 'medieval manor house' as it has been previously described; although it was the manor house in the sixteenth century, prior to the dissolution it was in fact the rectory.

In the past, when people wrote about Norton's history they have often relied heavily upon what was written by previous historians rather than by referring back to the original documents. It is hoped that the publication of this volume of transcriptions will form a solid foundation for future research on the history of the village and its residents.

Copies of the hardback book 'Further records of Norton 1007-1681' are for sale at £10 plus postage and may be ordered by emailing ncagmembers@live.co.uk

http://www.nortoncommarch.com

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'Coronel Morgones men took Bacon bred chise beare & when all was spente & gon then they broke the glass windows'- William Payton, Bidford

The Warwickshire 'Loss Accounts' record the financial, physical and emotional suffering of hundreds of named civilians across the county between 1641 and 1646, before and during the First English Civil War. In a unique project, 'Loss Accounts' volunteers have transcribed and tabulated all the known accounts for a single county, creating an important source for local, social, family and military historians alike. Searches can be made to accounts for individual parishes or in the index to personal names.

https://heritage.warwickshire.gov.uk/civilwaraccounts

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By Richard Hoyle

When I was running the Victoria County History some years ago, the draft of a red book crossed my desk. It did not take too long to decide that it was thinly researched and not in a publishable state and indeed it has yet to appear, which is why I cannot check a point. But in the footnotes was a reference to what I took to be a short, locally published pamphlet or book on a topic which interests me. My immediate reaction was to try and get hold of it, but a quick search on Copac (now libraryhub: https://discover.libraryhub.jisc.ac.uk/) showed that there were no copies in the national libraries nor university libraries. Indeed, it seemed to have no existence at all, either in library catalogues or on Amazon. Or bookfinder.com (which, after all, uses the slogan ‘Need a book? If they can’t find it, it was never printed’). In a digital age, it did not exist.

I was reminded of this by a Zoom lecture I attended late last year. This was a presentation by a group working in Vernacular Architecture. I have always taken an interest in the built environment, not least as a tangible demonstration of the prosperity and aspirations of local society. Anyhow, in the course of this lecture a reference was made to a book or pamphlet by a venerable member which sounded very relevant to what I am doing at the moment. Back to libraryhub. Not a copy to be found. But the search threw up something else by the same author that looked relevant, and www.bookfinder.com found a third publication by him. I’ve never encountered any of this author’s self-published works. I should have known about them years ago – but I didn’t – and it doesn’t seem easy to get hold of a copy of any of them now.

So the question is this. Why is so much apparently good material published privately and is for most of us unobtainable?

Obviously much local history is not going to find a commercial publisher. And for that reason local societies do good work publishing the work of their members and the outcome of their own projects. Publishing locally can give a book a local circulation. The history of Spencers Wood we did some years ago fell into that category: it is still for sale at the garage shop and appears on a stall at the annual carnival, at the church fete … after seven years its annual sale is now very small.

I have heard the argument that self-publication allows an author much greater control over his or her work – no interfering publishers, no irksome copyeditors to query what is obvious to the author – and if the author takes the risk, they also get to keep the income. Fair enough, but this also dooms the book to a local readership and a limited circulation. We have all encountered this. Books we hear of but can never find.

Let us be honest. A great deal of local history dies with its researcher. It never gets written up. If it does, it may well not get published, if it gets published, it never circulates very far. The work of my venerable architectural historian will, in all likelihood, remain known only to the cognoscenti and, should anyone hear of it, be hard to find. And then there is the problem of copyright. It is one thing for the copyright to belong to a society which can licence reprints or web publication. But if copyright belongs to defunct group, or the scattered children of a recently deceased individual, what then?

One answer to all of these problems is to make more use of county journals. I know that is too high a hurdle for many local historians. And they object that the Yorkshire journal is never seen in Scarborough because it is the ‘Leeds journal’ and so on. But most county societies now offer their back volumes as pdfs on their websites. Their contents get into the national bibliographies. They can give the author a visibility that the pamphlet sold in the village shop cannot.

But if the work is a larger piece or very local, say ‘Lost pubs of Ambridge and Penny Hasset’, then a county journal may well judge that it is not for them and we are back to standalone publication. Now this is where I have to be critical of a recent article by Barry Shurlock, ‘On publishing local history’, which appeared in The Local Historian in July of last year. There was much sage advice in the article. I would add a few points, including don’t be seduced by run-on prices and print too many copies. The Spencers Wood people did, which is why there are boxes of the history slowly turning ‘off mint’ in garages all over the village. Mr Shurlock is well aware of the digital economy and makes a few nods towards it, but his article firmly saw the outcome of the process as being a book, a physical object to be sold, and this is why the piece seemed so, well, ‘last century’. In this century, what is equally important, if not more so, is the pdf.

We probably all know about pdfs so no great explanation is needed. But in short they are a digital image of a paper or a book. The pdf is what the compositor supplied the printer. Every author should make certain that they get a pdf of the finished book. It can be used for a printer to produce a reprint from (and with short-run printing a book need never go out of print), but as we all know, they can be circulated by email or downloaded from websites. They are a universal currency. And, of course, pdfs can be made of books for which no pdf was saved, or which pre-date modern computer setting, by scanning the text. Not perfect by any means, but it can be done.

Now I am not arguing that people should stop printing books. Books have a long future ahead of them. People want to own them. People often (not invariably) regard them as being superior to text on Kindles and tablets. No one ever had a party to launch a pdf (well, not yet anyway). It is true that academic libraries increasingly hate books and printed journals. But then, for the most part, that sort of library doesn’t want to acquire local history.

No, what I am suggesting is that when books go out of print, they should have an afterlife as readily accessible pdfs. They can be mounted on society websites. They can be added to archive.org. There is no good reason why they can’t be added to the catalogues of record offices as pdfs: they are now generally keen to add pdfs of catalogues or images of documents if only as tasters of what they look like, and a good number of record offices now embrace the local studies library function. The disadvantage here may be that these pdfs may not be picked up by Google. This may seem an arcane point, but it is Google ‘crawling’ a site which gives a book – or your lecture programme – visibility in a Google search.

There are a few bespoke local resource libraries like Dales Community Archives (dalescommunityarchives.org.uk) and there is no reason why it shouldn’t build a library of Dales local history, both older classic works and recently published (but out of print) works. Building online libraries of their county’s local history is may be something that some county societies might like to think about.

What I don’t recommend is putting your pdfs on personal websites: these die with their owner, as mine surely will.

The objection that will be made is that to place publications on a website as downloadable pdfs deprives the author, or the publisher, of future income. Well, selling out a print run also deprives them of future income: it just has to be accepted that there comes a time when a book is going to generate no further income. Keeping the residual copies warm and dry is a cost, which is the stage we have reached with the Spencers Wood history.

In fact there are ways of getting an income from pdfs. There are sites which will act as gateways, selling access to pdfs, such as ejunkie (which the List and Index Society has signed up with). And whilst I have no experience of this, and try and avoid using the company, there is self-publishing with Amazon Kindle. But there is also print on demand which many publishers have now espoused to save on warehouse costs (and the number of books they have to discount as remainders). Amazon offers a print-on-demand-as-paperback service. I am aware of at least one local historian who has self-published with Lulu.com and his books are found by both Amazon and bookfinder.com. Of course, print on demand is not of the highest quality but is far superior to a sheaf of photocopies held together with treasury tags or bulldog clips.

Books are very much for the present. Of course they can be reprinted, but by their nature they sell out and copies have to be secured by loan or through the secondhand market. Pdfs are for the future. So, I urge you to think of a pdf as the future of the book after the print run has sold out, whether as a downloadable pdf on a website, where there are many options, or given a second wind on a commercial website. And this applies not only to books published in the future, but the considerable backlist of out of print and unobtainable works. If a book was worth publishing in the first place, then it is worth continuing to make it accessible into the future. Someone like me might wish to read it. In fact, lots of people might wish to read it. But they need to find it first. Make it easy for us.

Richard Hoyle is chair of the List of the Index Society and VCH Shropshire. He is weighing up these issues with a couple of forthcoming publications.

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By Derrick Johnstone

The Old Edinburgh Club (OEC) is one of the longest established history societies in Scotland, founded in 1908. Like others, it runs a regular programme of events and produces its own journal, The Book of the Old Edinburgh Club. Recent lecture topics have included ‘India in Edinburgh in the 19th Century’, ‘Science, Technology and the Royal Scottish Museum’ and ‘Widows, Dowers and Debts in Early Modern Scotland’. Another considered ‘Edinburgh and the Census’ and asked how access to Census data could be improved to facilitate local history research. This is so constrained outside the tight confines of data archives accessible to only a small number of academic researchers.

The Club has recently published the latest volume of the Book of the Old Edinburgh Club. This features articles amongst others on the British Linen Company and its connection with slavery, on Jews in Edinburgh 1841-1911, on The Treasury and the University of Edinburgh, on 350 years of the Royal Botanic Gardens, and on forgotten philanthropist, Catherine Sinclair. The issue uses high quality images including this striking engraving of Gilmerton Quarry taken from Stodart’s Picturesque Views in Scotland (1801).

Back copies of the Book up to 1985 are available online on the Club’s website www.oldedinburghclub.org.uk and further volumes up to 2008 are being digitised. These constitute a substantial body of work on the city’s history with many authoritative articles. More recent back copies are available for sale.

Another recent development has been the compilation of the Bibliography of Edinburgh History, https://oldedinburghclub.org.uk/bibliography-of-edinburgh-history/ designed to provide a launchpad in seeking out what has been written about the city’s rich heritage. With over 2,000 items, it includes publications from the earliest works such as Maitland’s History of Edinburgh and Leith in 1753 to those of today. There are books, individual chapters, journal articles and dissertations. Whether your interest is in parts of the city, in its individual communities or more generally in culture, economy, politics, society and the built environment, the Club believes this offers the best single online source to consult.

The Bibliography makes use of the Zotero app which many researchers find invaluable in managing their own projects. It is easy to use and the Club provides tips on tracking down copies of the literature cited. The OEC continues to update the Bibliography as new literature becomes available and members spot missing items!

The Club has supported a variety of projects including a catalogue of Architectural Plans (1700-1824) held by the Edinburgh Dean of Guild Court. This is a remarkable collection of drawings, reports and correspondence tracing the development of the city site by site, not least that of the New Town.

Another is the Edinburgh Southside Graveyard Project which has been restoring headstones, laid flat for safety reasons. Since 2016 the work of the Project has not only allowed inscriptions to be read once more, but also improved the environment and provided constructive opportunities to participants on Edinburgh Council’s Community Payback Programme for offenders. The Club also sponsors an annual prize at the University of Edinburgh for the best postgraduate dissertation relating to the history of Edinburgh.

Derrick Johnstone is Secretary of the OEC, secretary@oldedinburghclub.org.uk

www.oldedinburghclub.org.uk

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By Keith Foord

Battle and District Historical Society (BDHS) was remarkably active in 2021. But we only managed one half-live meeting in November, for the rest of the year the monthly lecture programme was maintained via Zoom, thanks to the active agreement of our speakers who embraced the concept, and also a very large number of our members who enjoyed the events, sitting on their sofas at home, often sipping wine or quaffing cups of tea. Even our November meeting was a hybrid affair with Zoom set up for those who did not wish to attend in body. On that occasion the audience was split 50:50 between physical and virtual attendees. This will probably be the way we start up in 2022 as well. Our research and publications groups continued to meet, sometimes in person if numbers and rules allowed but also by Zoom when not.

Battle is a ‘new town’! No village or hamlet was here before 1066, the nearest place to the battlefield being a tiny hamlet called Uckham, and nothing was built here before 1070 when monks from Marmoutier Abbey, near Tours on the Loire, came to supervise the building of an abbey, with its great altar on the site of Harold’s demise, on the orders of William the Conqueror. The town then grew around this site, the burgage plots that were granted at that time still being reflected in the town layout (Martin, Martin and Whittick).

For us being at the epicentre of a critical change for the nation gives some dilemmas. Harold’s death on the battlefield of ‘Hastings’ at Battle means that we are the starting location for what has been termed ‘Big Bang’ local history which was not just the beginning of a new national story, but affects us locally in many ways even today. The history of Battle can only be understood in the context of its wider local history extending over the eastern part of Sussex and this has been reflected in a series of recent books that the Society has published concerning the district before 1066 (‘BC to 1066), the Battle of Hastings itself (‘1066 and the Battle of Hastings), the post Conquest to Dissolution period (‘Conquest to Dissolution) and about Harold Godwinson (Harold Godwinson). With all of these we have had the advice and assistance of our past President, Professor John Gillingham, and present president, Professor David Bates. Such links are invaluable. All the above are now printed by Print on Demand (PoD) which we adopted from the start of 2021 to produce our books, for which we are our own publisher. The books, which are essentially a quartet of related books are more fully detailed below.

The history of Battle was dominated by its abbey, which held a vast manor around it, and many manors elsewhere, in monastic times. After the Dissolution Henry VIII gave the manor to one of his courtiers, changing the dynamic between town and manor dramatically. Even when that family sold off the abbey manor the town had no local government, and the fortunes of the town reflected the fortunes of the new holders of the manor and their successors such as the Websters (Pryce) for a very long time. There was no local mayor, freemen or town council as there had been in neighbouring Hasting and Rye for centuries. It was not until the 1800s that the first vestiges of recognisable local government appeared here.

Not that many interesting things did not happen. and our research group has been grappling with the information that can be found, producing a significant number of small papers on varied subjects from and pertaining to Battle and District, which we have posted online in a series called ‘Collectanea’ at https://battlehistorysociety.com/CollectaneaOurVirtualLibrary/.

In addition one of our members, George Kiloh, has collected information about over 60 local historical personalities and BDHS has published his book ‘Characters of Battle’ via PoD. George had earlier realised that the local War memorial was less than accurate and researched the WWI dead and survivors from the local area and produced the well-researched book ‘The Brave Remembered’ correcting matters, with mini-biographies of both those who died and those who survived. Subsequently, a supplementary listing memorial board of the previously locally unrecorded dead has been mounted in the local Memorial Hall. The list is surprisingly large at 70, and one wonders if this is not an excellent example of local history at work, which should perhaps be repeated across the nation, given the amazing size of the numbers of local dead missed off the original memorial.

Work is at present in hand on additional books, that nearest to completion being a study of the English Rural Revolution 1830-1870 using Battle district as an exemplar.

Our archivist, Gina Doherty, has in recent years brought together and digitised many old records of district events, all the old Journals of the Society, a number of Oral records, records of changes in Battle High Street over many decades, and old photographs as well as ‘Collectanea’. Many of these are now to be found in a digital archive at http://bdhsarchives.com/ and the digital archive continues to grow.

Books published recently by the Society are:

George Kiloh English Rural Revolution - Battle 1830-1870 (to be published in 2022)

Keith Foord, Harold Godwinson – the life, death, mythology, family and legacy of King Harold who died at Battle in 1066 (2021) ISBN 9871903099117*

Keith Foord and Neil Clephane-Cameron 1066 and the Battle of Hastings – Preludes, Events and Postscripts, (2nd edition 2021) ISBN 9871903099094*

George Kiloh, Battle Characters through the Ages, (2021) ISBN 9871903099100*

Keith Foord, BC to 1066 – an early history of eastern Sussex, (2020) ISBN 9871903099063*

Neil Clephane-Cameron, The 1066 Malfosse Walk, (2020) ISBN 9871903099056

Keith Foord, Conquest to Dissolution 1067 to 1538 – a history of Eastern Sussex, (2019) ISBN 9871903099049*

George Kiloh, The Brave Remembered – Battle at war 1914-1919, (2015) ISBN 9871903099018

All the above books can read about and be purchased online directly from BDHS via our secure website https://battlehistorysociety.com/booksandarts/ . Books marked * are also widely available from online booksellers worldwide via PoD.

The BDHS website can be found at https://battlehistorysociety.com/,

and the BDHS Facebook pages are at https://www.facebook.com/BattleHistorySociety

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This project, which ran during 2021, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, aimed to make visible the work of citizen historians involved in commemorative activity between 2014 and 2019.

Drawing on the knowledge and experiences of two First World War Engagement Centres - ‘Voices of War and Peace’ and ‘Everyday Lives in War’ - we worked with community activists, academics, independent scholars, and heritage professionals to produce a series of four open access legacy-themed e-books.

The books focus on topics which were poorly represented during the UK centenary or where gaps remain in historical understanding. They can be freely downloaded and shared, from the links here or via the shortened URLs to the engagement centres below:

Remaking Histories of the Nation
https://www.voicesofwarandpeace.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Remaking-histories.pdf

Children and Conflict
https://www.voicesofwarandpeace.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Children-and-conflict.pdf

Women and War
https://www.voicesofwarandpeace.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Women-and-War.pdf

War and Aftermath
https://www.voicesofwarandpeace.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/War-and-Aftermath.pdf

https://www.balh.org.uk/TDX131

https://www.balh.org.uk/QXC133

Sarah Lloyd, Institute of Historical Research & Ian Grosvenor, University of Birmingham

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By Mike Holcombe

Baslow is a small village in the Derbyshire Peak District adjacent to the historic houses of Chatsworth and Haddon Hall. Baslow History Group usually have a talk once a month from October to April and visits to historically interesting places during the summer months.

When lockdown commenced we were unable to do anything. Our President, David Dalrymple-Smith, has researched the village’s history for many years and has gathered a massive amount of information from many sources. He contacted me with a short article that he had written and thought that members might be interested in. That prompted me to think about an occasional newsletter with more articles to keep members interested and in touch. This led to the Baslow History Group Newsletter. Two other members contributed articles, I had hoped for more!

I found that there were various free publishing tools available that produced e-magazines and decided to use one: FlipHTML5.com This requires the production of the contents as a .pdf file. I created this in landscape format using Microsoft Powerpoint which was a tool I was familiar with. The magazine was well received and we started producing one every month. One small negative is that a small box for adverts pops up at the bottom of the page, it can be removed easily. It can be avoided with the premium version of the tool.

Articles were on anything and everything about Baslow, its surrounding area and Derbyshire and covered periods from pre-Roman to the present day. Many of the topics were based on David’s research. I also wrote articles using a variety of online sources:

• Derbyshire Archaeological Society journals.
• Derbyshire Records Office material
• Various Government websites
• Wikipedia – often good detailed and accurate entries
• Other sources, often local specialist websites

After we had been going for a year a colleague suggested that we could perhaps put some of the articles together in book form. We looked into this with various printers. I had thought of a format between A4 and A5 but it became clear that this was going to be expensive. Paper usually comes in A4 so there would be a lot of wastage and the cost would be higher than if we went for A5. We got a few quotes from printers and chose a local one, Mensa Printers of Sheffield who charged us £5 per copy. This was for a soft backed book (called perfect binding) with 251 pages including 65 in colour (the number of colour pages affects the cost).

We enquired about the cost of designing the book and preparing it for the printers professionally but that was beyond our means. I decided to do this myself. My overall concept was to make it as attractive as possible with plenty of pictures and a wide variety of topics and articles. We put photographs of the village and surrounding countryside interspersed with the articles. I used Microsoft Word to produce the camera-ready copy. It wasn’t that easy to translate from Powerpoint to Word, various online tools claim to do this but they all mess up the formatting in my experience so it was down to manually ‘copy and paste’. We applied for a grant from the Derbyshire Dales District Council’s Local Projects Fund and received £200.

Each chapter was done separately, Word cannot handle files bigger than 250MB. Word can also be temperamental but I managed to produce each chapter as a .pdf file and the printers were happy with this. If I do it again I might use LibreOffice, which is free and very good. I tried to be careful about the copyright of images. For maps Openstreetmap.com is useful. We claimed overall copyright in the Preface. Two committee colleagues proof read the manuscript.

I designed the covers using Powerpoint. The printers needed these .pdf files to have ‘bleed and tick marks’ essentially this mean to have no margins so the printing goes to the edge of the paper.

Sending large files – a typical chapter was 50-150 MB – required the use of Dropbox - although I could have taken them to the printers on a storage device. The printers were very helpful throughout the process. Initially we ordered 100 copies which sold out rapidly and then we reordered 30 copies every few weeks until we decided that the demand had been satisfied at 281 copies – almost every household in the village must have one now! We advertised in the Parish magazine and it was sold in the village shop. The County Library bought 6 copies – they also subscribe to the monthly Newsletter.

There was a discussion about getting an ISBN. This costs £96 and we did not think it was worth it as we did not intend to sell outside the village.

Preparing it for online publication meant combining all the separate .pdf files into one. This was done with Adobe Acrobat. It produced a file of 639 MB so it needed to be compressed. Most free .pdf compression tools won’t work with such a large file. However, Rasteredge.com could. It reduced it to 3MB. There was a problem as 3 pages with tables on were unreadable. I was able to replace them using Rasteredge quite easily.

Although it took quite a lot of effort I think it was worthwhile. The Group is now holding meetings again and we have a few new members.

My advice is to try and experiment with something informal such as a newsletter before plunging into a full blown book.

https://baslow-history-group.weebly.com/baslow-book.html

Baslow History Newsletters are at:

https://baslow-history-group.weebly.com/2020-newsletters.html

https://baslow-history-group.weebly.com/2021-newsletters.html

https://baslow-history-group.weebly.com/2022-newsletters.html

Mike Holcombe is Chair, Baslow History Group

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Two McCulla Awards for Local Studies Librarian of the year have been made this year as the pandemic interrupted the usual arrangements. The Award is in memory of Dorothy McCulla who was Head of the Local Studies Dept at Birmingham Central Library, from 1969 until her untimely death in 1981. The judges, from CILIP Local Studies Group, had a difficult job choosing winners from a strong field which reflects the excellent work being done under difficult circumstances in the past few years.

Norma Crowe, Local Studies Librarian at Medway Archives Centre, won the Award for 2020 . She has worked in local studies in Medway since 1995 and has a fine record of community engagement. Her work on the history of Short Brothers of Rochester led to the founding of the Short Brothers Commemoration Society (which she chaired) and the erection of a memorial in the town. A similar project led to the setting up of Strood Heritage Society. Her outreach work often uses exhibitions to involve local volunteers and encourage visitors to the Archives Centre, in recent years she has featured women's history and World War I. New audiences have also been attracted by her wide range of publications and web pages.

The 2021 winner is Louise Birch who has been Senior Librarian Manager, Local Studies, in Leeds since 2015. She has strategic responsibility for the department and is particularly concerned with building digital platforms and leading an externally funded oral history project in partnership with other library authorities. During the pandemic she was able to oversee the development of a new website for the Leeds online photograph archive of over 66,000 images which has massively increased public engagement with the collection. She also runs a regular programme of events for Heritage Open Days, is developing the local studies offer to schools and has created heritage tours of the Central Library building.

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The Platinum Jubilee is going to feature prominently in the minds of societies over the next few months. We will look forward to reading about a variety of activities in future newsletters, and will hope to share some of the more unusual ideas.

Project Purley, for example, report that their plans for this historic milestone ‘are coming along nicely’. There will be an exhibition, and afternoon tea accompanied by a fashion show. They have also recently started on a new project bringing together aerial photographs of the parish, from a Luftwaffe view in 1944 to Google Earth in 2021, with coverage every five years or so. A series of zoom meetings will look at a few pictures at a time to share memories of the development of the area. www.project-purley.net

As we get used to the idea of ‘living with Covid-19’, a number of societies have been reflecting on their experience of the last couple of years. Alston Moor Historical Society in Cumbria have taken a very positive view and noted the benefits their have gained. Because their archives are housed in an office in Alston Town Hall, that is classed as commercial premises so the society was able to apply for the Government grant of £10,000 offered to associations likely to suffer from lack of income. With this they have designed and installed street name plaques around the town, commissioned a new website, and are fitting out a ‘shop front’ in the archives. They are also starting work on the backlog of acquisitions. The support and vital financial contribution of Alston Moor Parish Council is always acknowledged. https://alstonmoorhistoricalsociey.org.uk www.clhf.org.uk

Lancashire Local History Federation Newsletter February 2022 contains much regional news, including the retirement of Jacquie Crosby. The new chief archivist is Alex Miller. Readers’ attention is drawn to ‘Digital Skills for Heritage’, resources available from the National Lottery Heritage Fund to help organisations with all things digital and online. Topics include Online security and privacy; Getting started in online learning; and making online content accessible to all. These pages are relevant to societies new to the whole area, or those wanting to develop their online presence. https://www.heritagefund.org.uk/our-work/digital-skills-heritage#digital_helpdesk

www.lancashirehistory.org

There is a warning in the March 2022 Bulletin from Merton Historical Society: ‘don’t take at face value any dates on buildings’. The society had been asked to confirm that this photograph has been taken at Hall Place, Mitcham, when members of the Beddington, Carshalton and Wallington Archaeological Society met there in the early 1920s. This was not a simple matter. The ornate entrance doors in the photograph are surmounted by a stone shield bearing the letter W between figures 17 and 07, implying a date for the building of 1707. The history of the house can be traced from its origins as a large open-hall medieval building, through several stages of reconstruction, to its eventual demolition in 1948. However, it was completely re-built in 1870, and maybe the shield was added by Sir Cato Worsfold to impress with his historical credentials? It certainly seems to have confused the authors of the relevant section of the Victoria County History of Surrey (Vol 4, pp 229-234). www.mertonhistoricalsociety.org.uk

In Friern Barnet & District Local History Society’s Newsletter of February 2022 there is an article on the history of the local Fire Brigade. Particularly interesting is the financial detail, as it was run by Finchley District Council from 1899 the cost was carefully recorded. In 1908 the Chief Officer was paid £62 pa, the Second Officer £44 pa, the engineer £50 pa, two firemen £33 pa each, and 11 part-time fireman £2 each per year. It was also a source of income, as attendance at a fire had to be paid for: for the manual engine at Finchley attendance was £1 15s 0d (including two horses), 1s per hour each for men to pump, 2s. 6d each for firemen for the first hour, and 1s. 6d for the second hour. Was the fire extinguished by that time? www.friern-barnethistory.org.uk

Eastbourne Local Historian is the journal of Eastbourne Local History Society. They carry regular articles based on items recently donated to the society. In the issue of Winter 2021 one discusses a Railway and Bus Timetable of 1932 and what it can say about travelling life at the time. One gem is a Coupon Insurance Ticket which provided the traveller had signed the page and had it with them, entitled the holder to an insurance policy for £100 if they were killed on their journey.

In Spring 2022 the topics are a folder donated to the Society with archive material about Raven’s Croft School, including beautiful artwork of local scenes; and smallpox in Eastbourne from the paperwork left to the Society by the late Dr John Surtees. www.eastbournehistory.org.uk

Mole-catching was a traditional occupation that often ran in families. Granny Moleskin (1835 – 1906) of Hatfield was renowned for making moleskin waistcoats. An article in Hatfield Local History Society’s Newsletter (March 2022) gives a great deal of detail about the trade. Moles are so small that it takes over 100 good moleskins to make the two front panels of a waistcoat. The special characteristic of the fur, compared with that of other animals, is the nap, it reacts the same whichever way you rub it. This is apparently an adaptation to facilitate reversing in tight tunnels. In the early C20th there was a boom in moleskin clothing when Queen Alexandra ordered a wrap; result a pest problem on Scotland’s farms was turned into a lucrative business. https://www.hatfieldhistory.uk

Two items in Tewkesbury Historical Society’s Bulletin 31 demonstrate how research topics can evolve one from another. An article on ‘Margaret Hickes: A female philanthropist of the Reformation’ began with a portrait of the lady, dressed as a respectable widow of the period, still hanging in the Town Hall, inscribed ‘Margaret Hickes widow who died anno domini 1562 and gave a house of VI pound rent per annum an acre in Ouldbury to the poor and hie wayes’. This inspired the second piece to explore where and how this philanthropy operated in Tewkesbury, in the 16th century and since. Both have comprehensive references which would enable others to develop the topic further. www.tewkesburyhistory.org

In recent years the centenaries of the First World War, the work of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, and local research on war memorials has lead to a familiarity with the unique design of CWGC headstones. North East Derbyshire Industrial Archaeology Society report on a very special contribution made by a Derbyshire quarry. Hopton Wood limestone from Middleton-by-Wirksworth quarries is of exceptional quality. They produced some 100,000 headstones, and employed 30 engravers. The finished stones were transported down Steeple Grange railway to the Cromford Canal on their journey to cross the Channel to Belgium. At the 2018 anniversary, the quarry was asked to produced three more stones, and the grandson of one of the original engravers engraved them; one is at Holy Trinity Church Middleton, one at Steeple Grange railway Station, and one at the Wirksworth Memorial Gardens, St Mary’s Church. nedias.co.uk

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Sittingbourne Museum held its first Saturday opening in March which proved to be very successful, including the donation of a Radio Times dated 1951. The next will be on the first Saturday in May. Storm damage to the museum roof has been repaired; and they are again welcoming school groups. 'The museum is starting to come back to life'. www.sittingbourne-museum.co.uk

In their January newsletter Send & Ripley History Society reported on the progress towards re-establishing their museum following the demolition of the old Ripley village hall, and its replacement by two new buildings on the site. The timetables of completion, and critical stages such as installing a new power supply, put pressure on the society to take some important decisions. They were given the museum building by the National Westminster Bank in 1989, and paid for its removal (see below) to the village hall site which they occupy at a peppercorn rent. That agreement has stood but does not constitute a formal lease. This is now being rectified, and an EGM of the Society early in 2022 agreed to payment for the new electricity supply. Members are very supportive of having a physical building for their museum, but they are also considering how to expand their digital offering. https://sendandripleyhistorysociety.co.uk

An action group made up of eight amenity and local history societies, including Wandsworth Historical Society, has been set up to lobby Wandsworth Council to secure the future of the Wandsworth Museum collection. After surviving in various formats and various locations, it was incorporated into Battersea Arts Centre, but due to financial difficulties arising out of the pandemic, the collections were returned to the Council last summer. Now in storage, they remain unused and inaccessible to the public. The action group has made a number of suggestions, and discussions are taking place. www.wandsworth hsitroy.org.uk

See new Redditch town centre museum page 13

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The Davy Notebooks Project consists of an international community of over 1900 volunteers who are currently transcribing, using the people-powered research platform Zooniverse, Sir Humphry Davy's (1778-1829) handwritten notebooks, many of which have never been transcribed before. The notebooks cover a wide range of subjects, and contain chemical researches, poetry, material on agriculture, astronomy, geology, mathematics, medicine, philosophy, and more. Davy travelled throughout the UK and Ireland during the course of his life, and his notebooks contain reflections and sketches of the places he visited, and the people he met. Anyone interested in taking part in this interesting, rewarding, and free project (and no prior experience is necessary) please go to the Zooniverse project page here
https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/humphrydavy/davy-notebooks-project

Aerial Photography Explorer, launched last month, is a new facility from Historic England that allows users to search and explore am online map showing aerial photographs of England over the past 100 years. This provides a fascinating insight into changes in both urban centres and the rural landscape (and everything in between). Over 400,000 images from 1919 to the present day are available, covering nearly 30%of England. This will expand as more of the 6 m aerial images in the Historic England Archive are digitised. There is a parallel Aerial Archaeology Mapping Explorer. https://historicengland.org.uk/images-books/archive/collections/aerial-photos/

The Scottish Council on Archives is developing a new online portal called Your Scottish Archives, which will allow searching across archives and records of local authorities, universities, businesses, and also heritage and community groups. The latter are often less accessible, having fewer resources to preserve and promote their collections. Engagement with community and heritage groups will be ongoing from 2022-2024 and beyond; the first phase of the site will be launched in late 2022. Clish Clash, the e-newsletter of Scottish Local History Forum to whom we offer congratulations on reaching the milestone of 50 editions. Clish Clash has been sent to SLHF members every two months since November 2013. https://www.slhf.org

Epsom & Ewell Local & Family History Centre opened in January 2002, so has reached its 20th anniversary. During that time their volunteers have sorted and listed a huge variety of records, developed a major website, mounted numerous displays, and answered countless enquiries from local residents and people around the world. Their Newsletter is Lives & Times. https://eehe.org.uk

There is an article in The Researcher, the newsletter of the West Sussex Archives Society, Friends of the West Sussex Record Office, headed The 1921 census: a tarnished jewel with a warning. Reiterating the comments of many local historians (and see also Susan Moore’s article on p 8 here) the author has calculated £84 to reach eight great-grandparents, and £31,298 for the population of Chichester. However, he recommends exploring the ‘advanced search’ facility outside the paywall, where you can search ‘employer’, then ‘location’ and the resulting names have place and year of birth. Some calculations can then give, for example, the age profile of those working at the Shippams factory, ranging from 14 to 72! www.wsas.co.uk

There’s a trio of online exhibitions marking the BBC’s centenary (plus a permanent one at the Science Museum): 100 Objects, 100 Faces, 100 Voices, together with a 100 Timeline. One of the objects is the BBC Micro – how many readers remember starting in the world of computers on one of these? https://www.bbc.co.uk/100

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By Tim Lomas

This joint project between BALH and the Historical Association is now moving ahead at a rapid pace after the inevitable delays caused by covid. 12 teachers, 6 from the primary sector and 6 from the secondary sector, have already gone through several phases related to the project.

All teachers came together with the tutors and Tim Lomas, Megan Kelleher and Claire Kennan representing BALH at a residential weekend held in Lincoln in late September 2021. A series of workshops and visits allowed participants to share ideas and thoughts on their planned research. Feedback was immensely positive and was soon followed up with the online course requiring 3-4 hours’ reading and discussion per week. This lasted until December 2021 culminating in a one-day follow up workshop held at the Museum of London on December 11th.

After extensive discussion with the 2 course tutors (Bev Forrest for primary and Michael Riley for secondary), the teachers have now reached the stage when they have narrowed down their ideas to come up with a single theme which they will research. It is expected that they will produce up to a 5000 words assignment which can adopt a range of formats such as a teaching programme, teaching resources and activities which will have to be of sufficient quality, be accessible and useful to other schools. Deadline for production of resources with all necessary revisions is planned for 6 June 2022. This will be followed by editing leading to publication on both the Historical Association and BALH websites. The teachers have also been told that they will be expected to use what they have acquired in supporting any appropriate BALH activity.

Although there is still some final tweaking, the project titles and plans are now largely complete and reveal a range of different themes covering possible teaching activities for -7 years olds right through to age 16.

The primary teachers’ proposals comprise:

• What can Handsworth Road tell us about Sheffield? (aimed at Year 4)
• How has the Leeman Road area of York changed over time? (aimed at Key Stage 1 ages 5-7)
• How did the Black Country help to win the war? (aimed at Year 5)
• Claverham Meeting House. A significant place for Key Stage 1.
• What was life like in Hackney for Caribbean migrants?
• What do the local primary school log books tell us about life in Wrecclesham? (Farnham) (aimed at upper Key Stage 2 – older primary pupils).

The secondary teachers’ have identified:

• How should we remember Paul Stephenson? (Bristol)
• What story should be told of Bryan Blundell? (Liverpool)
• What lies behind Stroud's long history of radicalism? (Stroud)
• What did it mean to belong in Mill Road,1950-1990? (Cambridge)
• What mattered to people in 1840s Chard? (Somerset)
• How should we tell the story of Andover? (Hampshire)

In each of the resources there will be strong emphasis on using local archives in history lessons. The tutors and other feedback indicate that there is a strong buzz and frequent sharing of ideas using social media and other channels. Many have ambitious aims for their activities. For example, one primary participant noted: "The goal for me taking part in the Fellowship would be for a child to be walking or driving down Handsworth Road with their parent or carer and to turn to them and say 'Did you know that used to be a huge holly tree nursery' or 'Benjamin Huntsman used to live there’. For them to have that pride in their local area”.

On successful completion of their activities, the 12 teachers will earn themselves the title “Teacher Fellow”.

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By Trevor Fisher

James P Bowen’s informative article (The Local Historian Vol 52 No 1 January 2022, 53-67) on Arnold Bennett covered much of relevance, though I would still like to know why Bennett wrote of Anna of the five towns when he knew there were six. However the wider perspective of the alleged isolation of Stoke needs more attention especially as Bennett walked from Burslem to go to school in Newcastle under Lyme. Burslem was the mother town where the pottery industry started, Newcastle under Lyme was a borough several hundred years older than the six towns, and had many better facilities which local people used. Bennett was willing to draw on the area eclectically and in Anna of the Five Towns left one out - and when I started working there in the 1980s it was still possible to talk to people who took exception to being omitted. Nor was he the only person to leave for better things. J B Priestley was wrong to suggest no one left the Potteries except Bennett – Rudyard Kipling’s family left Stoke for India, though there is no indication in Burslem that his father worked in the now deserted art school before leaving for the sub-continent.

There are more pressing issues however. Local media reported on January 24th this year that Burslem’s Leopard pub had been attacked by arsonists and destroyed. The pub was named the Tiger in Bennett’s local novels, and was far more than just an old building. Reputedly the place where Josiah Wedgewood met James Brindley to plan the Trent and Mersey Canal in 1765, it was a hotel which attracted celebrities at its peak. Legend has it that Ava Gardner and Dirk Bogarde stayed there. The large function room hosted many events including meetings of the Arnold Bennett Society. It was also notorious for allegedly having a large number of ghosts.

This large and historically important building was standing empty, victim of the pandemic and the decline of Burslem, which has very little economic activity today. A few weeks before the fire the police arrested two men for using the negelcted building to grow cannabis. It is an eerie fact that the shops on either side were untouched by the flames, which took out the roof and swept back through the building – some hundred feet or more – with the precision of a blow torch. Four men have been arrested on suspicion of arson, but until the police investigation is over, we cannot know their motives.

The incident took place against the background of a controversy in Stoke over council plans to cut opening hours of two local museums, one the dedicated Gladstone Pottery Museum. The council claims there is little demand and footfall has declined. The recent film of the life of pottery genius Clarice Cliff, The Colour Room, showed a townscape that no longer exists. A brutal fact is that Stoke is no longer the pottery capital it used to be, and it may be time to close that chapter. Was the burning of the Leopard a deliberate attempt to destroy a link with the illustrious past? Has Stoke become a city that has turned its back on its history?

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By Alan Crosby

Antonio Grafigna was lost. A reward of £1 was offered for information about his whereabouts. He had gone missing in Preston, and a printed poster described him, ‘a BOY FROM ITALY’. We do not know the exact date, but it was probably in 1860. Little Antonio, eleven years of age, was only 4 feet tall, with chestnut hair and eyes. He wore a ‘hairy cap’, an Italian fustian jacket, and drab corduroy trousers. Much more remarkably, he was carrying a little box in which were ‘some Guinea Pigs and White Mice’. Anybody finding the lad, and with such information, would receive the reward by contacting Antonio’s brother Davis [sic] at 20a Back Turner Street, Manchester.

The fate of the guinea pigs and white mice will be forever unknown, but Antonio was found – or at least found his own way home. The brothers can be traced in the 1861 census: Antonio Graffigno, aged 11 and born in Italy (place unspecified) and Davide Graffigno, aged 14, were living in a lodging house on Lumb Square, Leeds. It was run by Rosa Curotto (32 and Italian of course) and 28 people including Rosa were living in that one property. All were born in Italy apart from six babies or small children, and all nineteen aged 11 or upwards were described as ‘musician’. Quite a few nearby properties also had Italian-born residents, for this was the city’s ‘Little Italy’.

The young families and individuals living in the extraordinary household headed by Rosa Curotto were the Italian organ-grinders, who were a familiar and popular element of the street-scene of Victorian towns and cities. These itinerant entertainers congregated together, like migrants in any time or place, and circumstantial evidence suggests that most were from Lombardy and Tuscany. The ages of the infants imply that they had been in England for only four or five years. Perhaps Antonio’s white mice and guinea pigs formed part of his ‘act’, a piece of street theatre or conjuring. We shall never know.

But, quite remarkably, we do know what happened to young Antonio, and his is revealed to be a most unexpected destiny. Prior to 1882, he and Davide opened a restaurant in the Prenzlauer Berg district of Berlin, and did well. They catered to and for the city’s growing Italian population and were soon able to relocate to the busy and prosperous Schönhauser Allee, which ran through the centre of the area. Antonio then returned to his earlier profession, and at Schönhauser Allee 73 also opened a shop which rented hand-organs to the city’s Italian street-musicians.

On the opposite side of the road, at no.74, were the premises of Giovanni Battista Bacigalupo, who also appears in the Leeds census. He owned and ran a business, building beautifully-decorated hand-organs, and in 1891 the two men joined together with a third, John Cocchi, to establish an internationally-important concern which made all manner of mechanical musical instruments and subsequently diversified into punched piano and organ rolls, that ultra-fashionable device of the early twentieth century.

A photograph survives of Antonio Grafigna, seated next to a magnificently-ornamental organ, accompanied by Bacigalupo, the latter’s two sons and two daughters, and over thirty of their employees. It was taken in 1899, when Antonio was about 50 years old. He is small of stature, neat and dapper, with a short, carefully-trimmed beard and well-polished shoes – a far cry from the hairy cap and drab trousers of forty years before. His business partner is, to be tactful, substantial of body, and sports a luxuriant moustache, the very picture of a successful entrepreneur.

Only five years later, Antonio died. He had married and had a son, but almost nothing is known about the family. The business was liquidated on his death, though it retained his name, and his son went to live in Italy.

It is a fascinating story, for which I cannot really claim much credit – the original poster from 1860 is in Lancashire Archives (CBWA 1-784) and the German end of the tale (and very much more) is set out in a superbly-researched and definitive three-part paper by Fred Dahlinger Junr., published in the journal Carousel Organ (yes, ‘tis true!) in 2009-2010. But what a serendipitous historical journey for Antonio and indeed for me, so many years later. From white mice in Preston to mechanical marvels in pre-1914 Berlin … historical research never ceases to delight.

https://www.coaa.us/index_archive/Issues_31_to_40/Luigi%20Bacigalupo%20to%20Louis%20Bacigalupi,%20Fred_Dahlinger_%20_40-41-42.pdf

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By Joe Saunders

So far in 2022 we have been joined by some excellent speakers on some fascinating topics. In February we were joined by Helen Frisby and Brian Parsons with ‘From Front Parlour to Funeral Parlour: English traditions of death and burial’. In March we had Susan Moore and Sue Swalwell on ‘The Magic of Chancery’ with a case study from 18th century Whitby, Yorkshire. In April Rhiannon Sandy and Stephanie Brown discussed ‘Expectation versus reality in medieval legal records’ with examples from York and Bridgwater. For those who missed the talks or would like a reminder of them we have been providing summaries on the BALH blog, including reading suggestions and links to resources.

We have our next Local History Hour in May where we welcome Cheryl Butler and Jackie Wilkinson to talk about 16th century women with a study using the records of Winchester Consistory Court. We will then be leaving you in good hands with Local History Day in June before taking a summer break.

You can find details of these and other upcoming BALH talks on the Events page of our website. https://www.balh.org.uk/events

If you are yet to join us, Local History Hour runs on the last Thursday evening of each month at 7pm inviting two guests to speak from different perspectives on a given theme relating to local history. We use Zoom Webinar where attendees sign up in advance, and attendance is free to individual members of BALH, with a £5 charge for non-members. Across our digital output we offer benefits to the members of our Society members. For Local History Hour, the charge for these is £3. For each talk you sign up for you’ll get a link, this will take through to the waiting room on the night.

Zoom Webinar works differently to the Zoom Meetings many of you will have become familiar with. When we open the doors of the waiting room to let you into the event you’ll be able to see and hear your host and speakers but they won’t be able to see or hear you. Instead, you may submit text questions via a Q&A box. At the end of the hour we’ll have time for the submitted audience questions.

Please look out for announcements of these talks and others here in Local History News, our e-newsletter, website and social media accounts. We look forward to seeing some of you there.

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Not a special issue

This wasn't planned as a special issue on local history publishing but curiously we have a number of articles on that subject, either making general comments or presenting examples of outcomes. These demonstrate just how active societies (and individuals) have continued to be through the restrictions of the last couple of years.

PDFs

From time to time we get communications that suggest, usually very politely, that we might do things differently. I recall one not long ago that said we use too many abbreviations, assuming that all our readers know what they mean. 'PDF' appears on many pages in this issue. Familiarity with those three letters might not be a problem, nor indeed making use of that type of document; when I have finished compiling this issue of LHN I will turn it into a pdf to send it to the printers. However, the background is more interesting than I thought it would be. PDFs are now 30 years old. Portable Document Format was created by Adobe in 1992, and became an open standard in 2008. Its initial popularity was for desktop publishing because creating a pdf fixes what the document looks like, containing text and images, graphics, spreadsheets, and these days links, audio, video and much more as well, combined in a single file. This can be done whatever the software, hardware or operating system in use. The Adobe website also says 'No paper printouts needed. Ever.' Are we any nearer 'the paperless desk'?

Local History Day

See Supplement page 1. Book now!

Society members

The annual Insurance Fact Sheet insert is in this issue, please pull-out and keep.

Please amend your mailing list for sending us your newsletters and journals to our new address (below)

Change of address

BALH’s office address is now

BALH Registered Office, Ground Floor, 4 Victoria Square, St Albans AL1 3TF

Thanks

We are always pleased to hear from anyone who appreciates what BALH is offering. This is from a delightful email received last month:

‘Many thanks for all the work on everyone's behalf. I have watched and listened to some interesting and inspiring things. What a rich community of like-minded people.’

That final sentence sums up what it feels like to be part of BALH!

Poems

Any suggestions for ‘local history’ poems? (see Sean O’Brien’s selection of poems about history)

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By Jon Newman and Laurence Marsh

(The Herne Hill Society in association with Backwater Books 2021 160pp ISBN: 978-0-9540323-4-0) £14.50 (£17.00 inc p&p in UK)

Poor John Ruskin – highly strung, awesomely intellectual, dogmatic. Arguably he was the most revered aesthetic critic of the Victorian era. His output was massive, his thinking complex, but what drove him? How was he influenced by the locality where he lived, and how far did he influence that locality himself? Such is the conundrum that the authors of this outstanding new study have set out to solve.

It was in suburban South London from 1823 to the mid-1880s that John Ruskin (1819–1900) lived out much of his life, and it was there that he developed an intense phobia for railways as they encroached on the natural scene he so dearly admired. Railways ignored landscapes, they distorted the shapes of towns, and he despaired as he witnessed the destruction they wrought on the environment. Then there was the Crystal Palace, so successfully the home to the Great Exhibition, which was re-located in 1854 to Sydenham Hill, where his sensibilities were particularly irritated by the structure’s transformation into a commercial development interlinked with railway speculation. But he couldn’t let go, and as late as 1884 ‘its stupidity of hollow bulk’ continued to rile him. Finally, and these are only exemplars of his numerous concerns, there was his campaign for a Gothic revival in architecture, though disenchantment soon tarnished his purist standpoint, compelling him to accept that South London Gothic meant little more than stuck-on ornamentation.

For decades his writings were out of fashion, but now his work is deemed worthy of revaluation, to which there comes this latest analysis by the eminent South London archivist Jon Newman and the established heritage researcher Laurence Marsh. Producing a book is not a task for the faint-hearted, and the care that has gone into this particular project, judging by its list of acknowledgements, is astonishing. Packed with illustrations (some of them a trifle small, I’m afraid) and with high-standard endnotes to finish off each chapter, the text falls into two parts: an assessment of Ruskin’s enduring preoccupations, and an overview of his topographical legacy – contrasting tones and yet the melding works well. Here’s a must-have for all those fascinated by London and its place in Victorian culture.

Ruskin’s childhood home on Herne Hill was demolished in 1927, and his later house on Denmark Hill was compulsorily purchased in 1947, but locally the most noteworthy memorial to him is nearby Ruskin Park dating from 1907. In the garden of that second home a group of Moderne mansion flats was erected in 1936. Seriously neglected and surrounded by shabbiness, they are now on Historic England’s ‘Heritage at Risk’ register. Of the ironies this deterioration might have triggered in John Ruskin’s restless mind we can only guess.

Neil Robson lives in South London where he has formed a deep interest in the area’s architecture and social development. He is the current editor of the Wandsworth Historian

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By John Taylor

These two volumes recover the story of war-resisters in the present borough of Southwark. They are a salute across a century to the men and women who stood out against the War of 14-18 by refusing to serve or by campaigning against it. Their experiences are placed in the wider context of the war, showing how the anti-war movement developed over time.

Thanks to Sands Films in Rotherhithe both books are now available online as free downloads, here https://www.sandsfilms.co.uk/war-resisters.html

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By Rob Mitchell

(Norfolk & Norwich Festival 2021 238pp ISBN 978-1-910759-61-5) £19.95 from https://nnfestival.org.uk/festival-for-a-fine-city/

The Norfolk & Norwich Festival was first established in 1772 to raise funds for Norwich’s new hospital: initially there was a benefit sermon ‘topped and tailed’ with music. In 1788 the first 3-day Norwich ‘Grand Musical Festival’ took place. In 1824 it became a triennial event: that year 8,508 people attended the concerts, raising nearly £2,400 for the hospital. Profits varied according to expenses paid out: it was important to have well-known performers who would to attract large audiences but their fees ate into profits.

The festival ‘chorus’ has always comprised local singers, who were enthusiastic amateurs. Indeed by the 1840s Norwich was seen as a leading city for fostering and nurturing vocal talent (p.89). Sarah Ann Glover, a singing teacher at the Girls’ School on Colegate, had devised, or at least popularised, the ‘tonic-sol fa’ method.

Mitchell outlines the roles of the various festival directors and also the composers whose work was showcased. The festival became a trendsetter with directors dedicated to having new works performed, which was not necessarily popular with the press. Such works include Edward Elgar’s Sea Pictures (1899); the orchestral suite of music from Ralph Vaughan Williams’s ballet Job (1930); and in 1936 Benjamin Britten was approached to write something for the festival – the result was Our hunting fathers.

Over the years the format and purpose of the festival changed: in the 1960s there was an attempt establish an all-round festival, including folk and jazz concerts, comedy and street performances. The Norfolk & Norwich Festival has moved away from choral and classical music to appeal to ever-diversifying audiences. One continuity is the use of St Andrew’s Hall as a venue for music events.

Details of this year’s festival can be found here: https://nnfestival.org.uk/

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By Louise Ryland-Epton

Bremhill Parish History Group in association with HobNob Press, 2021

Supported by the Heritage Fund, Victoria County History and Wiltshire Council Calne Area Board

220 pages, hardback

ISBN 9781906978198 £24 incl p & p

https://www.bremhillparishhistory.com/

Bremhill Parish Through the Ages is the culmination of a community National Lottery Heritage Fund project to discover more about the history of the parish from prehistory to the present day, run in conjunction with the forthcoming Victoria County History volume for Chippenham Hundred.

Compiled by Louise Ryland-Epton with contributions from those involved in the project, the Bremhill Parish History Group, this volume provides a detailed and fascinating look at the places and people who have shaped the parish over many years. Topics include landscape and settlement, buildings, communication routes, agriculture, education, religion, folklore, the impact of war and more.

Lavishly abounding with fully captioned and high-quality images and a timeline to provide further interest and food for thought, the book is very well laid out. There is a mix of general information, interspersed with case studies homing in on local people and families such as Lucy Simpkins whose speech about daily struggles is said to have been the source of Charles Dickens’ poem ‘Hymn of the Wiltshire Labourer’. Another interesting story is that of the persecution and suffering of Quaker Joane Hale. The book’s beauty stems from the obvious passion its contributors have to reveal the stories of everyday people, making for a truly valuable contribution to local, social and family history.

Bremhill Parish Through the Ages is a painstaking and beautifully produced study of a parish using many different sources, fully referenced and indexed. It will be of great use to those who are interested in the parish itself, but also as an exemplary study aid and reference guide for anyone interested in local, social and family history, both within the county and further afield.

An interesting and enjoyable read, highly recommended.

Julie Davis is County Local Studies Librarian

Wiltshire & Swindon History Centre

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By Rob Vincent

(Huddersfield Local History Society 2021 viii+96pp ISBN 978-0-9929841-3-7) £11.95 + p&p from https://www.huddersfieldhistory.org.uk/publications/

In this beautifully illustrated book, Rob Vincent celebrates the principal elements of the landscape of the Colne Valley, which runs from the western edge of Yorkshire up to the backbone of the Pennines. The stimulus for his research was his own home – New Ing Farm – which stands on land ‘brought in’ from the moor in the early nineteenth century and is a property designed, like many others in the valley, for the area’s (then) mixed economy of cloth making and farming. Its upper floor was once a weaving workshop with a long row of mullioned windows facing south-east to let in as much natural light as possible, and there is a small barn attached to the house. The settlement pattern of the past continues on the hillsides in such houses even though the twenty-first century small-holders have full-time jobs to sustain their families. Nowadays local farming is almost entirely pastoral but in earlier centuries some grain was grown: the 1801 crop returns show oats almost exclusively.

The field patterns and walls give a visual framework to the valley: due to the weather and the seasons the scenery changes constantly but the field pattern changes slowly as the centuries pass. The patterns and walls discussed are located on one of the many maps. The valley is dotted with quarries and delphs from which dressed stones for walls and buildings came. The 1854 OS map marks more than 80 ‘sandstone quarries’: hardly any are now worked but they remain strong visual features.

Non-Conformist religious movements – mostly Baptists and Methodism – have left numerous chapels and Sunday schools in the landscape, some of which are still in use. Vincent observes that these buildings have a dignified presence and ‘are sturdy evidence of the collective confidence and assertion of communities whose self-reliance, trade connections, and increasing literacy had nurtured habits of independent thought and self-organisation’ (p.49).

A variety of connections link the valley to the world beyond: initially local tracks running along the corridor of the valley and up over Standedge, the narrowest crossing of the South Pennine watershed. Following a long quest during the 1980s and 90s, the actual (as opposed to conjectured) course of the Roman road through the valley was discovered, establishing that part of the route linking Chester and York. As well as roads, including early turnpikes and now the M62, two other important transport routes went through the Pennines: canal and railway, necessary to move freight, raw materials and finished goods. The 3-mile tunnel needed by the canal, commenced in the 1790s, proved exceedingly expensive to cut but railway construction went more smoothly. Its tracks are valley bottom features, which disappear as they pass under Pule Hill and Standedge. The line of its tunnels is marked on the surface by substantial engine houses and ventilation towers: strange scars on a rural landscape that are testament to the area’s industrial history. Laying above the populous and industrious town of Huddersfield, the valley has 14 substantial reservoirs to supply it with water: some to feed the canal and some the general water supply.

Vincent has an engaging style of writing, weaving together the elements that have created the Colne Valley landscape.

Heather Falvey

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By Tom Welsh

2022 Amazon Kindle £2.99, pbk £7.99

Shedding light on fourteen archaeological mysteries which are re-examined with new evidence, this is interesting history that outlines the constraints and problems of 19th century antiquarians/archaeologists, and uses the fascinating, and under-appreciated, source of letters-to-the-editor arguments in newspapers. The Victorian archaeological societies were very broad, in many ways more akin to local history than excavation; this is not always appreciated by modern archaeologists. Antiquarians were mostly working with the best intentions and some of the documents that they transcribed and published have since been lost. We would be the poorer without their achievements.

There are a lot of antiquarian writings reproduced in old newspapers, such as serialising old books, where the books themselves have not survived. Newspaper archives also reveal a lot about archaeological societies that did not go into their journals.

The author also has a website exploring the use of newspaper archives historyregained.net

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Selected and introduced by Sean O'Brien

Candlestick Press 2022 ISBN 978 1 907598 90 6 £5.95

A varied, and personal, selection that demonstrates the scope of the word 'history', from the beginnings of time to the present.

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By Derek A Simmonds

Amazon Kindle https://www.balh.org.uk/BHW130

This is the story of how the community of a small market town rallied round to support their local Auxiliary Hospital for five wartime years. It is a piece of high-quality local history research and writing, using interesting new primary source materials. Funds raised from its sale go to a local homeless charity.

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