August 1666 – a bad time to be a sailor?
I’m currently transcribing the earliest register for Ramsey St. Michael in Essex. Although the very early register is lost, entries survive from 1645 onwa...
Author: Helen Barrell
A Birmingham mystery: is this brick really 132 years old?
On the junction of Greenfield Road and Vivian Road in Harborne, Birmingham, some refurb work has recently taken place on what was once a furniture upholsterer&#...
Poison Panic: arsenic deaths in 1840s Essex
Published on 30th June 2016. UK: Pre-order now directly from the publisher (Pen & Sword), or Waterstones and Amazon. USA: Pre-order from Barnes & Noble ...
Interesting finds in West Bergholt’s parish registers
One of the pleasures of transcribing parish registers are the intriguing marginalia that turn up in them sometimes. I’m yet to find a pre-1813 parchment r...
Exhibition reviews: “Terror & Wonder” and “Sherlock Holmes”
It was my birthday and I wanted a treat, and seeing as two quite interesting exhibitions were on in London, it seemed as good an excuse as any to wend my way te...
Video: The Secret of the Edwardian Brooch
This might look like a fairly ordinary photograph brooch, but it has a secret…. Audio transcript (PDF – 40KB)
Wills – how they’re indexed and where to find them
What? All that in one blog post? Erm… no… however, there’s been a couple of jumps forward with regards to the availability of wills and will i...
Interview with Janice Preston, historical romance author
The first book by Janice Preston, historical romance novelist, was published this summer. Mary and the Marquis tells the tale of a widow, who finds an injured m...
Lawshall & The Gunpowder Plot
Everyone knows about Guy Fawkes, the Catholic Yorkshire man [1]Some might claim, Somerset man, but that is Robert Parsons, who came from outside Bridgwater, all...
The Wivenhoe Poltergeist
What I’m about to write has nothing to do with genealogy, although it’s something that happened to me and a friend of mine in Wivenhoe, so it’...