Local History News Number 148 Summer 2023

By Alan Crosby

Just over 40 years ago my first full-length book was published. It was a history (indeed, the first ‘proper’ history) of my home town, where I was born and grew up. I left to go to university and when it hit the bookshops I was just completing my doctorate. That I had been able to work on a 100,000 word DPhil thesis and at the same time to research and write an 80,000-word, 224-page book is something that, four decades later, slightly surprises me… but I suppose it typifies the energetic enthusiasm of the young.

The book was based on extensive research into primary sources, as well as the limited quantity of reliable secondary works. It told the story of the town from the Conquest period through to the early 1980s. Even then, I felt strongly that good-quality local history did not stop at (say) 1914 or even 1939, but that the story continues until the present day, and I could use my own personal experiences as part of the process of understanding the past of my community.

My daily walk to and from the grammar school (just over a mile each way) passed all manner of historic sites, ranging from a thatched cottage and a village pond, an Edwardian town park and a Victorian sewer ventilation pipe, to large late 19th century detached houses which were being torn down to make way for higher-density private housing. There were the leafy lanes on the edge of town where we did cross-country, and there were independent shops run by people whose surnames (I later discovered) were traceable in local parish registers back into the 17th century. And there was school itself, a monumental exercise in red brick and white stone Edwardian baroque. When I first went there it was 52 years old. Now, almost 110 years old and no longer used as a school, it has an entry in the new Pevsner volume for Surrey.

When I wrote the book, published in 1982, the run-down unplanned Victorian town centre had just been comprehensively redeveloped by the borough council created in 1974. We had a fine new library, shopping precinct and pedestrian streets, while some landmarks of my childhood, such as the lovely red brick creeper-clad Albion Hotel (circa 1845, opposite the railway station), had vanished. We were in the brave new world, with such desirable modern elements as a dual-carriageway relief road, multi-storey car parks, an 18-storey slab-like office block and a state-of-the-art fire station. Few had any regrets for the passing of the old order.

Twenty years on, I wrote a fully revised second edition of the book, which benefited from the remarkable progress in printing techniques and design during the previous two decades. This edition took account of the radical changes in the town which had been apparent since the early 1980s, including large-scale population growth, new roads, heritage conservation, the closing of the outdoor pool where I learned to swim many years before… and, yes, the further redevelopment of the town centre. After only 20 years the central area scheme of the 1970s was perceived as timid, too small, ill conceived. More massive renewal was in progress, and on my visits to the town I found myself bewildered: ‘What used to be here?’, ‘How do I get there?’

I doubt that I’ll do a third edition of the book but, if I did, I would have a very strange and disturbing tale to tell. For the town in question is Woking, whose borough council has just been declared bankrupt. Its calamitous financial position is the result of madly misguided high-risk investment in yet another redevelopment of the town centre, with a cluster of 34-storey tower blocks (hotels, the inevitable ‘luxury apartments’, new shops). The towers, thrusting into the Surrey sky and visible up to 30 miles away, are the highest buildings in England outside a major city. The aim of the former chief executive was to turn Woking into a new Canary Wharf, another Singapore, so the previous council administration borrowed vast sums of money from the markets on dodgy terms, predicated on a huge financial return from commercial and residential properties. That return has not materialised and now, with an annual income of about £16 million a year, the council has debts of £1.2 billion. Some future historian of the town is going to need a good head for figures!

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FOR OUTSTANDING INDIVIDUAL CONTRIBUTION

Stuart Antrobus, Bedford Architectural, Archaeological & Local History Society: for over 20 years’ work in recovering and disseminating the history of Bedfordshire Women’s Land Army in the Second World War.

Dr John E. Kay, Lewes History Group: for long and dedicated commitment to the research, sharing and promotion of the local history of the Lewes and Ringmer communities.

Graham Thompson, Teign Valley History Group: for founding the Teign Valley History Group, the Museum and Archive Trust and his three volumes on local history.

Profiles of each individual will appear in the next few issues of Local History News, starting on page 6 of this issue

FOR RESEARCH & PUBLICATION

SHORT ARTICLES

Shirley Wittering, ‘Innovation and communal farming before enclosure in Cambridgeshire: the growing of sainfoin and saffron’, Cambridgeshire Association for Local History Review no. 30 (2022) 13–19.

Tony Wakeford, ‘Yapton: a Sussex parish seen through the parish records and census’, West Sussex History, journal of the West Sussex Archives Society no. 89 (Autumn 2021) 29–32.

Gareth Thompson, ‘The Cranbrook Auxiliary Unit and operations bases in World War II’, The Cranbrook Journal no. 32 (2021) 11–13.

Liz Bonsall, ‘Graveboards in the Bourne Society area’, Local History Records, journal of The Bourne Society no. 108 (Autumn 2022) 12–19.

LONG ARTICLES

Brian Hodgkinson, ‘Stairway to heaven: the Scala Celi indulgence in Tudor Lincolnshire’, Lincolnshire History and Archaeology vol. 52 (for 2017/18 but published 2022) 207–226.

Esther Chant, ‘The cult of St Urith in pre-
Reformation Devon’, The Devon Historian vol. 91 (2021) 1–12.

Deirdre Dean, ‘The Piccadilly Line extension’, Hornsey Historical Society Bulletin no. 63 (2022) 35–43.

Rosemary S. Hall, ‘Coventry’s Park Gardens: nineteenth century detached town gardens’, Warwickshire History vol. 18 no. 5 (Summer 2022) 255–268.

FOR A SOCIETY NEWSLETTER

Edmonton Hundred Historical Society Newsletter (see profile, page 6).

To nominate someone for next year’s BALH Outstanding Individual Contributions awards, see details and the form in the supplement inside this issue.

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Always the right man to ask

BALH award winner: Dr John Kay

John Kay’s interest in Sussex history originated in a Workers’ Educational Association course led in the 1970s by inspirational Sussex historian Colin Brent and his archivist wife Judy. They encouraged a good number of their students to develop their own interests and initiate their own lines of research, creating a new generation of young Sussex amateurs at a time when academics like W.G. Hoskins, Maurice Beresford and (in Sussex) Peter Brandon were expanding the boundaries of local history, and the East Sussex Record Office was just starting on its progress from a few rooms at the top of County Hall to the professional organisation it is today.

Together with John Bleach, John founded the Ringmer History Study Group in 1981 and has been chair and newsletter editor ever since. Ringmer is a large village located where the South Downs merges into the Sussex Weald, but the group’s membership has rarely fallen below 300 – almost 10 per cent of the village’s adult population.

John was central to the founding of the Lewes History Group (LHG) in 2009, was its first chair, and has been a key committee member ever since. He organises its program of monthly speakers for talks on a wide range of local history topics that routinely command audiences of 150 or more. As a member of LHG’s governing committee, John contributes much thought leadership and experience to our discussions and decisions.

John authors and edits our monthly newsletter (the LHG Bulletin), which he has sustained without a pause over more than 150 issues to date. Each runs to ten or so pages of illustrated articles on a wide range of local history topics, and has an email circulation in excess of 500. He deals indefatigably with frequent questions which come, via our website, from far and wide about local genealogy, people, events, businesses, buildings and estates, often responding within hours in astonishing and engaging detail. As an example, someone enquired about a 17th century windmill in a nearby manor; John promptly responded with a full A4 side detailing and winnowing out the possible candidate mills, describing their relatively ephemeral nature (risks from storm, lightning, explosions and fire), and providing context by explaining the ins and outs of land and mill ownership in this part of Sussex.

In a similar vein, John answered, within hours, a query from someone about the Lewes school that her grandfather may have attended with a page of diverting educational local history and of the headmaster of the school in question, local character John Dudeney and his family.

Outside of local history groups, John is also active in the CPRE, the countryside charity, and is a Ringmer parish councillor of many years’ standing, including long service as chair, and is a staunch defender of history in its built environment. In short, he is an exemplar for bringing local history alive, preserving and sustaining it, and making it readily available to the local community.

Prior to his retirement, John Kay was a reader in biochemistry at the University of Sussex, associate dean of the Brighton and Sussex Medical School, and previously the director of the Centre for Medical Research. He is a published author in both history and biomedical journals.

Neil Merchant. See also back cover.

The Edmonton Hundred Historical Society (www.edmontonhundred.org.uk) was founded in 1936 to promote and foster interest in local history in the settlements in that ancient hundred, that is, Edmonton, Enfield, Potters Bar, Southgate, South Mimms, Tottenham, Wood Green and Monken Hadley. Edmonton Hundred lay west of the river Lea in the north-east corner of Middlesex, with South Mimms, Monken Hadley and part of Enfield projecting westward into Hertfordshire. From the later 19th century those places were transferred piecemeal to that county, but the society does not recognise any county boundaries.

The EHHS’s monthly newsletter comprises eight A4 pages packed with news, information and articles. It opens with details of the society’s next meeting and any upcoming visits. ‘Diary dates’ very helpfully gives information about various events and talks arranged by other local organisations and also any updates from the Bruce Castle Museum and Archive. The newsletter clearly generates interest because there are often letters or emails from readers commenting on items in previous issues. The regular series ‘100 years ago in Edmonton Hundred’ comprises local newspaper articles (and illustrations where available) from a century ago thus charting change and ‘progress’ in the area – such as the 237 journeys by Enfield’s ‘motor ambulance’ between September 1921 and March 1922. There is usually one longer article on a local topic such as that by Ian Jones, entitled ‘Five brothers and a palace’, about Enfield Palace. Alternatively, personal reminiscences of the area may be recorded.

This lively newsletter keeps members informed about the past and the present in an engaging way.

Dr Heather Falvey, BALH Reviews Editor

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The Treasurer oversees all the financial affairs of the charity. Working with our management consultants Moore Insight, who provide BALH with basic secretariat, bookkeeping and audit services, the Treasurer is responsible for the following:

• Setting the financial strategy, including budgets

• Providing written and verbal reports at quarterly Trustees’ meetings (usually online)

• Supervising the audit

• Presenting the annual results to the membership at the AGM

• Approving all expenditure and monitoring the online bank account

• Overseeing all areas of income, especially subscriptions (together with the Membership Secretary)

Although formal accounting and bookkeeping qualifications are not essential, the Treasurer needs to have a good understanding of balance sheets, profit and loss accounts, cashflows and the nominal ledger. He or she needs to be thoroughly IT literate and have a good understanding of managing an online bank account.

The Treasurer is responsible to the Chair on day-to-day affairs, to the Trustees on all strategic issues and ultimately to the membership. The total time commitment is about 2-3 days a month, on average. The role is voluntary but reasonable expenses will be met.

Expressions of interest should be made to the Chair, Dr Paul Dryburgh, at chair@balh.org.uk.

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By Alan Higgins

During the 18th century, several public houses in Blidworth, near Mansfield in Nottinghamshire, formed themselves into clubs or friendly societies. These clubs, more commonly referred to as ‘sick clubs’, were extremely well organised and kept strict financial record books that showed their actual society to be a financial and social success. Members paid regular contributions into a fund and the aim of the society was to provide sick pay and funeral benefit.

On 3 January 1767, George Marlow of the New Inn, situated opposite St Mary’s Church in Blidworth, Nottinghamshire, formed such a society. The rule book, details of financial and special events, members’ names, dates of meetings etc were all recorded and still exist to this day. The first contribution was sixpence per month, but due to inflation the subscription rose to one shilling on alternate months. In 1769 sick pay was 5 shillings per week. Funeral benefits were set at £5. On the death of a member’s wife, he received 30 shillings, and on the death of a second wife, a further 30 shillings; these sums were deducted from the member’s own death benefits.

Around 1900 there were five such clubs in the village, all associated with the local inns, and these ‘sick clubs’ combined their resources to fund a club doctor. Doctor Saunders of Hucknall was chosen and he visited Blidworth, held a surgery, on Surgery Lane, each Tuesday and Friday morning and visited the sick in their homes. Some men belonged to more than one sick club, and were then better off ‘on the club’ than at work, which led this worthy doctor to remark, ‘If a man belongs to one club, I can cure him. If he belongs to two, then I can do him some good. If he belongs to three, then he is incurable.’

In 1923, the Newstead Colliery Company began employing men at Blidworth to construct the new colliery and these men, together with the hundreds of men later employed in producing the coal, paid a compulsory amount into the company sickness scheme and thereby qualified for the services of local doctors who resided in the village. In 1924–26, the construction of the colliery surface plant began and among these buildings was a medical centre.

A description by Michael W. Gallagher in his book Blidworth Colliery and Colliery Village reads as follows: ‘The ambulance room is a model of what a room should be. The floors and walls are tiled, light blue and white tiles are used in the scheme, and a very pleasing and hygienic effect is produced. The equipment consists of a bath, operating table, cabinets for lint, dressings, splints etc. It contains everything that is necessary for the first aid treatment of wounds and fractures. There is also an electric water heater which may be used to obtain an instantaneous supply of hot water if required.’

Blidworth miners’ families unofficially used this facility, particularly in the case of emergency and Jack Wedd, the ambulance man who lived very close to the colliery, was always on call both at home and at work. Jack and his wife Elizabeth were still the village first aiders until the 1950s.

Ransom Hospital near Mansfield was developed at the turn of the 20th century as a private hospital and later became an NUM-funded hospital. Set in a lovely location within Sherwood Forest, the sanatorium was renowned for its fresh air techniques with patients sleeping on the open verandas of the wards. Newstead Sanatorium near Ravenshead was opened by the Duchess of Portland in 1942. Newstead specialised in treating tuberculosis, a worldwide pandemic in its day, and although not completely eradicated, effective vaccines and antibiotics control the infection to a large extent.

Two doctors began treating patients in the village during the 1930s: Dr James Matthews with a surgery on The Crescent and Dr Alan Spencer with a surgery on Dale Lane. Both used a surgery attached to their homes. Dr Spencer continued to practise in the village until retiring in the 1960s and is remembered fondly for being a friendly character who knew most of his patients by name and in many cases was present when they were born, including yours truly. He often
suggested to the parents of the newly born male children that they name the baby after him, hence there were numerous Alans in
the village – again including yours truly.

I remember his waiting room on Dale Lane very well. There was no appointment system: if you were ill, you simply turned up and waited your turn. The room could be full, with 20-plus people in there, all sitting on hard wooden bench seats. You made a mental note of all the faces and went in to see the doctor after everyone who was there before you. Never once did you hear anyone saying ‘I was here before you’. It was a system of one out, one in, while you waited for an hour or more in a room full of people coughing and sniffling. One of the original wooden seating benches was transferred into the waiting area at the Blidworth Abbey Medical Group’s building, although very rarely used; today’s patients seem to prefer the softer seats while waiting to be electronically paged.

In the years immediately after the Second World War the priority was the welfare of the people. The Minister of Health, Aneurin Bevan, was given the task of introducing a system of health for the nation, and in 1948 medical care became free and based on need rather than on ability to pay.

The NHS has constantly evolved throughout its history and today is almost unrecognisable as the service that was established 75 years ago this July. However, it is under significant pressure and facing perhaps its biggest challenges since it was established. Together, we can ensure that everyone enjoys the best possible health and quality of life post Covid-19.

Alan Higgins is chairman of Blidworth & District Historical & Heritage Society. A version of this article was first published in the society’s newsletter.

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By Peter Perkins

Since retirement, I have enjoyed undertaking research into several different aspects of Northamptonshire’s industrial history, for example the county’s boot and shoe industry, its ironstone extraction industry and Barwell’s Eagle Foundry in Northampton. If someone asks me if I know anything about a specific company, building or manufacturing process, I will happily spend an hour or two trying to find an answer.

I have honed my research skills using a variety of sources, often initially by trial and error, and have found that technology can frequently shorten the process considerably. In the early days, it was necessary to scrutinise dozens of books at the library or spend days or even weeks at the record office.

If researching a person, company, factory, machine or industrial process, my first line of action is a simple Google search on the subject; this can often provide a lot of information. It is important to choose the search terms carefully, where necessary varying the word format and using double quotes to search for specific groups of words. For example when I began my research on Barwell the ironfounder I used a variety of search terms including “Edward Harrison Barwell”, “EH Barwell”, “Barwell & Co Eagle Foundry” and “Barwell & Co Northampton”. I found that each came up with different pieces of information but I soon gathered enough information to allow me to determine where to look next in terms of record offices, The National Archives, newspapers etc. I also found it is important not to just look at the first page of research results. Although some search terms bring up a lot of unwanted information, it is often worth ploughing on as useful information can be sometimes be found on page 10 or 20 of the results.

Occasionally I have hit the jackpot by finding someone has a doctoral thesis or something similar online which covers in detail the topic in which I am interested. While one has to be wary about the accuracy of what one finds on the internet, particularly if it is a secondary source, it will often give clues on where to find the primary source material. For example, when I was researching the Gretton parchment works, a Google search came up with a website listing the family history of a parchment worker on that site in the 19th century. Some quick checks searching for the worker’s name at ancestry.co.uk enabled me to confirm that the information was reliable.

Another other useful source of information is the online British Newspaper Archive (BNA). Although a subscription is required to access this at home (it is free to access in many libraries), you can often find out more in five minutes than you could obtain in a month of looking through physical copies of newspapers in a library. A few words of warning, however: although you can read the original pages of the newspapers on the BNA, the search tool relies on the fact that each page has been scanned and turned into digital characters using optical character recognition (OCR). Sadly, this process is not foolproof so you cannot guarantee identifying each and every occurrence of your search term in the newspapers. Secondly, the BNA doesn’t necessarily have every page of every newspaper it claims to have. For example, there are copies of the Northampton Mercury from 1770 through to the 20th century on the BNA but some issues are missing, including those for the whole of 1875. Furthermore, newspaper holdings on the BNA tend to be a bit sparse after the 1920s. Despite these problems, it can be an excellent source of information about various industries, businesses, factories and even individuals.

Although designed for family historians, I also find family history websites useful in seeking out information about people involved in various industries. It can help to build up a picture of a company, particularly if there are several generations of the same family in the business. Using Ancestry, I was able to build up the structure of five generations of the Hayes and Wise families who were involved in papermaking at Rush Mills and other watermills in the 19th century. The main family history websites also have digital versions of some of Kelly’s and other trade directories, useful for finding out when companies were trading in the 19th and 20th centuries. Some digital trade directories are also available on the Leicester University Historical Directories of England & Wales website (access it via www.balh.org.uk/CKF150). A benefit of these digital versions of the directories is that you can search for personal and company names, rather than having to trawl through page by page.

Maps form an important resource when looking at the history of industries. The old one inch to the mile OS maps (or today’s 1:50,000 equivalents) are useful for looking at road, canal and railway features as well as the presence of mills, quarries and other large features. However, for individual buildings, large-scale maps are more useful and one can consult these in libraries and record offices. There are nonetheless some online sources for large scale maps. The most reliable source of late 19th century 6 inches and 25 inches to the mile OS maps for whole of Great Britain are to be found on the National Library of Scotland (NLS) website, maps.nls.uk. The NLS website also has the 1:500 scale maps of Northampton from c.1885, very useful for identifying the location of early factories in the town.

Goad Insurance Plans of Northampton (and other major UK towns and cities) are another excellent map resource for identifying detailed plans of buildings in the older industrial areas of the town. They show the structure of factories, shops and houses and identify the materials used for walls, roofs etc and often a lot of internal detail which was used to indicate the risk of fire and other insurance issues. Northamptonshire Record Office and Northampton Central Library have a variety of originals and photographic copies respectively. The Goad plans of Northampton for 1899 plus a few for 1888 are also available free online via www.balh.org.uk/DKZ151.

This is just a snapshot of some of the research resources for industrial archaeology. I would not like to leave you with the impression that you can undertake all your industrial history research online but it will often give you a good start and you can then decide where to target your manual searches in record offices, libraries and other archives to best effect.

Peter Perkins is secretary of the Northamptonshire Industrial Archaeology Group. A version of this article previously appeared in the NIAG newsletter. Copies of Edward Harrison Barwell – 19th Century Northampton Ironfounder by Peter Perkins (2019) are available from www.niag.org.uk.

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By Wendy Tibbitts

I was searching for a dissertation topic for my MSc in English Local History when I was invited to a friend’s party. At this party were a number of directors of a company that owned Heathrow Airport and I overheard a group making flippant party banter about knocking down ‘a few houses’ to expand the airport. I was appalled that the thought of demolishing Grade II listed buildings, and the consequential loss of history, meant nothing to these businessmen. It made me think about what had already been lost under the airport and I decided there and then to focus my dissertation on the now buried hamlet of Heathrow. Whenever I mentioned my dissertation subject most people assumed that the airport had been built on fields of little consequence, but this was not the case. The soil was particularly fertile and the market garden produce grown there fed Londoners from Covent Garden market. In fact in 1911 Heathrow was home to a community of 368 people living in 83 dwellings. Some of the buildings dated back to the 16th century. All this history is now buried and lost forever.

After completing my master’s I continued to research and write about this area of West Middlesex and was still doing so when in 2018 the government announced its new airport policy. This included the construction of a third runway at Heathrow, which would mean the loss of most of the village of Harmondsworth, but also the total destruction of the hamlet of Longford. Longford had never featured in any written history before so I decided to write it while its 11 Grade II listed structures were still visible and their stories could be told.

As well as spending many hours in national and local archives looking for relevant material, I interviewed people who had grown up in the area. They kindly shared with me many useful documents and photographs of parish history. During lockdown I took advantage of the free digital downloads from The National Archives to download all of the personal wills for Harmondsworth parish. These enabled me to build relationship trees between the various families.

So I had all the facts, but not the gossip. To get to the real social history I used stories I found in the British Newspaper Archive and the Old Bailey Online transcripts. The history that emerged was in complete contrast to this now-tranquil residential backwater that not even Google Street View has bothered to fully visit. Longford was once a thriving farming community on the edge of Hounslow Heath and alongside the Great Bath Road. This road brought Longford into the centre of national and international events. It saw William of Orange marching towards London to take the crown from James II. It was a busy, bustling hospitality centre for travellers and a staging post for the carriage trade and Windsor-bound royalty. It saw highway robbery, scandal, tragedy, abduction and celebration.

Being a mile from the parish centre it was sheltered from vicarial or manorial governance and so it became a haven for Nonconformists. Most of the farmers were Baptists and I used the dominant farming family as the thread that run through the last 300 years of Longford history. During the height of the carriage trade the hamlet was a refuge for highwaymen, but this menace dissipated when the proliferation of the railways reduced the carriage traffic. The four Longford inns suffered as a consequence until bicycle mania gifted them income from the weekend London excursionists. At the start of the 20th century, while the hospitality trade increased, the farms began to decline, especially with the outbreak of war in 1914. The centuries-old farm routines struggled when farm labourers were conscripted and horses were requisitioned, but towards the end of the war when the government recognised that there were food shortages, tractors were seen on the land and prisoners of war were put to work. It was the Second World War that finally ended the fortunes of the hard-working farmers. Although the fertile soil of Heathrow and Longford was keeping London fed, the vast area of flatlands was also a suitable place for a future civilian airport. In 1944, just weeks before D-Day, the farmers were evicted with little notice. They had to leave growing crops in the ground and it took years before they received compensation. Some of the Longford farms continued to farm with reduced acreage, but in 1948 more land was purchased and that was the end of Longford as a farming community.

The stories of the people and the buildings of Longford are fascinating and numerous, and where I had verbatim accounts of events I wrote them creatively in order to make the book a ‘good read’ for readers who just enjoyed history and might not know the area. I hope that my research will mean that the history of the Longford community is safeguarded for future generations – whatever its ultimate destiny.

Wendy Tibbitts is a former museum director and the author of Longford: A Village in Limbo (Historio Publications, 2022) and wrote ‘The 1917–1918 food crisis: how the Middlesex War Agricultural Committee responded’ in The Local Historian 48(3).

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By Sharon O’Connor

The Dulwich Society local history group members are always looking for new ways to communicate local history, engage with residents and visitors, and add context to Dulwich’s past. Recently, we decided to install a listening post as an alternative to information boards.

After a bit of research into the different products on the market, including audio benches, we chose Black Box AV’s audio post (www.blackboxav.co.uk). The slim, tanalised timber post holds the electronics required to play up to six short messages of a couple of minutes each, giving up to 16 minutes of playback in total. The post is simple to operate with two buttons, one to start the audio, the other to scroll through the recordings.

The post has solar panels on each of its four sides, so needs no wiring or external power source, making it perfect for outdoor spaces and even through our long dull winters we haven’t had an issue with the post not playing. We got someone to install it in a small concrete base to make sure it stayed put. Its height makes it accessible to all, including children and people with wheelchairs, and we put ours next to a bench so people can sit to listen if they wish. Robustness and simplicity come at a price, however, and the posts are not cheap. (Editor’s note: Black Box prices start at £1020 ex VAT.)

The local history content for our post took the form of a script by local history group member Brian Green and is written from the point of view of Edward Alleyn (1566–1626), early modern actor and playhouse owner as well as lord of the manor of Dulwich and founder of Dulwich schools, almshouses and chapel. The script was recorded (on a smartphone) by local resident and actor Will Owen who, as Edward Alleyn, explained how he came to buy the manor of Dulwich and set up his charity. He talks about the buildings you can see when you are standing or sitting near the post. The tone is deliberately light while at the same time conveying quite a lot of historical information. The post gives us feedback in terms of listening statistics, which show that it is used regularly throughout the year, particularly in summer when Dulwich has more visitors.

We made the unveiling into quite an event. Our president gave a speech before around 70 people We then moved into the chapel for a short talk on the history of the 400-year-old building followed by an organ recital then drinks in the chapel cloisters to celebrate.

The messages on the post can be changed via a memory card so we have offered use of the post to the Dulwich Players, our local amateur dramatic group, and the Dulwich Festival, for them to make their own content for short periods. We can then return to Edward Alleyn retelling some of our rich local history.

Sharon has lived in Dulwich and been a member of the Dulwich Society local history group (www.dulwichsociety.com/local-history) since 2004. Now retired, she was assistant archivist at Dulwich College, which holds a treasure trove of information on the area of Dulwich as well as the school and its alumni.

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By John Sheaf

I was most interested to read the article ‘Starting a newsletter’ by Gill Sarre of the Farnsfield Local History Society in issue 147 of LHN.

I am the editor of the Borough of Twickenham Local History Society (BOTLHS) Newsletter and offer a few thoughts. Our society was started in 1962 and the newsletter has been running since 1963. During these 60 years it was, at one time, produced quarterly but this was changed to three times a year to better fit in with the society’s season. (Our season runs from October to May with monthly lectures, except for January which is a social event and May, which is the AGM followed by a short talk.) Accordingly, we have a Newsletter in September (before the start of the new season which includes the programme of talks), another in December (with details of the January social) and April (giving notice of the AGM). The latest edition was numbered 192 and was the 50th edition I had edited. We have had very few editors over the period, with another editor producing 57 editions, which certainly helps continuity.

We, too, have sometimes found it difficult over the years to find contributors. All I can say is perseverance is probably the name of the game. As one newspaper’s wise local history editor once said to us, ‘Keep doing what you are doing, and keep doing it well, and people will come to you.’ These days we are lucky to have a small band of stalwart regular contributors who are contacted a month in advance of each edition as a reminder. We also try to make each issue as informative, varied and interesting as possible and cross-reference or link items where we can. Both the chairman and I write some opening words to try and encourage a ‘conversation’ with our readers.

Two things seem to work quite well. We always include a write-up of previous meetings which informs non-attendees and reminds people who were able to attend on the night of a summary of the lectures. We also encourage contributors, where possible, to write in a ‘how-to-do-it’ way to try and show less experienced people the various ways research can be undertaken. We hope, in turn, this will lead to future contributors!

I showed these thoughts to a fellow committee member, Mike Cherry, who added a few further thoughts as follows:

It is rare to get unsolicited articles, and this may be because people who haven’t written local history are lacking in confidence and think you have to be very knowledgeable to write anything. So, including short and simple items might show them that anyone can have a go. He also thinks it’s important to include lots of illustrations as it breaks up the text and, basically, people like pictures. He also suggests that articles are accessible and don’t assume that readers have knowledge of the context. He further adds that detailed, perhaps more technical research is better suited to publications and journals rather than newsletters and that ‘then and now’ pictures might prompt people to share memories and invite readers to send pictures and reminiscences.

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By Trevor Fisher

Tutbury Castle as it is believed to have looked in the 16th century (18th century engraving)

The final 18 months that Mary Queen of Scots spent in English captivity ended any pretence that she was an honoured guest. The fiction had been almost maintained when the Earl of Shrewsbury kept her in his properties. But on 14 January 1585 she was moved to Tutbury Castle, where she had previously been resident in 1569–70 and which she hated. Cold, insanitary and used for the Royal Stud, the castle made her so seriously ill, diplomatic pressure from France forced a move to Chartley Manor near Stafford to recover her health.

Moving to Staffordshire was motivated by the break-up of the Earl’s marriage to Bess of Hardwick, after accusations that the Earl was pursuing Mary at the expense of his marriage. However the secretary of state, Francis Walsingham, had a political agenda. While in Sheffield with the Earl, Mary had been running a secret correspondence channel with the French embassy sending coded letters via couriers, so Walsingham provided a new jailer, Amyas Paulet, to stop her plotting by letter. Tutbury could not be sealed as it was surrounded by houses but Chartley Manor was remote. Paulet wrote in a letter to Walsingham, ‘I cannot imagine how it may be possible for them to convey a piece of paper as big as my finger out’ of the castle. However, this prison was not Chartley Castle but the nearby Manor, which could be put in lockdown – entrance was strictly controlled. Mary was finally cut off.

But Walsingham had changed his priorities. There was no doubt that Catholics on the Continent were plotting, so Walsingham needed to know what they were doing, and could not be sure Mary could not make contact secretly with her supporters, What he needed was to allow correspondence which appeared to be secret – but which would come through his office so he could read the letters. This feat was – just – possible. Neither Staffordshire house had a brewery, so the vital import of beer had to come from Burton. The weekly arrival of a barrel was commonplace, so a hollowed-out bung could take letters in a waterproof package. This proved easy and by 1586 Mary was convinced she had a perfect system.

The key element, however, was the courier. The courier had to travel between the French embassy in London and Staffordshire, and needed to be a practising Catholic supporting the Counter Reformation who would be given the thumbs-up by Mary’s agent in Paris, Thomas Morgan. It would help if he came from Staffordshire and knew the territory. Where could such a paragon be found? Just on cue at the end of 1585, such a man appeared. His name was Gilbert Gifford (the Giffords are a Norman French family who have lived continuously at Chillington, south Staffordshire, since 1178). The accepted version of his career has him being captured in December 1585, being interrogated by Walsingham and recruited as a double agent, picking up the letters stored at the French embassy, and delivering the first batch to the brewer on 16 January 1586. But this is not a simple story and Kate Williams in her 2020 book Rival Queens (p. 299) oversimplifies by saying Gifford ‘headed for Chartley Hall. There he offered himself to Mary and her secretaries, Curle and Nau, as a useful postman and they took him to their hearts’.

Gifford never went to the Manor, which was banned to visitors. Had he been allowed in it would have been clear he was a double agent and his usefulness ended. What has to be explained is how a transmission belt involving the Burton brewer and the French embassy was created in the space of a little over six weeks, with no modern communications and in the middle of winter. That Gifford did deliver in this restricted time slot is undoubted – the question is how? Chartley, still today a remote and rarely visited Staffordshire backwater, has yet to yield up its secrets.

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By Jane Howells

The first volume published by the Wiltshire Record Society contains the churchwardens’ accounts of the parishes of St Thomas and St Edmund 1443–1702. One of the more dramatic events they record occurred in 1653. By the mid-17th century the fabric of St Edmunds Church in Salisbury had been causing concern for several years. In 1651 the bell was removed from the top of the tower ‘it being hurtfull to the Tower’. Just over a year later the vestry found ‘the Tower to bee so Clift wth shaking’ that they could not ‘suffer any Peale to bee rung againe’. On Sunday 26 June 1653 the mayor and ‘a great Multitude of Godly Christianes were mett at Edmundes Church for the Publique Worshipe of God. … the very hand of God did keep the Stones and Timber from falling vntill the next morning that his one people were all Secure at home, and then hee so sweetly Ordered the fall of the Tower that … neither Man, Woman or Child received any hurt thereby’. By 1656 sufficient money had been raised to rebuild the tower, an unusual example of reconstruction in medieval style under the Commonwealth. The near miss is commemorated in this plaque still to be found at the building, which since 1975 has been Salisbury Arts Centre.

See Henry Swayne (ed.), Churchwardens’ Accounts of St Edmund and St Thomas, Sarum 1443–1702, Wiltshire Record Society, 1896, pp. 226–228; Ruth Newman and Jane Howells, Salisbury Past, 2001, pp.50–51.

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By Heather Falvey

The latest issue of Bedford Local History Magazine (no. 110, Spring 2023), published by the Bedford Architectural, Archaeological & Local History Society, comprises nine articles under the general title ‘A history of some faith groups in Bedford’.

The rapid expansion of Bedford at the beginning of the 20th century led to seven new Church of England churches being built in Bedford and Kempston, some beginning as ‘tin tabernacles’. Due to the town’s changing demographic some are no longer places of worship but remain centres of communal activity. There was an active medieval Jewish community in Bedford, but the modern Jewry was founded in the 18th century. A prominent family in that community in the early 20th century was the Abrahams family, who included Harold Abrahams, the only British athlete to win an Olympic gold medal in 1924. In the teeth of virulent anti-Catholicism, the role of Rev John Priestley Wormoll, who arrived in late 1863, was to establish (or revive) Roman Catholicism in Bedford. He first founded a small chapel in the upstairs of a house and then raised funds for a proper building. The church of The Holy Child and St Joseph, designed by Gilbert Blount, with its beautiful chancel arch, was eventually opened in 1874. A meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Bedford was formed in 1907, but it was not until 1955 that it moved to its own premises. The Salvation Army are still very active in the town, even providing an outdoor games area next to their Woolpack Hub.

Other faith groups studied, and continuing today, have overseas connections. The Moravians evolved from a Protestant Christian minority in Bohemia and Moravia (today’s Czechia). The Miracle Church of God in Christ, begun in Bedford in 1961, was formed to meet the spiritual and community needs of recent immigrants from the Caribbean. Lacking a permanent home, it moved between rented buildings. Despite various setbacks regarding leasing a site on Alexandra Road, the current church was eventually built there. By 1982 it had 120 full members. A thriving church, it is described as a ‘multi-cultural, multi-generational church’, with ‘planted churches both in the Caribbean and Africa’. (There is nothing about the Emmanuelle Pentecostal Italian Church in Ashburnham Road.)

The town’s connection with John Bunyan is famous. The church which now worships at Bunyan Meeting House owes its existence to John Gifford, and 11 others, who formed themselves into an Independent church. In 1653 the town authorities invited them to take over the church of St John. Bunyan was converted under the influence of Gifford and joined the church that year. At the Restoration, permission to use St John’s was withdrawn and Bunyan was imprisoned. While in Bedford Gaol he wrote Grace Abounding and started work on The Pilgrim’s Progress. In 1671, while still in prison, he was chosen as pastor of the Bedford Meeting; following the Declaration of Indulgence of March 1672, he was released and licensed a ‘Congregational preacher’. The church purchased an orchard and barn, setting up the latter as a meeting house. A new meeting house opened on the site in 1850. The beautiful building still stands, although much altered and extended. As well as services, it hosts exhibitions and community art workshops, and, of course, the John Bunyan Museum.

Finally there is The Panacea Society, a Christian sect founded in 1919 by a group of women living in Bedford. They followed the teachings of Joanna Southcott (d.1814) and of their leader Octavia (Mabel Beltrop). They acquired property near the town centre and created their own campus, including a large garden. They came to believe that Mabel/Octavia was the Daughter of God and their garden was the Garden of Eden. The Society only ceased in 2012. The article considers the origins of the Society’s beliefs, the life of Mabel/Octavia and how their final years were recorded and a legacy established.

The BAALHS hopes to publish further articles on Eastern religions in Bedford and possibly others. This fascinating series of articles could be emulated by other history societies of large towns.

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A recently digitised collection of regional images that has been added to the University of Leicester’s Special Collections Online will be of particular interest to local historians. Views of England and Wales contains more than 2,000 topographic prints, drawings, paintings and photographs, mostly from the 18th and 19th centuries. The originals are held at the university’s Centre for Regional and Local History. The digital images are all available free under a Creative Commons licence.

Subjects in this useful resource include rural and landscapes, castles, churches, ruins, country houses, architecture, maps and building plans, as well as portraits, objects, depictions of historical events and more. Almost all historic counties in England are covered, with the exceptions of Rutland and Staffordshire; Gloucestershire and Yorkshire are the best represented. Five of the Welsh historic counties, namely Caernarfonshire, Flintshire, Merionethshire, Monmouthshire and Pembrokeshire, are also represented. The collection can be freely viewed via https://www.balh.org.uk/NHW153 and an online exhibition at https://www.balh.org.uk/JTN154 provides an introduction to the collection.

Dr Alister Sutherland, digital outreach and collections assistant at the Centre, said: ‘For many years, this extensive collection sat in a big wooden chest of drawers at Marc Fitch House, walked past every day, its contents unknown to most and rarely viewed. After many months of work, it is now fully accessible online and searchable… Views of England and Wales is also an excellent visual record of buildings, landscapes and places that have changed or disappeared since the prints, or the artwork they were based on, were created.’

As an example, the cover image of this issue of LHN shows St Mary’s, Dover, in 1843 when it was being cleared for major restoration work described by the church’s own website as ‘controversial’ (see www.balh.org.uk/MQD155).

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With thanks to John Corfield, John Chandler, Heather Falvey, David R. Jones

The oldest known decoratively carved wood has been found in a peat bed during construction work in Boxford, Berkshire. Historic England, working with scientists from Nottingham Tree-ring Dating Laboratory, has established that there is a 95 per cent likelihood the carved timber is around 6,000 years old, 500 years older than a previous find from south Wales. The piece of carved oak is a metre long and was found near the River Lambourn. The markings are reminiscent of decorations on early Neolithic pottery. The timber is expected to go on display at West Berkshire Museum in Newbury.

Historic England has also launched a new project, History in the Making, to encourage young people between the ages of 13 and 25 to celebrate overlooked local histories in the north of England. The project provides grants of up to £15,000 for youth organisations and community groups to create ten place markers to commemorate local history. A pilot project has already supported canal heritage in Bradford and women’s history in the Doncaster area.

Mike Esbester from the Railway Work, Life & Death project (www.railwayaccidents.port.ac.uk) is keen to hear from people about which county or settlement’s history they are interested in where it had (or has) a railway link, in order to help develop the project’s local history work. He can be contacted via railwayworkeraccidents@gmail.com.

The Council for British Archaeology East Midlands is holding its autumn conference at Navenby, Lincolnshire on Saturday 14 October. The theme is expected to be fortifications. Details: cbaem.archaeologyuk.org

Historic Buildings & Places (HBAP) has appointed a new director, Liz Power, who was previously director of the London Museum of Steam & Water; she is also a trustee of the Association of Independent Museums. LHN readers may be interested to note that HBAP has been selling historical copies of Transactions of the Ancient Monuments Society at half price (see www.balh.org.uk/URN156).

A Bronze Age roundhouse discovered in Cardiff last year – and the earliest house ever found in the area – is being excavated. The house was found under Trelai Park, not far from Caerau Hillfort. A clay pot found at the site suggests it dates from around 1500BC. Local volunteers and schools have been assisting with the dig, and findings are expected to be exhibited at CAER Heritage Centre in December.

Scotland’s oldest mainland castle, Castle Sween, has reopened after 18 months of closure for safety assessment in the light of climate change. The castle, which is 900 years old, is free to visit.

A local historian in Broadstairs, Kent, Ken Nickoll, has solve the mystery of where Wilkie Collins rented a cottage in the town and started work on The Woman in White. Mr Nickoll used letters by Collins and Charles Dickens, along with details of the landlord on tithe records, to identify the location, which is now called Woodside Cottage and has been granted a blue plaque.

A steel sculpture celebrating Birmingham’s Black history, entitled ‘Black History is British History’, has been unveiled in All Saints Park, Wiston Green, near Birmingham Canal Old Line. It was created by artist Luke Perry with support from the Canal and River Trust and Legacy West Midlands.

The government has listed seven places which is advocating for UNESCO World Heritage status in what is called the ‘Tentative List’. The three UK heritage-related sites (the others being in overseas territories or listed for natural significance) are York city centre, Birkenhead Park and a trio of Iron Age sites in Shetland.

An abandoned graveyard in Glasgow is to be restored for public access, including details of its history and a list of interments, thanks to the new Friends of Maryhill Road Graveyard group. The graveyard, once attached to Maryhill Old Parish Church, was donated to the public in 1826 but the church was abandoned in 1985 and later demolished, with the graveyard recently inaccessible to the public.

A site described by estate agents as ‘Britain’s oldest home’ recently went up for sale at £2.5m – Kents Cavern in Torquay, Devon, has been owned by the same family for 120 years and inspired Agatha Christie’s novel The Man in the Brown Suit. The caves are believed to have been first occupied 100,000 years ago, and the oldest human remains in north-west Europe were found there.

A three-year, £5m project to conserve and develop Caernarfon Castle has been completed, which now means the public can access more of the principal gatehouse, including a new rooftop deck.

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John Corfield of Bridge & District History Society in Kent reports that the group has completed the digitisation of its History Archive, which can be viewed online at www.bridgehistory.org.uk. He notes: ‘We digitised some 30,000 photographs and documents, including leaflets, magazines and booklets. All were scanned and saved as high resolution (300 dpi) JPG files, which were then OCRed to produce a text file for each scan. They were then merged to a master text file, which can be searched, providing links back to the original scans. The scans were collated for each document as compressed PDF files for easy browsing. All the files were linked to an Access database which can be searched.’ (See LHN146 & 147 for more on digitising local history society archives, and page 26 of this issue.)

Hornsey Historical Society reports on a successful publishing project which other societies might seek to replicate: a collection entitled 100 Stories from the Archive sold more than 200 copies in its first ten weeks. The society also reports that making all of its publications available online (hornseyhistorical.org.uk/books) has led to ‘a significant increase in sales’.

Hertfordshire Association for Local History has recognised Letchworth resident Philippa Parker with a personal achievement award for her work in supporting the placement of a memorial plaque to Ebenezer Howard’s first wife, Eliza, as well as her cataloguing work on the Clutterbuck family archive. Mrs Parker has also spearheaded a project to investigate street names in Letchworth.

Newport & District History Society in Shropshire recently celebrated its 40th anniversary. More than 130 people attended an anniversary event, which was accompanied by a display in the town’s Guild Hall.

The Association of Genealogists and Researchers in Archives (AGRA) will hold its third annual conference at Downing College, Cambridge on 8–9 September. The theme is ‘Navigating your family history: journeys with ancestors’, covering issues relating to migration, as well as naval and military records.

Cumbria Local History Federation has been holding training and awareness sessions as part of the CLHF Archive Catalogue Project; these have focused on an archive catalogue system which the CLHF has been considering adopting, and are aimed at groups interested in developing or improving their local archive systems.

This year’s London and Middlesex Archaeological Society (LAMAS) local history conference will take place on Saturday 18 November at the Museum of London and has the theme ‘The London menagerie: animals in London history’. Details will be available at www.lamas.org.uk/conferences

At its recent AGM Dr David R. Jones, Wrexham, was elected the new president of Denbighshire Historical Society. Dr Jones studied at Bangor University and was previously the society’s secretary, chair and a member of its editorial board. The Society is on course to celebrate its 75th anniversary in 2025 with a special issue of its annual Transactions.

Julia Letts of the Oral History Society would like to hear from anyone out there who is currently working with schools on oral history projects or interested in oral history with young people and could support the OHS in helping update its online resources, provide new case studies, promote their own work, write a blog or suggest ideas and share their experience. Contact julia@lettstalk.net

In 1980 Whitchurch Local History Society (Bristol) published Whitchurch – Village Memories, edited by Jonathan Wood, a compilation of recollections of the village during the First World War and through the 1920s and 30s. In 1997 they published Whitchurch – More Memories, edited by Brian and Margaret Slade, which comprised further recollections of the earlier period and also covered aspects of village life from the Second World War up to the 1990s. Both books are illustrated with a sketch map of the village and several photographs. They have proved so popular with local people that not only has another book been produced (Whitchurch Memories – A Third Volume) but also the two earlier books have recently been reprinted.

Kent Archaeological Society welcomes applications to the Allen Grove Local History Fund, which has the object of promoting research, preservation and enjoyment of local history in the county. Applications are welcome from individuals, groups or societies (grants will not be made for excavation, fieldwork or works of fiction). The deadline is 30 September 2023. Contact allengroveadmin@kentarchaeology.org.uk for application details.

The Roman Roads Research Association has released the third volume of its peer-reviewed journal Itinera and is now accepting submissions for Volume 4, by 15 November. Itinera (see www.romanroads.org/itinera.html) includes reports of excavations, new discoveries from LIDAR, aerial photography and geophysics, designation of ‘new’ routes through an expanded Margary system, and a range of peer-reviewed scholarly articles exploring the wider context of roads as related to military and civilian activity.

Wembley History Society has assisted with a project to restore a commemorative plaque from the 1948 Olympic Games at Wembley Park. The original plaque was unveiled on 6 July 1948 by Alfred Barnes MP, then Minister of Transport, to mark the opening ceremony of Olympic Way preceding the 1948 Olympic Games, also known as the ‘Austerity Games’.

Banffshire Field Club will host a conference on ‘Banffshire Fowk’ – discussing Scots emigration and the Banffshire diaspora – on Saturday 7 October. Details via bfc.1880@gmail.com

Hexham Local History Society has a new project, ‘Digitising the great and the good’. The late David Jennings compiled a ‘vast collection’ of obituaries and profiles of prominent local people, mostly from the 19th and early 20th centuries and which have been largely inaccessible in a collection of box files. Now the society is seeking volunteers to look through the collection and then digitise and
transcribe suitable material. Contact chair@hexhamhistorian.org if you can help.

In issue 2 of the Farnsfield Local History Society Newsletter (see LHN148 for details of its genesis), Janine Buckley, project lead for the Miner2Major heritage buildings survey, reports that volunteers have listed details of many non-listed heritage buildings in the area. The information is being added to the Historic Environment Record at https://her.
nottinghamshire.gov.uk, which now includes more than 170 records for Farnsfield.

Another new newsletter is The Clavering Chronicle, launched this spring by Clavering Landscape History Group in Essex. It includes reports from recent events, including a fieldwalking day which unearthed prehistoric and Roman finds, as well as a ‘notes and queries’ section. Congratulations to Jacqueline Cooper for an excellent start.

Chirk History Society in north Wales has announced that its meeting on 12 July would be the last one after 30 years since the group was founded. Secretary John Warren told the Border Counties Advertizer that there were only eight members left; people were reluctant to join the commute and the cost of speakers – up to £90, he said – was prohibitive. The last two talks would look at highlights of 30 years of the society, and present about Erlas Walled Garden in Wrexham.

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The Royal Historical Society (RHS) has issued a statement about what it calls ‘unprecedented turbulence and uncertainty’ in UK higher education. It says that the universities of Brighton, East Anglia and Kent are all consulting historians about voluntary or compulsory redundancies. The statement was published in June in the wake of reports that the University of East Anglia was cutting 113 staff and that 86 per cent of academic staffing cuts would come from the arts and humanities department. The history department at UEA is to be reduced by more than a quarter. The RHS statement concludes: ‘Present-day commentaries regularly propose that History, and the wider humanities, are “in crisis”. We do not agree. History as a subject and pursuit remains in good health. But what does appear to be in crisis – now as never before – are the structures that enable and sustain History in UK higher education.”

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Wales’s first national broadcast archive has opened at the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth. The Wales Broadcast Archive Centre provides access to half a million clips from the history of Welsh television and radio. The centre offers an interactive exhibition and digital access to material that has been preserved in various formats throughout the decades, and includes sound recordings dating back to the 1930s. There are also ‘Clip Corners’ offering access to the centre’s resources at 13 other libraries and archives across Wales. www.library.wales/national-broadcast-archive

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Shropshire Archives now has an online index to its Salop Fire Office policy books collection, which can be searched in its catalogue at www.shropshirearchives.org.uk by using the phrase ‘Salop Fire’ followed by the name of a person or street.

Historic Environment Scotland (HES) is converting Archive House in Bonnyrigg to become its new, world-class archive facility, expected to open in 2026. HES holds more than 3,500 collections relating to national archaeology and architecture and is currently based in John Sinclair House, Edinburgh. Also in 2026, the archive’s public search room and library will move to HES’s HQ at Longmore House, Edinburgh.

The National Archives’ new exhibition is on the theme ‘Spirit of Invention’ and showcases Victorian design and creativity. It runs until 29 October (www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/spirit-of-invention). Meanwhile TNA has proudly been sharing the news that it has been voted Richmond’s ugliest building for the second year running!

West Sussex Archives Society will be celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. A record office open day is planned for 25 November, which will showcase some of the many documents that friends of West Sussex Record Office have helped the Society to acquire.

Follow ‘A year in the life of a community archive’, featuring Dunkeld Community Archive, through a series of blog posts hosted by the Scottish Council on Archives: see www.balh.org.uk/WTQ158

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A project entitled Mapping Museums has been awarded £1m from the Arts and Humanities Research Council to gather new data on the closure of museums in the UK since 2000. The project will run for two years from this October and is based at Birkbeck and King’s College in London. The group’s blog posts and data on museum closures to date can be explored at blogs.bbk.ac.uk/mapping-museums.

Researchers exploring old newspaper reports as part of work on the £45m refurbishment of Paisley Museum – Scotland’s biggest cultural heritage project, due to reopen in 2024 – have uncovered details of barbaric birch rod punishments of children as young as eight, tied to a whipping post outside Johnstone Police Station in the early 1900s. The original post will form part of a display at the revamped museum.

St Fagans National Museum of History in Cardiff has been rated Britain’s top free attraction by the consumer group Which?, based on a survey of 7,000 people. Second place went to the National Railway Museum in York.

A £9.9m National Heritage Memorial Fund grant is being used to support a three-year programme of repair and conservation work in Ironbridge, Shropshire. The project will include repair work at the Museum of the Gorge, in a Grade II* Gothic-style warehouse, and other sites within the Ironbridge Gorge World Heritage Site.

A new museum showcasing the history of Catholicism in Scotland is expected to open next spring. The combined Scottish Catholic Archives and Museum will include holdings from the now closed Blairs Museum in Aberdeen and will be housed in the former St Mary’s School in Orr Street, Glasgow.

Beckford’s Tower in Bath has been awarded £100,000 for preservation after water damage, adding to wider support from the Heritage Lottery Fund to revamp the museum. This will also support research into its creator William Beckford’s connections with slavery.

A rare Roman mausoleum has been discovered by the Museum of London Archaeology team working at the Liberty of Southwark site in Borough. It was apparently used for wealthier members of Roman society. Coins, pottery and roofing tiles have been found, but no coffins. A permanent display about the site is being planned.

In 1998 Hackney Museum interviewed local residents from the Windrush generation. Now, 75 years after the Empire Windrush arrived, it is revisiting these stories through a series of blog posts (see www.balh.org.uk/FBP157).

Newtown Textile Museum in Powys has a new exhibition, ‘Amelia Ray: A Victorian entrepreneur at the cutting edge’, exploring the life of a female drapery magnate thanks to the rediscovery of her account books. Runs until 30 September.

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Ludlow History Hub (www.ludlowhistoryhub.com) is a new site created to support local history in the Shropshire town. It was set up by Rosemary Wood, co-author of a book on past residents of the town which has recently gone into a second edition in the light of demand, thanks to support from Ludlow Civic Society.

Genealogy website ScotlandsPeople (scotlandspeople.gov.uk) has released searchable indexes to the registers of Edinburgh’s Bridewell and Calton prisons, plus Largs Jail in North Ayrshire. The records cover the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

www.aviationancestry.co.uk is a one-man project to construct a database-driven website derived from information in British aviation press advertisements. Creator and former pilot Dave Robinson explained how the site has been created in the March issue of Hatfield Local History Society’s Newsletter.

Historic England has launched the Building Stones Database at https://historicengland.org.uk/advice/technical-advice/buildings/building-stones-england/ – this resource brings together information on local building stones, their uses and sources as an online interactive geological map. This can be searched by postcode, address and place name, as well as by stone type, source or structure – the aim is to facilitate sourcing the correct stone for historic building conservation.

Heritage Search, the free online portal to Oxfordshire County Council’s heritage services, has been expanded, redesigned and relaunched. It now contains more information about a wide range of archival resources, including documents, photographs and maps, and many of Oxfordshire’s heritage assets can be plotted on its new mapping platform. New catalogues include records from Oxford town clerks dating back to 1747 and details of air raid precautions and civil defence services 1937–73. Visit heritagesearch.oxfordshire.gov.uk

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Avon Local History & Archaeology (an umbrella group of societies – see www.alha.org.uk) publishes an annual Catalogue of Presenters, which features the names and contact details of around 60 people who are willing to give talks or lead local walks. Creating a similar directory could be a great resource for other groups of societies where member groups are often looking for new speakers at events.

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Sheila Hancox of Ivybridge Heritage & Archives Group in Devon writes: I found it interesting to read about Jeremy Gibson in LHN146. I went to Scottish country dances with Jeremy and remember him well, dressed very smartly with a dress suit and dickie bow but he never wore a kilt when I knew him. When he started the Banbury Historical Society he wrote books, transcribed registers etc. as well as organising talks to enlighten the members about the history of their town. Now 60 years later I live in Devon and have spent the last nine years doing the same thing but thankfully with the aid of the internet and computers. Thank you to Barrie Trinder for writing about Jeremy. It was great to read the Banbury names.

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A particularly popular BALH webinar back in 2021 was Dr Ellie Pridgeon’s talk on ‘Archiving your local history collection’, and she kindly returned to give an updated version in May this year. Ellie is a consultant archivist who has worked with museums, universities and community archives across the UK. This was timely given much discussion in the pages of LHN (issues 147 and 148) about how member societies can approach looking after their often extensive archives and digitising them. More than 200 people attended the new talk.

In the first part, covering ‘Managing your digital records’, Ellie emphasised the need for local archives to adapt to the digital era, warning against a potential ‘digital black hole’ where valuable digital assets could be lost due to poor storage methods. A well-structured, centralised system was recommended for managing digital files, highlighting the importance of maintaining a consistent folder structure and a separate list or map outlining where data is stored. She also discussed creating a master copy for long-term storage alongside an access copy for regular use.

Specific advice was given on how to handle different types of files and formats for text documents, video and audio. Ellie advised that emails containing important information should be saved outside the email system, ideally as PDFs, with careful attention given to the naming and storage of these files. Concerning backups, ideally three copies of digital archives should exist: the original and two backups, which could be stored on a server, external memory, hard drive or in the cloud.

Ellie also discussed the option of depositing local history collections off-site with official repositories, such as a local records office, museum or history centre. These repositories could handle both physical and digital archives, thus providing another alternative for maintaining and preserving digital archives.

In the second part, Ellie looked at archiving websites and social media content. Various methods were explored, such as screen capture, the UK Web Archive (www.webarchive.org.uk), and the Web Recorder (webrecorder.net), each with its advantages and limitations. Notably, copyright complexities when archiving web and social media content were highlighted. The talk concluded with a lively and informative Q&A.

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By Heather Falvey

The growing legacy of Lionel Munby (1918–2009)

Datchworth and Tewin in Tudor and Stuart Times from wills and inventories by Lionel Munby, edited and with an introduction by Jane Walker (privately published 2023 105pp ISBN 978-1-3999-4605-6) £7 + p&p from jwbaines@gmail.com

Among his many other roles, for 20 years Lionel Munby was editor of The Amateur Historian (which became The Local Historian under his editorship) and later he was president of BALH. (See TLH, 39:3, 2009, pp.236–7.) He was also a tutor for the University of Cambridge’s Board of Extra-Mural Studies (now the Institute of Continuing Education). As part of that role he ran local history and palaeography classes in many Hertfordshire villages and towns. These led to the founding of several local history societies and to the publication of some books of wills and probate inventories, including those from Sarratt, Kings Langley and St Stephen’s parish, St Albans.

A few years ago Jane Walker came across a collection of files in Datchworth Museum. These contained the fruits of a local history course run by Lionel in 1983 in Datchworth village hall for parishioners from Datchworth and Tewin (a neighbouring parish). Students learned to read 16th and 17th century handwriting using a selection of Tudor and Stuart wills and inventories from the two parishes. They also learned how to interpret the contents of such documents. The files include photocopies of wills and inventories from Datchworth, and some transcripts, but no documents from Tewin because the files had been donated by a Datchworth resident. Most importantly there is a 21-page typescript by Lionel containing an account of Datchworth and Tewin in Tudor and Stuart times based on 72 sets of probate documents. This is a comprehensive summary of the students’ findings on various topics, including religious opinions, provisions for dependants and specific bequests, such as jewellery, clothing, arms and books. The probate inventories provide information about rooms in houses, animals and crops, as well as furniture and household linens.

Knowing of the other books that had been published under Lionel’s guidance, or inspiration, Jane was determined to publish his discussion of this probate material. To give context to his essay, she decided to add some of the students’ transcripts of the Datchworth material (24 sets of documents) and then transcribed documents relating to 15 Tewin parishioners. She has added some footnotes to Lionel’s text, and Figure 1, the family trees of two closely connected families. New appendices include a list of all of the testators mentioned by Lionel from each parish in alphabetical order, cross-referenced to the transcripts where relevant and a comparison of the descriptions of Datchworth rectory in the glebe terrier (1607) and the Rev William Payne’s inventory (1622). There is also a glossary and three very comprehensive indexes.

In his lifetime, Lionel published, among other things, several books on Hertfordshire’s history, and two handbooks for BALH – Tudor and Stuart Handwriting and How much is that worth? Now Datchworth and Tewin in Tudor and Stuart Times adds to his important local history legacy.

Tibshelf Local History & Civic Society, Miners to Medics. Tibshelf: Pioneers of Medical Care 1860-1960 (TLHCS 2023 28pp no ISBN) £2.00 + £1.85p&p from ivan44brentnall@outlook.com. The pamphlets are £1 each to cover the cost of home production, and most of them can also be downloaded from the society’s website: https://tibshelflocalhistory.co.uk/miners-to-medic/

The Tibshelf Local History & Civic Society (TLHCS), a small local history society based in North Derbyshire, was established in 2016. In 2019, on the eve of the Covid-19 pandemic, the society secured a Heritage Lottery grant to research the Tibshelf Colliery Ambulance Corps, who were pioneers of industrial first aid and became the first brigade registered with the St John Ambulance Brigade in 1882. As the project proceeded, they uncovered a story long forgotten in the village and worth recording. They have therefore produced a short booklet, entitled Miners to Medics, detailing the corps’ efforts.

During the period 1860 to 1880 deep coal seams were mined in the area and Tibshelf’s population grew. First aid training for miners started in 1872 and from this the Tibshelf Ambulance Corps began to assist miners who were injured underground. A sister Nursing Association started in 1882. The corps’ activities included winning a silver medal at the International Health Exhibition in 1884; travelling to Windsor for a review before Queen Victoria in 1893; providing volunteers to help the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) during the second Boer War (1899–1902) as ward orderlies and stretcher bearers in base hospitals in South Africa; and during the First World War providing volunteers serving with the RAMC collecting the wounded from the battlefield as frontline troops. The local pits finally closed in 1936. In 1948, with the advent of free health care from the NHS, the brigade ceased operation, although the Tibshelf Ambulance & Nursing Association regularly attended the acclaimed the local flower show and sports day until 1958.

Ivan Brentnall, chairman of TLHCS, tells us that, due to limited finances, Miners to Medics is restricted in size; nevertheless it provides a concise, readable story of their activities. In addition, the TLHCS has produced a series of 65 pamphlets with more detailed information on some of the characters and their stories (such as Stuart Crawford Wardell, the Scott family and Caleb Wood – Rorke’s Drift survivor) and various aspects of the village’s history (such as ‘Fatalities in the Tibshelf pits’ and ‘Tibshelf brickworks’). The society has also built up associated databases and even produced a short film based on a miner recalling his participation in the Royal Review. As Ivan comments, ‘Tibshelf was not alone in these efforts and the story should be worthy of sparking the interest of other local societies.’ And perhaps similar projects.

Building a Chiltern Church in Swyncombe by John Sennett (published by the author, 2022, no ISBN) £10 + £2.25p&p from johsennett@aol.com

Like many other local historians, John Sennet seems to have filled his time productively during the pandemic. He researched the earliest history of the church in Swyncombe. His quest was to see how far back he could trace its building. He admits to being a ‘complete novice at this sort of thing and the journey through the maze of possibilities has been astonishing’. He also wanted to discover why this particular church was dedicated to a seemingly obscure English saint, St Botolph. (As he points out, the history of the parish and the church after it was built is recorded in the VCH Oxfordshire, vol. 18.)

First, Sennett considers people living in the Chilterns area before the Romans arrived in Britain, then the effects of the Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Danes and Normans there. Domesday Book reveals that between 1066 and 1086 the manor of Swyncombe had been granted to the Norman abbey of Bec, but it also reveals that there were no tenants at Swyncombe. Sennett points out that the suggested founding date for the church of 1020 cannot be proved, and it is unlikely given the absence of inhabitants. The font can be dated to the early 11th century but he speculates that this came from another building. The earliest evidence for the church’s existence is from the mid 12th century.

Botolph, a Benedictine monk, was known as one of the earliest walking monks, taking the gospel to the heathens. He journeyed far, perhaps the reason why more churches are dedicated to him than any other English pre-Conquest saint. (Over 70 churches in his name have survived.) Sennett even suggests (in the absence of any other evidence) that the church at Swyncombe may have been named after him because he passed close by. With Swyncombe only 40 miles from London and 15 from Oxford, Sennett observes that the church’s curious survival over 900 years in this peaceful and windswept coombe echoes what survives of St Botolph’s holiness.

This booklet is being sold in aid of the church’s current building project (a washroom).

More Baslow through the Ages, edited by Mike Holcombe and David Dalrymple-Smith (Baslow History Group 2022 246pp no ISBN) £10 + £3p&p available from https://baslow-history-group.weebly.com/

The Baslow History Group has produced a second illustrated book on aspects of the history of their village. The origins of the group’s newsletter and of the first book were described in an article by the group’s chairman, Mike Holcombe, in Local History News, no. 143 (Spring 2022), pp.22–23. As before, More Baslow through the Ages is a collection of articles taken from the group’s monthly newsletter. The editors point out that this ‘is not a systematic or rigorous history of Baslow rather a series of vignettes that reflect things about Baslow’s past’. The six chronological chapters comprise a total of 39 sections of varying length. These sections include, for example, ‘Romans all around us’, which discusses speculative Roman roads in the area; the medieval gilding of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Baslow church; a list of Catholics reported to the authorities on various occasions between 1634 and 1731/2; ‘Tally Ho! – our stagecoach’ that passed through the village; and ‘When Hathersage suffered and Bakewell prevaricated’ about dealing with outbreaks of infectious diseases in the late 19th century.

The book has numerous illustrations, not only maps and photographs of the surrounding landscape, but also beautiful paintings of buildings in the area by Norman Tomlinson. As the preface notes, ‘The first book was a success and repeatedly sold out.’ Almost all households in the village have bought at least one. Doubtless this second book will be just as popular.

Dockland, Smokestacks and Slums: In the Shadows of British Industry, Cedric Greenwood (Silver Link Silk Editions 2023 176pp ISBN: 978-1-857945–92–8) £35

In this picture-led book, Cedric Greenwood has focused on what he calls ‘the best, or worst (whichever your viewpoint) of the old industrial scenes in the period 1950–65’. This, he notes, was a particular period of pre-
eminence, a postwar rekindling of engineering, manufacture and exports before the decline of the 1970s and 80s in the face of labour protests, tardy modernisation and foreign competition.

This book sits in a series called The Nostalgia Collection, which include two previous works by Greenwood on transport themes, and the author is clearly drawn to the aesthetic of chimneys and smokestacks, girders and warehouses – typically the material here, consisting of more than 200 photographs (mostly taken by the author) accompanied by extensive captions, shows buildings and infrastructure which date from the 19th and earlier 20th century. Themed chapters cover the railway and canal network, wharves and warehouses, streets and slums, and ‘the acceptable face of industry’, namely ‘the more congenial and attractive aspects of industry’ such as windmills, scenic harbours and appealing industrial housing such as that at Port Sunlight.

Greenwood mocks himself for his ‘rather purple descriptions’ but in fact the text here is excellent – each piece sets the context of the picture in question and explores its details admirably. What actually lets the side down a little, though, is the reproduction of the pictures – mid 20th century amateur colour pictures can be a challenge due to their saturation, and they lack the sharpness we expect today, but here alas a fair number are dark enough to make it hard to see the details Greenwood elucidates. A little more careful Photoshop work by the publisher would have ameliorated this. AC

Books for review should be sent to: Dr Heather Falvey, 119 Winton Drive, Croxley Green, Rickmansworth WD3 3QS – or contact her via reviews.editor@balh.org.uk

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By Iain Taylor

One of the drawbacks of being Treasurer of any membership organisation such as BALH is that he or she sometimes has to deliver unpalatable news. This year is one of those.

For the year ended December 2022 the Association posted a loss of over £10,000. For the current year our budget is anticipating a loss of a similar amount.

There are very good reasons for some of this. We have made significant investments over the last few years in our digital infrastructure and offerings, all designed to benefit our members. These can be seen most clearly in the developments on our website, in our range of webinars and workshops, most of which are free to members, and the Local History Matters podcast, blog and Ten-Minute Talks now available for everyone to enjoy (see www.balh.org.uk/resources). In addition, we have also been fulfilling our educational remit by investing in an innovative series of Teacher Fellowships, the final results of which will be available soon.

By continuing to conduct most of our administration online, a change enforced by the pandemic, we have successfully reduced many of our day-to-day expenses, but the rising cost of living has hit BALH just as hard as the rest of the country. The Association has sufficient assets and reserves to maintain our existing programmes and publications in the short term, and the Trustees continue to keep a close eye on our expenditure. But, going forward, it is simply not sustainable for the Association to continue to post such losses.

Since the vast majority of our income comes from the subscriptions paid by our members, I’m afraid that means that we will need to increase our rates with effect from January 2024. This is not a decision we have taken lightly, but members should be aware that our subscription rates have remained at the present levels for at least the last five years (and significantly longer for many categories), while the benefits of membership, particularly in terms of our publications and digital and educational offers, have expanded significantly.

The Trustees have therefore revised subscriptions for each class of membership as follows

:

2023 2024

Individual £30 £36

Overseas £42.50 £51

Society £75 £90

Institution £٣٨ £٤٥

Students £25 £25

Given the current economic circumstances, and the length of time since our subscription rates were last reviewed (and in the hope that no further increases will be necessary for some time), the Trustees believe that this proposal is reasonable and proportionate.

However, the Trustees are well aware that such increases, however necessary, are never welcome. Therefore, from 2024, we are also proposing to introduce a new option of digital membership, available for all membership categories (except institutions). Such members would retain all the current membership benefits, but instead of receiving hard copies of our two quarterly journals, The Local Historian and Local History News, these would be emailed to members as PDFs. As well as being environmentally friendly, this would reduce our printing and mailing costs, and therefore we would be able to continue to offer digital memberships at the current (2023) rates. All members will be offered this option when memberships become due for renewal at the end of 2023.

We have also agreed that, from 2024, all student memberships will become digital only. As well as being more environmentally conscious, this will hopefully benefit a generally younger demographic who are better adapted to accessing electronic content, although of course existing student members may, if they wish, switch to a standard membership and continue to receive the print journals as before.

I would estimate that these changes will return BALH to a break-even position by 2025. More than 90 per cent of BALH members voting at the recent AGM supported these changes.

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By Joe Saunders

In 2021 BALH was proud to launch a new annual lecture, to be held each winter, welcoming a distinguished academic to share their research with us. We hope this will become a highlight of our annual calendar for our members and the wider public to enjoy. The lecture has been named in honour of Dr David Dymond, who died in August 2021. David had been closely involved with BALH for many years, including serving as a council member, trustee, vice-chair, chair and vice-president.

The inaugural Dymond Lecture was presented on an evening in early December 2021 by Professor Andrew Hopper, who spoke about his research on the human costs of the British Civil Wars of the 17th century. In 2022 we were pleased to welcome Briony McDonagh, who is Professor of Environmental Humanities at the University of Hull, with a talk entitled ‘Landscape, environment and learning histories’ on the history of water management in the city.

This year BALH is delighted to host Fiona Edmonds, who is Reader in Regional History and Director of the Regional Heritage Centre at Lancaster: www.lancaster.ac.uk/history/about/people/fiona-edmonds. Fiona is an expert in medieval history in northern and western Britain and will be comparing three medieval upland communities in Northern England, Wales and Scotland.

We are incredibly excited to welcome members and the public to this talk. The lecture will be hosted by our President, Professor Caroline Barron, via Zoom on an evening in early December. The event will be free for BALH members with a small charge for non-members (reduced for members of our member societies).

Full information of the talk, including date and booking information, will be in the next issue of Local History News and on the BALH website’s events page: www.balh.org.uk/balh-events

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BALH virtual event, Thursday 19 October 2023, 6.30–7.30pm

London livery company records can reveal rich information about local and family history that in the past has been largely been closed off to the wider public.

Consulting their records gives not just an understanding of the livery company’s history and that of the City of London, but also the individuals and communities they have been connected with for hundreds of years. Livery companies’ records are not limited to members or to London but include parishes lying in counties across England – in the Mercers’ case, Buckinghamshire, Norfolk, West Sussex and Hertfordshire. Beyond the lives and properties recorded in such estate records, the philanthropic works which the rents of these lands funded from the 15th century onwards have also left rich records. In the pages of the Mercers’ Company Archive, traces of the lives of almshouse residents, of prisoners who were assisted and schools that the company have maintained can all be explored.

Join heritage manager Liza Giffen and Charlotte Ferra, supervising archivist, to explore:

• the history of the Mercers’ Company and the ways in which it operates
• what types of records The Mercers’ Company hold
• what types of local and family history information they contain
• where you can access livery company records.

For more information and booking see: www.balh.org.uk/JTN149

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By Joe Saunders

During the early summer the Outreach Team, ably assisted by our Outreach Coordinator and the Digital Team, have been working on various initiatives for BALH members.

We organised our online AGM in May, where we hosted a talk from Iain Taylor and David Killingray on their new book on Sevenoaks in the long 19th century (1789–1914). We have also been planning the new Local History Live, an online event replacing Local History Day which we are going to run with an interwar theme in September (see this issue’s Supplement). Members of the team have been working on celebrating our personal achievement awards for 2023. Other members have been looking into an Exeter regional conference, following the success of the regional conference last year in Taunton. Tim Lomas has also been pulling together the last elements of the Teacher Fellowship and we are working on sharing the results online and in print. We have been planning our third annual Dymond Lecture by Professor Fiona Edmonds who is coming to the end of her term as head of the Regional History Centre at Lancaster University. Other online talks are being organised such as one with the Mercers’ Company in London (see page 31).

BALH has also been involved in the British Coronation Project 2023, which is an effort between several educational organisations working around schools and the coronation in May. Part of this involved providing teaching materials on the history of coronations. Members of the BALH team have curated information and resources to use to think about coronations in local history – see www.balh.org.uk/coronation

BALH attends a variety of events but we can only do so if we are aware of them. Please get in touch with our Outreach Coordinator Stephen Miller if you are running an event and we will see if we are able to attend: outreach@balh.org.uk

The BALH blog continues to draw in excellent research as does our popular series of online ‘Ten-Minute Talks’. We are always looking for new blogs and videos so please get in touch if you would like to share your local history research with a wide audience. In 2023 we have a bit of a 1920s theme developing and we would be keen to hear more about your local history in your research. Get in touch with the Digital Team with your idea: digitalteam@balh.org.uk

You will see elsewhere in this issue that we are currently seeking your help providing information and advice to fellow local historians (see page XX).

The BALH Outreach Team, which promotes the association and local history generally, is looking for new members help with our initiatives. Contact Joe Saunders, Outreach Chair, joseph6.saunders@hotmail.com.

Keep up to date with our activities via
Local History News, the BALH website and e-newsletter.

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We are delighted to have chosen the winners of our 20sStreets competition, which attracted more than 150 entries covering a huge array of fascinating topics. Launched last year in partnership with The National Archives, the competition invited entrants to research and share stories connected with the 1920s, focusing on any community within an area covered by the 1921 Census of England and Wales. The winning submissions explored subjects as diverse as women’s football and its popularity in the 1920s; the impact of the 1926 general strike on a mining community in County Durham, and the lives and careers of three young women who worked together in a Watford department store.

Winners – Individual category: Simon Carpenter – The Three Choirs Festival makes its BBC debut; Helen George – Watford in the 1920s – Three Ladies of Trewins Department Store; Alexander Jackson – Fleetwood Ladies; Sharon O’Connor – Khalid Sheldrake: The East Dulwich man who would be King; Catherine Todd – Surviving the 1926 General Strike in a mining community. Winner – Group category: Oakhill History Club, Oakhill School – Connecting the Threads of Life.

For more details of the project and the runners-up see www.balh.org.uk/RTH152.

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By Alan Crosby

I admit to a shameful pleasure in taking an open-topped bus tour in a city which is new to me. Even though I am (it hardly needs to be said) a serious visitor, I enjoy mingling with the frivolous trippers and tourists in kiss-me-quick hats, as we follow a convoluted route through and sometimes beyond the urban area, listening to a commentary through those jolly purple or red or yellow disposable headphones, which it always seems a waste to chuck in the bin at the end.

The tours are highly variable in quality – not only in terms of the commentary and the information given, but also of the route itself. At Seville we discovered that, because the entire historic centre is pedestrianised, the bus could not go through any of the really interesting bits. We were therefore treated to more than we needed of suburban housing estates and light industrial zones. The same was true in Bordeaux, where a surprising number of semi-derelict former factories were passed by on the rive droit, but the views of the Garonne were impressive.

Recently in Berlin, however, we went round twice. This was because on the first circuit we managed to hook up to the wrong English commentary – the children’s version, which featured an intensely irritating American child (or fake American child) who when, for example, passing the Reichstag or a cathedral, exclaimed ‘Hey, mom, that’s just great’ or ‘That’s just amazing, it’s so big’ or similar inanities. We couldn’t understand why our friends were not as appalled as we were, but they had found the grown-up version – which was actually quite good.

Having realised our mistake, we enjoyed the second circumnavigation of the city. For me, a highlight was the lengthy meander through the socialist architecture of the erstwhile East Berlin, among the great blocks of workers’ flats lining the immense boulevard of the Karl Marx Allee, the road to (eventually) Moscow. That was the sort of area we’d probably never visit in other circumstances, but it was well worth the detour.

The most impressive tour was in Belfast, where the route was long, comprehensive and with a well-scripted commentary. It was a surreal experience to be surrounded by Japanese, American, German and Italian tourists, cameras and phones in overdrive, as we drove along the Falls Road and the Shankill Road, saw the Divis Street flats, gazed at the Crumlin Road jail, and watched throngs of visitors wandering along the pavement by the Peace Wall. All those familiar names from the news bulletins of 40 years ago, now part of the tourist circuit… but who can complain about that?

I’ve twice arranged a private bus tour, taking a group as part of a history study visit. One was to Belfast again, where the commentary was not pre-recorded but ‘live’, given by a brilliant and eloquent guide who wove his own story into the official script. The son of a mixed Catholic/Protestant marriage, he had grown up during the Troubles, and on one occasion his life had been saved when he had been thrown over a wall by a British soldier as paramilitary gunfire raked the street where he was playing. His input brought the tour to an entirely new and superior level.

The other group tour was in Derry, where the open-topped bus picked us up at our hotel, a couple of miles from the city centre. That was ideal in principle, but there was a serious practical problem in consequence. The recorded commentary became badly out of synch, so that the driver had to make desperate efforts to catch up. These included unscheduled detours down side streets, repeating sections of the tour, and going round a major roundabout six times in succession. The commentary was in any case out of date. In the heart of the city, at the Diamond, we were told that Austin’s department store was not only the oldest independent department store in the world, but was also Derry’s finest shopping experience. Unfortunately, it was boarded up and had broken windows. At the end of the tour my students, most of them crying with laughter, voted it the most entertaining tour ever.

Inexplicably, there is no open-topped bus tour of Preston, but I look forward to the day when an enterprising entrepreneur starts one. I can hear the commentary now, with a choice of 15 different languages: ‘And on your left you can see the elegant Victorian residence of the editor of The Local Historian, the celebrated Dr Alan Crosby. We will stop briefly for a
photo opportunity.’

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By Tim Hamilton

Hello, my name is Tim Hamilton. I’m a white male with brown hair and blue eyes. My pronouns are he/him and they/them.

At my place of work, I have fried fish and chips, boiled and rolled dandelion-and-burdock-flavoured ‘suck’ and dressed up as both a Victorian baker and 1950s ice cream man… If you haven’t already guessed, I work at the Black Country Living Museum in Dudley. I currently form part of the Collections Care and Management Team helping take care of the 80,000-plus objects which have been acquired from local businesses and donated by people in the community over the last 50 years, all of which contribute to telling the story of the Black Country.

If I’m honest I came to the museum sector in quite a roundabout way. Most of my early adult life I worked in interior design and was always being asked by my clients where I’d been to university. Having grown up in the context of a low income, single parent household and being diagnosed with ADHD at an early age, a university education had never been on the cards for me and I didn’t know of any family members who had been to university either. Succumbing to peer pressure, I enrolled as a history undergrad at the Open University in the summer of 2016. As it was, of course, long distance study I supplemented my learning with a hands-on volunteer role at Birmingham Museums Trust doing conservation cleaning in the historic properties. While volunteering I met so many fascinating people from students to retirees and all manner of museum professionals with different interests and specialisms. I realised quite quickly I’d found ‘my people’, so to speak, and decided to make a career for myself in museums. Making that goal a reality was easier said than done; I worked nights, I took casual and zero-hour roles for the experience, and I continued to volunteer on my days off. I truly believe hard work is good for the soul and looking back at how far I’ve come, I wouldn’t change one moment of it.

I have the Open University to thank for opening the door for me to apply to University of Oxford’s Advanced Diploma in Local History. It was a year of study I will never forget. It not only equipped me with the toolkit for undertaking local history research but a deep appreciation for the commitment and enthusiasm local historians demonstrate when attempting to shine a light on all our underrepresented and often hidden histories. In my spare time, I can be found putting some of what I learned at Oxford into practice by way of writing a Black Country local history segment for West Midlands Magazines.

In my museum role I’m an advocate and activist for underrepresented groups in museum collections including the LGBTQ+ community, people with visible and invisible disabilities and those with minority and ethnic backgrounds.

In my role as a BALH trustee I aim to humbly bring my perspective as a museum professional to the table as well as being an advocate for the use and co-curation of museum collections in, and as a result of, local history research.

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By Joe Saunders, John Chandler & Andrew Chapman

Local history online short courses

BALH, in collaboration with its education partner Pharos Tutors, has created two four-week courses:

• Getting Started with Local History is aimed at any local historian looking for inspiration and advice, though it will especially appeal to those of you who have recently started or would like to start researching local history. It introduces you to local history as a subject and discusses key skills and sources tow help you with your research. The focus is on modern British history from c.1780 to the present day.

• Progressing your Local History Research is for any local historian looking for inspiration and advice but it will particularly appeal to those who have already begun their research. The course builds upon the themes, skills and records considered in the Getting Started with Local History course, developing research skills and moving to the period before the Industrial Revolution. We then move on to bringing the pieces of your research together for analysis, selecting appropriate analysis techniques and thinking about how to share your findings.

The course tutor is Joe Saunders. Joe has undergraduate and master’s degrees in history from the University of Glasgow and is a part-time PhD researcher at the University of York, where he also teaches. He is a freelance historical researcher, a BALH Trustee and currently Outreach Team chair.

For more information on these and other Pharos courses visit their website at: www.pharostutors.com. A 15 per cent discount on both courses is available to BALH members using codes found in the members’ area of the website: www.balh.org.uk/members/

Selling BALH through your society outlets

One of the core aims of BALH is to assist its members by publishing handbooks and other useful information on local history topics. We currently have in print books about internet sites, handwriting, dates and times, manorial records and teaching local history, and these are available for anyone to purchase through our website. We are keen that these should also be available for sale in archive offices, museums, and through member societies, and we are prepared to offer copies, if ordered in multiples of five or more, at a generous discount for resale. If your organisation would be interested in selling BALH publications please contact John Chandler, chair of the Publications Committee, for further information: jh.chandler@hotmail.com.

BALH AGM update

This year’s BALH AGM, held online, was well attended. Member votes supported an increase in membership fees and the introduction of a new digital membership tier (see page 30), and BALH award winners were announced (see page 5). The AGM was followed by Iain Taylor and David Killingray’s interesting talk, ‘Risk and choice: a new approach to local history, Sevenoaks 1790–1914’.

New Local History News schedule

Please note that from the next issue, LHN will come out one month later than hitherto, i.e. around the end of November, February, May and August. The copy deadline for the Autumn issue is 1 October.

A clarification

Tony Gee (see ‘Fighting talk from Scotland, LHN147) sends this clarification about the term ‘fancy’: ‘There is not a clear cut definition for this as such, but rather loosely speaking, in the sense used here, it meant followers and enthusiasts of the prize-ring. This could (and indeed did) often include members of the upper class, but the working classes were nevertheless extremely well represented (especially as the former began to lose interest in the sport, as attitudes changed).

Local History News welcomes your
news, articles, ideas, calls for help, newsletters and other publications – please contact
editor.lhn@balh.org.uk

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