All articles in Local & Family History
11th August, 2016 in Local & Family History, Military
How the Pershore Plum helped win the First World War
In August 1916, in the midst of the Battle of the Somme, William George Haynes, was given permission to take leave from active service in France to return to his home in the Worcestershire town of Pershore to help bring in the harvest. After helping to gather in the vegetables an…
1st August, 2016 in Local & Family History
Talking Tyke: 10 Yorkshire dialect words
Every so often I’ll say something and everyone around me will either laugh or look baffled. Having grown up deep in Yorkshire, my language is smattered with dialect words. Many of them I had never realised weren’t ‘real’ English. I thought everyone said them. Even now I’ll r…
18th July, 2016 in Local & Family History, Women in History
The Beatrix Potter pilgrimage
July 2016 marked the 150th anniversary of the birth of Beatrix Potter: well-loved British author, illustrator, entrepreneur, farmer and respected conservationist. To celebrate, we have chosen some lovely spots in her beloved Lakeland that you can visit. Why not walk in her footst…
6th July, 2016 in Local & Family History
What makes Wales great
Wales is perhaps best known for its fierce patriotism, its breath-taking coastlines, its melodic male voice choirs, and now, its European Championship-storming football team. And for a country that’s just over 8000 square miles in area and where sheep outnumber humans four to one…
23rd June, 2016 in Local & Family History, Military
Three ways to find your ancestors’ World War I medals
I am often asked how members of the public can find or source the actual war medals that their family ancestors won, specifically around First World War medals. The blunt truth is it is difficult. Very difficult. It is like searching for a needle in a haystack, but it can be done…
17th May, 2016 in Local & Family History, Military, Women in History
How the well-organised women of Cheltenham contributed to the war effort
In the early years of the twentieth century there were large numbers of ex-colonial, retired military personnel in Cheltenham – a leisured class with time on their hands and a culture of looking after their ‘troops’. As the young men left for war, groups of women came forwar…
24th April, 2016 in Local & Family History, Military
Growing up during the First World War in Worcestershire
The lives of young girls 100 years ago in rural Worcestershire was very different from today. They joined the newly formed girl guides, or girls friendly societies, and they walked out with their sweethearts. The First World War changed all of this as news of the conflict became…
8th February, 2016 in Local & Family History, Military
The Derbyshire Yeomanry in the First World War
By early 1916 the Derbyshire Yeomanry were having quite a different war than the standard text-book image of the Western Front. No trenches, no endless shelling, no blasted landscapes, no gas attacks and no no-man’s-land. In fact, it was more akin to what we might call modern war…
13th January, 2016 in Fiction, Local & Family History
London in literature
No other city comes close to London in the world of literature. Its streets, parks and buildings have provided homes for its authors, inspiration for their imaginations and settings for their stories. In the fourteenth century London provided Chaucer with a home above Aldgate fro…
21st December, 2015 in Local & Family History, True Crime
Graffiti of the East End
One night in 2013, graffiti appeared on a shop doorway in the East End of London. Not just any old, random doorway though. A public perception of what Jack the Ripper looked like appeared on the front of 29 Hanbury Street. The address was made famous when Annie Chapman’s body was…
21st December, 2015 in Local & Family History
Growing up in London’s East End
I find it fascinating that the reign of Jack the Ripper was actually only 50 years before World War II and lots of people, lots of Londoners, lots of East Enders, would have lived through both events. And just as the ‘Dead End Kids’ invented a game in the middle of the Blitz, so…
18th December, 2015 in Local & Family History, Military, Society & Culture, Women in History
East End suffragettes in the First World War
In popular accounts of the outbreak of the First World War in Britain, mention is sometimes made of the fact that the Women’s Social and Political Union suspended their militant campaign for the vote to take up an intensely nationalist, pro-war agenda. Sylvia Pankhurst and the ra…