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)
Author: Helen Barrell
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’...
Black History Month – some finds in Wivenhoe’s register
Growing up in Wivenhoe, I probably saw a greater mix of people from around the world than had I lived in a town of the same size that wasn’t anywhere near...
1934 hotel adverts from the ABC railway guide
In researching my novel, which is set in the mid-1930s, I needed to do some research into train journey times. As any good Agatha Christie fan will know, the AB...
How to date a photograph… perhaps
I’m very lucky that so many photos of my relatives have survived. The above is one of my favourites – a family group – and I have been trying ...
The Taylor family album
In July, I went to Somerset to visit my dad, and we ended up in the Smuggler’s Cave in Watchet. There’s all sorts of treasures to be found here R...
Inspector Whicher, Sergeant Cuff, Mr. Holmes, Monsieur Poirot
Yesterday[1]I started to write this on Christie’s birthday, but this behemoth could not be completed in one day. was Agatha Christie’s 124th birthda...