BALH Annual Regional Conference. National and local sources are brought to light by six speakers on subjects ranging from railway accidents to taxation records and house insurance.

Keynote speaker: Paul Dryburgh from The National Archives

Lunch and refreshments included
Stalls for local groups and book sales

Speakers

Paul Dryburgh is Principal Record Specialist at The National Archives, where he specialises in medieval records. Originally from Lincoln, Paul is also Honorary Secretary of the Lincoln Record Society, General Editor of the Pipe Roll Society and Honorary President of the Mortimer History Society as well as trustee of the British Association for Local History.

Talk: Paul will introduce the deeds and evidences of the early modern Court of Wards and Liveries in series WARD 2 at The National Archives. Following a recent cataloguing project around 10,000 new descriptions of a wide array of records relating to the transfer of properties between generations from the 12th to the 17th century and evidence of family descent are fully searchable online. This series is a goldmine of information of interest to local historians throughout England and Wales, detailing as it does land and property transfer, descriptions of landscape, place and field names and family descents.

Mike Esbester is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Portsmouth. He is the academic lead on the ‘Railway Work, Life & Death’ project (www.railwayaccidents.port.ac.uk; @RWLDproject), a collaboration with the National Railway Museum and the Modern Records Centre at the University of Warwick, looking at accidents to British and Irish railway workers from the late 19th to mid 20th centuries.

Talk: Local Impacts of a National Network: Accidents to railway workers & how the sources help local historians. In this talk I will introduce accidents to railway staff, the records that they have left behind, and why local historians might find them useful. I will outline key sources, and the free resources currently being produced by the ‘Railway Work, Life & Death’ project to help your research.

Mark Forrest Following spells as a researcher investigating medieval and early modern records for Cambridge University and manorial documents for Royal Holloway University of London, Dr Mark Forrest has been the archivist responsible for paper and parchment collections at the Dorset History Centre since 2004. He is also the Dorset editor for Somerset & Dorset Notes and Queries.

Talk: Something hidden in the attic: exploring some of the more unusual and interesting documents that have survived buried behind the Christmas decorations. From manorial documents to medieval music, you never know what you might find in a Dorset family archive.

David Hawkings started researching his family history in 1964. He has unearthed a wealth of unusual sources during his research for six books. One of the highlights are the records of death duties payable from 1796. These abstracts include thousands of wills and letters of administration for Devon and Somerset that were destroyed by the Luftwaffe during World War Two. His groundbreaking book, Bound for Australia, is now in its second edition. 

Talk: There are many obscure sources including the male servants tax, silver plate tax, hearth tax and carriage tax that give information for local historians. David will also talk about insurance records, letters to the Bank of England from prisoners, the national index of criminals for England and Wales, as well as sheriffs’ cravings in England and Wales.

David Killingray. Since 1972 taught in university sector researching and writing on aspects of African, Caribbean, imperial, and English local history. In active retirement he continues to research and write on those areas, most recent books on local history focus on Kent and my home town of Sevenoaks. I currently chair the trustees of the British Association for Local History.

Talk: Political activity is largely neglected in written local histories, at best being seen (as is religious belief) in a top-down way. Localities seethed with political ideas and grassroot factions, expressed in a variety of ways. This talk will examine the politics of localities and how they were related to the nation state and its expanding global role since 1750.

Jonathan Mackman is a trustee of BALH, and is currently responsible for membership issues. He is an experienced historical researcher, having participated in a number of medieval and early-modern research and cataloguing projects, and is currently a Research Associate at the University of York, working on 'The Northern Way', a project examining the lives, careers and influence of the fourteenth-century archbishops of York.'

Talk: Jonathan Mackman will be discussing the wealth of medieval and early-modern taxation records held at The National Archives, and their immense value for local historians. Using data produced during a number of earlier research projects, he will discuss the catalogues available for accessing these documents, some of the lesser-used types of tax record held at The National Archives, and how taxation returns can add to our knowledge and understanding of a settlement or region's medieval past.

Esther Hoyle works for the South West Heritage Trust as Archives Engagement Manager and is based at the Somerset Heritage Centre. Originally from York, Esther moved to Somerset in 2003 and has been working with the county’s amazing archive collections ever since, regularly giving talks and running courses to help people discover more about their heritage.

Talk: Travel Diaries. A slightly unusual source for local history research. The Somerset Record Office collection contains a fair number of diaries from the 17th century onwards that detail travel in the United Kingdome. They provide some fantastic eyewitness accounts of local places. References tend to be short and it’s a lot of reading to see whether it is of relevance, but often the entries are really useful or interesting. More treasure will be revealed in my talk.