To put in you the festive mood, each day from now until Christmas, my blog will be publishing images from postcards sent during the First World War. Click on the picture to be taken to an external website which will be of interest to historians of English history or local history or family history. Each day, the link will take you to a different website and, hopefully, help you discover resources new to you. Just like a traditional advent calendar, you’ll not know what you’ve got until you’ve opened (or clicked) the door.
My Advent Calendar is my Christmas gift to you. Happy Christmas!
What’s behind the door?… Click on the picture above to be taken to an external website of interest to historians. When you’ve finished viewing the external website, come back to my blog and, in the comments, tell me what you think of the website you’ve just visited.
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I hope that your preparations are going well for Christmas 2014. There always seems to be so much to do and so much preparation in the run-up to the “Big Day”. Reading blogs and carrying out any form of historical research is probably the last thing on most people’s minds!
So, to help ease your mood, each day from now until Christmas, my blog will be publishing images from postcards sent during the First World War. Click on the picture to be taken to an external website which will be of interest to historians of English history or local history or family history. Each day, the link will take you to a different website and, hopefully, help you discover resources or blogs new to you. Just like a traditional advent calendar, you’ll not know what you’ve got until you’ve opened (or clicked) the door.
My Advent Calendar is my Christmas gift to you. Happy Christmas!
What’s behind the door?… Click on the picture above to be taken to an external website of interest to historians. When you’ve finished viewing the external website, come back to my blog and, in the comments, tell me what you think of the website you’ve just visited.
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If you want to read more from my blog, please do subscribe by using the Subscribe via Email button. If you’ve enjoyed reading this post, then please do Like it with the “Like” button or Facebook button and/or leave a comment below.
I will be at Bishop’s Stortford Tourist Information in the Market Square on Saturday 6th December 2014, from 10am until 12pm, signing copies of my new local history book on the town.
I look forward to meeting some of my readers then.
If you can’t make the book signing, but still wish to purchase my book, then please do click the picture below to purchase (in book format or Kindle) from Amazon.
In October 2014, I had a virtual book tour around the internet talking about my book and Bishop’s Stortford. I visited the following blogs:-
About me
I have a MSt in Local and Regional History (Cantab); a BA History (Open University) and an Advanced Diploma in Local History (Oxon) – all gained as a mature student. Having been a business technologist in the City of London for the last 30 years, I am currently taking time away from my City career to write. My first history book, Bishop’s Stortford Through Time, was published by Amberley Publishing in September 2014. I have been commissioned to write a further three history books for them:-
Sudbury, Lavenham and Long Melford Through Time (due to be published summer 2015);
Saffron Walden Through Time (due to be published summer 2015); and
Postcards from the Front: Britain 1914-1919 (due to be published summer 2016).
I live in Essex, England, and regularly write about the local history of Essex and East Anglia on my blog.
I am delighted to be able to tell you that fellow local historian of Great Dunmow, Austin Reeve, has just published his book Remembrance: The World War One Memorials of Great Dunmow.
Austin has meticulously researched some of the men commemorated on the war memorials in and around Great Dunmow and recounted some of their tragic stories. He has also gathered together a unique collection of photographs and memorabilia (such as postcards, medals, certificates and – most extraordinary – a battlefield will) from the families of the town’s fallen and combined it all into a compelling book.
If you are interested in the local history of Great Dunmow (a small town in North West Essex), or indeed, the fallen of the First World War, I would highly recommend this book to you.
I must admit to getting goose-bumps when I saw the front cover as I know my granddad and my grandmother were likely to have been in the crowd, and also possibly my great-grandparents – the two Kemp brothers commemorated on the memorial being my granddad’s cousins (my great-grandmother’s nephews).
If you wish to purchase this book for the highly reasonable price of £5 (inc p&p to the UK), please email Austin Reeve directly at ashble55[at}yahoo.com. Austin’s book is proving to be very popular and he is currently just about to go into his third print run. He asked me to tell potential buyers that he wouldn’t be able send out books immediately until his next print run is confirmed.
Please do get in contact with him, if you wish to purchase.
Lest we forget
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Today is my spot on the Worldwide Genealogy blog – a daily blog written by a collaborative group of genealogists/family historians and historians. Click on the image below to read my post about The Chelsea Pensioners of the 19th and 20th centuries.
You may also be interested in researching your military ancestors
If you decide to signup to access records from the Forces War Records website, type the code “AW40” at the checkout to receive a 40% discount for any type of subscription.
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Regular readers of my blog will know that beautiful medieval illuminated manuscripts have long held a particular fascination with me. Created in the medieval period – with some manuscripts now 700/800 years old – the medieval world seemed to have been inhabited by mythical creatures: jousting snails, cats in towers hurling missiles at their enemies, giant fish – to name a few. All elaborately and painstakingly drawn and painted by craftsmen from another era.
Today’s selection of images from the British Library’s collection of illuminated manuscripts is the sea-nymphs and mermaids (and a merman too!) of the medieval mind.
Click on any picture to be taken to the British Library’s full description of the image.
Detail of a mermaid sitting on a bar border holding her tail in one hand and a circular mirror in the other. From Scholastic miscellany, (France, Central (Paris), between 1309 and 1316); shelfmark Burney 275 f.404
Miniature of a mermaid playing a harp luring sailors in a boat. From Bestiary, Guillaume le Clerc (England, 2nd quarter of the 13th century); shelfmark Egerton 613 f.38
Detail of a miniature of a mermaid and a fish. From Image du Monde (Le livre de clergie en roumans) (France, Central (Paris) and England, 2nd quarter of the 15th century); shelfmark Harley 334.
Detail of a miniature a mermaid with a mirror and comb. From from Les Fais et les Dis des Romains et de autres gens (France, N. W., Normandy (possibly Rouen), c. 1460-1487); shelfmark Harley 4372 f.79v
Detail of a miniature of the siren (Syrene) or mermaid who holds a fish, and the prow of a boat with two men in it, one rowing. From Bestiary, with extracts from Giraldus Cambrensis on Irish birds (England, S. (Salisbury?), 2nd quarter of the 13th century); Harley 4751 f.47v.
Detail of a miniature of a mermaid and merman with bow and arrow from Decretals of Gregory IX with glossa ordinaria (the ‘Smithfield Decretals‘), (France, S. (Toulouse?), Last quarter of the 13th century or 1st quarter of the 14th century); shelfmark Royal 10 E IV, f.3.
Detail of a bas-de-page scene of a mermaid. From Decretals of Gregory IX with glossa ordinaria (the ‘Smithfield Decretals‘), (France, S. (Toulouse?), Last quarter of the 13th century or 1st quarter of the 14th century); shelfmark Royal 10 E IV, f.47.
Detail of a bas-de-page scene of two grotesques fighting with domestic implements; between them is a mermaid. From Decretals of Gregory IX with glossa ordinaria (the ‘Smithfield Decretals‘), (France, S. (Toulouse?), Last quarter of the 13th century or 1st quarter of the 14th century); shelfmark Royal 10 E IV, f.69.
Full fathom five thy father lies; Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes; Nothing of him that does fade, But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange. Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell: Ding-dong, Hark! Now I hear them – Ding-dong, bell.
William Shakespeare, The Tempest, circa 1610-11
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Remember the men of this place who died for freedom and honour A.D. 1914-1918
Percy Charles Archer: died 15 July 1917
John Lewis Pasteur Armstrong: died 22 June 1916
Frederick Attridge: died 9 October 1916 Frank William Bacon: died 4 December 1918
Amos Alfred Barrick: died 31 December 1916
George Henry Barrick: died 11 June 1918
Frederick John Bartley: died 26 March 1917
George Henry Beard: died 7 September 1916
Albert Brand: died 8 October 1915
Frederick J Burchell: died unknown
Alfred Richard Burton: died 5 April 1917
Harold Vincent Burton: died 22 December 1916
Thomas F Burton: died 29 November 1918
Edwyn (Edwin) Bush: died 24 April 1917 David William Button: died 8 December 1918
William Henry Carter: died 24 July 1918
Alfred Thomas Caton: died 13 April 1918
Frederick Chapman: died 6 December 1918
Frederick George Clarke: died 30 July 1916
Alfred Coates: died 21 May 1918
Stanley Richard Coates: died 2 September 1918
George Cock: died 4 January 1918
William Coppin: died unknown
Sydney Cox: died 13 August 1918
Albert Crow: died 1 November 1914
William Frederick Crow: died 5 October 1917
Benjamin Thomas De Voil: died 1 July 1916
Ernest Cecil Freshwater: died 8 May 1915
Arthur Edwin Greenleaf: died 3 August 1916
George Frederick Gunn: died 18 July 1917
Arthur Gypps: died 16 October 1917
Harry Hines Halls: died 26 March 1917
Ernest Edward Harris: died 8 August 1918
Frank Harris: died 21 November 1916
Leonard Melsome Hasler: died 21 September 1917
Stanley Howland: died 21 October 1916
Thomas David Jarvis: died 16 July 1916 Gordon Parnall Kemp: died 26 September 1917 Harold James Nelson Kemp: died 28 May 1916
George Henry Ledgerton: died 2 November 1917
Frederick James Watson Lines: died 12 December 1915
Frank J Lodge: died 26 March 1917
Arthur Thomas Lorkin: died 26 March 1917
Hayden Lyle: died 6 November 1918
Llewellyn Malcomson: died 5 October 1916
Leonard Frederick Mason: died 12 September 1918
Ralph Milbank: died 23 March 1918
George Nelson: died 3 November 1917
George William Perry: died 17 November 1916
Francis Louis Pitts: died 15 June 1915
Bertram James Porter: died 2 September 1918
George Rawlings: died unknown
Arthur T Reed: died unknown
Harry Charles Edwin Robinson: died 28 March 1918
Henry Alfred Robson: died 28 April 1917
Frederick Isaac Rootkin: died 22 August 1915
Frank Edward Sams: died 1 November 1914
William George Saunders: died 26 March 1918
William Sayer(s): died 29 March 1915
Harold Mackenzie Scarfe: died 3 May 1917
Charles Edwin Sewell: died 24 March 1915
Frank Sewell: died 18 May 1917
Sidney Sharp: died 1 October 1918
Walter Sharp: died 9 April 1915
Arthur Smith: died unknown
Sidney J Smith,unknown Victor Spurgeon: died 8 October 1918
Percy A Stock: died 9 December 1917
Arthur George Stokes: died 26 October 1914
Ernest Archibald Stokes: died 19 February 1919
Edward Charles Stone: died 23 August 1918
William Matthew Stovold: died 6 November 1914
Montague Beavan Tench: died 10 August 1916
Harry Turbard: died 12 November 1915
Joseph A Turner: died unknwon
John S Wackrill: died 12 October 1918
William Waite: died 11 July 1917
John Joseph Walsh: died 19 November 1917
Edward Warner: died 21 March 1918
Hubert John Welch: died 29 September 1918 Arthur Albert Willett: died 25 February 1916 Frank Willett: died 23 October 1916
James Wilson: died 10 September 1915
A Edgar Yeldham: died 10 November 1917
Arthur William Young: died 21 November 1915
Not on the town’s war memorial but commemorated
on the Congregational Church’s memorial Walter Vosper Jakins: died 10 July 1917
Buried in St Mary’s Churchyard but not
commemorated on the town’s War Memorial Charles Henry Parham: died 30 June 1918
C Spiers: died 7 November 1918
They whom this tablet commemorates, at the call of King and country left all that was dear to them to endure hardships and face dangers. And then passed out of the sight of men by the path of duty and self-sacrifice giving up their lives that others might life in freedom.
Let those who come after see to it that their names be not forgotten
(War Memorial in St Mary’s Church, Dunmow)
100 years on from the start of the Great War, the moat of the ancient Tower of London contains a sea of blood-red poppies – some of which represent the dead of this small north Essex parish.
Lest we forget
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Yesterday was a very emotional day for me when I visited my granddad’s old school, Emanuel School, in Wandsworth, South London, and heard about his life as a school-boy on the eve of the Great War. As Emanuel’s school historian comments on the board displaying my granddad’s photo.
“In the summer of 1914 Emanuel boys went about the normal lives. They played cricket on the field, they sang in a School concert in Battersea Town Hall and they attended prize giving…We broke up in July [1914] under the shadow of Armageddon and reassembled [in September] to find it a reality.“
Emanuel at War Exhibition, November 2014
Visiting Emanuel school was intensely moving for me. Not least, because I never knew my granddad, as I was two when he died. A man who I’ve spent a great deal of time researching his family history and a man I would have loved to have known. A man I’m proud to call my granddad. He joined the York and Lancaster Regiment one day short of his 18th birthday in 1917 and returned home, injured, after the Great War to his loving parents and child-hood sweetheart, never to mention those terrible times again to another living soul.
My granddad, as a 15 year school boy, outside Clapham Junction on the eve of Armageddon, in the school uniform of Emanuel
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The whole day was incredible moving for me because on my way through to South London from North Essex, I stopped by the ceramic poppy display at the Tower of London.
I had heard a lot of negative comments about these beautiful poppies before I went, and also heard plenty more negative remarks whilst I spent 2 hours walking and contemplating the exhibition. Directly behind me, a man commented (clearly aimed at me) “90% of the people here don’t know what it’s about and have come to gawp.” Well, sir, leaving aside that your comment aimed at me was incorrect because I’ve spent the last 10 years of my life researching my own local war memorial in Great Dunmow (long before it was “fashionable”), you totally missed the point about the remaining 89.999% of visitors.
It doesn’t matter that previously 90% showed no interest in the past. The fact that they are showing interest today, and have stopped during their busy 21st century lives to take photographs, comment, ponder and wonder, means that all those 888,246 lost lives have not been forgotten. 100 years after the start of Armageddon, hundreds of thousands of people have flooded to see this incredible display of lives and families destroyed.
I saw young heavily fake-tanned women taking “selfies”, along with old veterans displaying their medals. I saw fully kilted uniformed Scottish soldiers, along with twenty-somethings wiping tears away. Veterans, pensioners, London workers, tourists, young people and children all stood shoulder-to-shoulder. The fact is, Paul Cummins’ remarkable Sea of Blood is for absolutely everyone to pause in their lives and to reflect back to that terrible time 100 years ago.
The Great War affected all our families 100 years ago, and is now touching their descendants hearts today.
The controversy of the display at the Tower reminds me back to the days even whilst the Great War was still raging when the question of War Memorials started to be hotly debated all over towns and villages of a devastated Britain. The building of War Memorials were highly emotional with bereaved communities totally unable to decide what was the best way to commemorate their dead. My own North Essex town of Great Dunmow has a war memorial – but reading the meeting minutes regarding its building shows that in 1918 this was a deeply divided and grieving community. These are cold-hard meeting minutes reporting facts, but even now, they show unwitting testimony of highly charged and emotional council meetings. No-one being able to decide anything: a community torn apart in their grief and frozen in their clerical indecisiveness.
Back to today, and yes, the Tower of London Poppy display is controversial, and the motives of some of its visitors questionable. But it is a very visual display of a shattered nation, and a shattered world.
If you have a chance to see the Tower of London’s “Blood swept Lands and Seas of red” before it is dismantled after 11th November 2014, do go. Take photos. Put them on Facebook, tweet them, publish them. By doing so those 888,246 lost souls – indeed the world’s lost souls from all the combatant nations – will always remain in our hearts.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning We will remember them.
The walls of the ancient Tower of London hemorrhaging the nation’s blood
In among the poppies, a poignant reminder from a bereaved family
The poppies and London’s iconic Victorian landmark – Tower Bridge
The old and new icons of London – with the blood of the nation
Somewhere in this sea of blood lies poppies representing 4 lost lives from my family.
The ghostly images of Emanuel’s 1913 XV projected onto the school building. Eight of those boys never returned from the Great War. They were my granddad’s schoolmates and later, his comrades in arms. Among the 888,246 poppies at the Tower of London, 8 poppies represent the lost lives of these boys.
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Whatever you and your children are doing this evening, I wish you fun and laughter. For the first time in many years, we will not be going trick or treating to our neighbours. Instead, as my son is a now pre-teenager, we will be visiting Colchester’s Zoo’s Fright Night. As I am the biggest scaredy cat in the world and hate horror films, I’m not sure if this is entirely advisable. But I am sure that my son will enjoy himself!
Here’s some beautiful early 20th century postcards of Halloween from America. The modern celebration of Halloween involving pumpkins, witches and black cats did not seem to have happened in Britain until relatively recent times. Therefore, I have yet to see any British Halloween postcards dating from the same era as the American ones.
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If you want to read more from my blog, please do subscribe either by using the Subscribe via Email button top right of my blog, or the button at the very bottom. If you’ve enjoyed reading this post, then please do Like it with the Facebook button and/or leave a comment below.
I had a fantastic week last week, touring the internet and talking on various blogs about my life long passion for “all things history”. I would like to thank all the wonderful bloggers who hosted my posts throughout the week. I have been truly overwhelmed by the response and lovely comments I have received on all the blogs.
As well as touring the internet, I was also busy researching my next two books for Amberley – Sudbury, Long Melford and Lavenham Through Time, and Saffron Walden Through Time.
Last week, I had considerable breakthroughs with both books, which hopefully I can share nearer the time of each book’s publication next summer. However, for the moment, I would like to share with you a picture I bought on the internet some months ago. This week, I managed to identify the lady and also, with the help of Google Maps, exactly where she is sitting in Long Melford. The picture had puzzled me for some time, because the angle of photograph made the building in the top left corner seem like one of the maltings buildings still in existence within Long Melford. But it’s not, it’s actually a large red-brick building from the 1860s.
Meet Kate Salter, Edwardian resident of Long Melford, taking a break in the roadside outside Daniel Spilling’s Saddlery shop in Hall Street, in summer 1907.
I look forward to bringing you tales about Sudbury, Long Melford, Lavenham and Saffron Walden Through Time in the run-up to my next two local history books being published next year.
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My book
My local history book on the historic East Hertfordshire town of Bishop’s Stortford has just been published. Please do click on the image below to buy my book.
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What’s behind the door?… Click on the picture above to be taken to an external website of interest to historians. When you’ve finished viewing the external website, come back to my blog and, in the comments, tell me what you think of the website you’ve just visited.
100 years on from the start of the Great War, the moat of the ancient Tower of London contains a sea of blood-red poppies – some of which represent the dead of this small north Essex parish.
The ghostly images of Emanuel’s 1913 XV projected onto the school building. Eight of those boys never returned from the Great War. They were my granddad’s schoolmates and later, his comrades in arms. Among the 888,246 poppies at the Tower of London, 8 poppies represent the lost lives of these boys.
