Interview on BBC Essex
I was on Peter Holmes’ BBC Essex show this morning, talking about the wonderful snippets of history I’ve found in parish registers. In the UK, you c...
Category: History
Suckling’s Essex
I’ve found something rather fun on Google Books – Suckling’s Memorials etc of Essex, published in 1845. He went round many of the parish churc...
Guest blog: The Mystery of the Sailor in the River
A guest blog for Wivenhoe’s History about a sailor who drowned in the River Colne in 1850. But all was not as it seemed. (A shorter version of this text w...
An epidemic in Brightlingsea, 1803
I’m finishing off the transcription of Brightlingsea‘s burials, in a register covering 1765-1812. It’s not a very interesting register, and is...
Interview: John Broom, author of “Fight the Good Fight”
With the First World War 100th anniversary commemorations ongoing, I’m welcoming John Broom, author of Fight the Good Fight: Voice of Faith from the First...
Workers’ Memorial Day – “Remember the dead, fight for the living.”
There was a terrible accident at the ropery on Wivenhoe High Street on 19th February 1855, when a boiler exploded. It killed three lads – Henry Browne (ag...
A witchfinder, an admiral, P. G. Wodehouse, the Boleyns and me
Strange things start to happen if you can trace your family back far enough, and if you can find a thread which is, let’s be honest… posh. In trying...
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)
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: of private baptisms and misgotten infants
Hogarth’s depiction of Tristram Shandy’s home baptism. The other week, I started to transcribe the parish registers for Lawshall in Suffolk, startin...