I am very pleased to say that my new book on the local history of the town of Bishop’s Stortford is now available in all good local bookshops.  If you are not local to the town (and I think a great number of my blog’s readership has an ocean or two between you and Bishop’s Stortford’s local shops!), you’ll be pleased to know that Amazon now has their copies in stock.

I had immense fun researching and writing my book. “Having” to consult archives, consult Tudor churchwardens’ accounts (my favourite bed-time reading!), read Victorian newspaper articles and write my text was absolute bliss.  Not to mention the countless nights I had to stay up late, so I could bid at the last minute on that well known internet auction site, thus securing that precious and highly important postcard of the town’s past.  (Unfortunately for my pocket, there were many many postcards which I just “had to have” at any cost!) After years spent commuting and working in the City of London as a business technologist, being able to do my passion – researching and writing about history – was absolute bliss.  Now, when people ask me what my profession is, I hover in deciding to tell them which of my two careers is my profession.  That I am a freelance business technologist working for some of the world’s largest international law firms in the City of London.  Or, a published local historian and author working from home.  (I am immensely proud of both my careers.)

There were several postcards that “got away”.  Postcards and images in my collection which I would have loved to have included in my book – but for one reason or another, I couldn’t.  Some images were excluded because I simply didn’t know what the image was about – apart from it was “somewhere” in Bishop’s Stortford; and others where I had so many images of the same building/view/area that I had to choose one postcard over the many other images.  With other views of Bishop’s Stortford, I had written their story but then had to cull that story and images from my book because there simply wasn’t room.

So, every week, starting this week, I’ve decided to blog some of the photos and stories that I couldn’t include in my book.  These are the ones that got away!

St Michael’s Church, Windhill, Bishop’s Stortford

The image below is an intriguing one.  It is a small Victorian carte de visite (or CDV) photograph of St Michael’s Church, in Windhill.  The CDV has perfectly square corners, and a plain back but, unfortunately, there’s no photographer’s information.  It is probably one of the earliest photographs of Bishop’s Stortford: according to my research, square cornered CDVs are normally pre 1870.  I thought that the gas lamp might give me a clue as to the date of the photograph – but according to good ole wikipedia, many towns were lit by gas lamps as early as 1823. I think that this view might roughly date from before 1870.

St Michael’s Parish Church, Windhill, Bishop’s Stortford,
sometime between 1850s and 1870s

The intriguing part of this photograph is the wooden structure at the front of the church.  At first glance it looks like a small ticket booth.  However, look closely… It is actually a very large structure.  It is big enough to have what looks like 2 oval church windows at the front.  Look again:  there’s two tiny children climbing up a ladder – a ladder of about 7 steps.  A very strange “ticket booth” if you have to climb up a ladder to get into it!  The structure has a wooden board at the top with printed words on it (if only the Victorian photographer had got just a little bit nearer – and then we could have read it on our modern-day computers!).

There were building works which took place in St Michael’s church and were completed in November 1866.  At this time, the east windows in the north and south aisles were replaced with new ones in the same style as the existing windows.  Maybe the structure was the master craftsmen’s workshop to help them build new windows.  Maybe the little girls have shimmed up the ladder to take a peak in the work rooms.  Inquisitive Victorian children captured forever.

What’s going on! Can you help me and tell me what this structure was?
Was it the craftsmen’s workrooms for the work which took place in 1866??

My book

If you want to learn more about this historic East Hertfordshire town, please do click on the image below to buy my book.

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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.

Thank you for reading this post.

You may also be interested in
– The trials and tribulations of writing a book
– Bishop’s Stortford Through Time – A progress update
– Bishop’s Stortford 1569-1571: The Vermin Man
– Happy Second Blogiversary to Me – The Future

© Essex Voices Past 2014.

I am absolutely delighted to tell you that my first local history book is in the final stage of its publication. It’s due to be in all good book shops in the UK 15 September 2014 – but you can pre-order it at a very reasonable price from Amazon.co.uk.  In the USA, it will be available on 28 September – Amazon.com

I hope that if you do decide to buy it, you will like it. Many readers of my blog and correspondents on Twitter have actively encouraged me to write my book, and many have helped with the identification of postcards and photographs of Bishop’s Stortford. A massive thank you to everyone who helped me.

If you wish to pre-order my book from Amazon, please do click on the picture below. I’d love you to tell me in the comments section below on this page if you do decide to buy it.  If you’re out and about, and see my book in a bookshop, I would love it if you sneakily made it more prominent to potential browsers and purchasers.

From its earliest days, Bishop’s Stortford was a prosperous town, something that continues up to the present day. After the manor of Stortford was purchased by the Bishop of London in the eleventh century, Bishop’s Stortford developed into a thriving market town in the Middle Ages. The opening of the Stort Navigation in 1769, along with the introduction of the railway in the nineteenth century, further increased its prosperity. Today, with excellent transport links to London, and Stansted Airport providing access to the rest of the world, Bishop’s Stortford is a town on the rise. Featuring full-colour images and fantastic vintage postcards, Bishop’s Stortford Through Time takes the reader on a fascinating journey of the town’s history and how it became what it is today.

One of the pages from my book- my wonderful children and their husband/partner alongside an image from the early 1900s. Some parts of Bishop’s Stortford haven’t changed at all (apart from the cars!).

I am delighted to say that during my research into the town, one of my daughters and her partner fell in love with the town, and so have decided to make Bishop’s Stortford their home.  They moved into the town in July – one of the many young couples who have found that Bishop’s Stortford certainly has a lot to offer them.

PS: You may wonder why the town is called “Bishop’s Stortford” (always always always with an apostrophe after “bishop”).  It’s because at the time of William the Conqueror’s Doomsday survey (1086), the manor of Storteford was owned by the Bishop of London.  Hence the town should really be called “The Bishop of London’s Stortford”.  But I guess Bishop’s Stortford or, as it’s more commonly known to locals, simply “Stortford”, will do. If you want to find out more about this historic town, then please do buy my book Bishop’s Stortford Through Time

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This blog
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.

Thank you for reading this post.

You may also be interested in
– The trials and tribulations of writing a book
– Bishop’s Stortford Through Time – A progress update
– Bishop’s Stortford 1569-1571: The Vermin Man
– Happy Second Blogiversary to Me – The Future

© Essex Voices Past 2014.

Over the last few months, I have been writing and researching my first local history book – Bishop’s Stortford Through Time for Amberley Publishing.  My book is a pictorial history of this Hertfordshire town, and uses vintage postcards from the early 1900s and compares them to modern day photographs of the same area.

Yesterday my husband, son and myself spent a beautiful sunny day walking the river banks of The Stort – taking the “now” photos of Victorian and Edwardian postcards.  All was going very well – we managed to locate all the spots where our predecessors – such as Edwardian photographers Arthur Maxwell and Harry Mardon – stood over a hundred years ago to take their photographs.  So, we lined up the shots, and my husband being the keen long-time photographer, took the photographs.

All went very well…  Until we returned home.

Then, I discovered to my horror that half the photos have a slightly bluey tinge to them. Somehow, my husband had accidentally “flipped a switch” on his supa-dupa modern digital camera, and subsequent photos now have a weird tinge.  Half are fine and really good shots.  And half are not.  Fortunately the shots where my son was hanging onto a tree perilously close to the water’s edge survived – as did the shots which could only be taken after my husband had, with the elegance of a ballerina, shimmied over a very high metal fence.

I thought I’d share my blue shots with you.  They would have been good, wouldn’t they!

River Stort, at Trout Bridge, Gipsy Lane – on the very borders between Hertfordshire and Essex

The River Stort, Twyford Lock

The River Stort, Twyford Mill (through the trees on the left)

And this is the colour the photos should have been! The glorious colours of early summer at South Mill Lock

Oh well – back to the drawing board!  I wonder what photographic problems my Edwardian predecessors had? At least hiking along the banks of the picturesque River Stort is a beautiful walk.

PS: If you are out in Bishop’s Stortford and see us intrepid three, please do come and say hi to us – we’re very easy to spot!

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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.

Thank you for reading this post.

You may also be interested in the following
– The Tudor rat-catcher of Bishop’s Stortford
– Bishop’s Stortford Through Time – A Progress Report

© Essex Voices Past 2014.

Hmmm – nearly two months since my last post on this blog.  Sorry, that’s really not good enough of me.  However, my writing is continuing frantically away in the background whilst I work my forthcoming book Bishop’s Stortford Through Time for Amberley Publishing.

I’m also writing a monthly post on Worldwide Genealogy – a collaboration of genealogists and local historians from all round the world. On that blog, I have been posting articles about my paternal grandmother’s family, the Gurney family of South London. You may be interested in reading my posts

– Who do you think they were?
– Family History Show and Tell
– Family History is like a box of chocolate – you never know what you’re going to get

My work on Bishop’s Stortford Through Time is going very well.  If you live in the area and are around on a Sunday morning, you will see myself and my husband walking the length and breadth of the town and river, taking photographs for the book.  Mind you, you will have to get up extra early, as we’ve discovered that the only time the roads are safe enough to take photos is very early on a Sunday morning!  A couple of times my husband has had to stand in the middle of what were once sleepy rural country roads but are now super-fast highways, where he has had to take his life into his hands for my precious book. Hockerill crossroads and the Causeway to name just two roads which were once sleepy quiet backwaters but now have lorries, cars and other assorted vehicles thundering through on them.

So, now for an update on my book:-

I have to write 96 pages comprising of 90 vintage postcards alongside 90 modern-day photographs.  Having exhausted that well-known internet auction site (plus several others not so well known), and plundered the stocks of my local friendly postcard dealer at Battlesbridge Antiques Centre, I now have 75 postcards to be used in my book.

So I am missing an elusive 15 postcards…

Can you help me?  I am looking for postcards (preferably pre-1920) particularly of the following areas of Bishop’s Stortford.  If you are out and about at antique fairs during these beautiful Spring weekends, please keep a look out for me.

– Bishop’s Stortford train station (or trains in the station)

– South Street by the publisher Wrench (or any postcards of South Street except any which show the Methodist Chapel)

– South Road – particularly the almshouses (but not the Rhodes Museum)

– Holy Trinity Church, South Street

– The Workhouse

– The Corn Exchange

– Market Square

– The Cemetery

– Any roads in Newtown (eg Portland Road, Apton Road)

– Any real photographs of The Wharf or the Hockerill Cut (real photographs only though)

And here’s one I found earlier… A photograph by Bishop’s Stortford photographers H & A Gurton (who were active during the First World War).  I do not know what the uniform is – someone has suggested that it could be a Sunday School uniform.  If you know, please do drop me an email.

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This blog
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.

Thank you for reading this post.

You may also be interested in the following
– The Tudor rat-catcher of Bishop’s Stortford

© Essex Voices Past 2014.

At the moment, I am knee-deep in postcards, papers and books relating to the Hertfordshire town of Bishop’s Stortford, whilst I research and write my forthcoming book Bishop’s Stortford Through Time for the publishers, Amberley Publishing.  During my quest for material, I happened across a book from 1882: The Records of St Michael’s parish church, Bishop’s Stortford, edited by J.L Glasscock, Jun.  This book has verbatium transcripts of various manuscripts, which, at that time, were held  in the parish chest within the church at Bishop’s Stortford. These manuscripts included various churchwardens’ accounts – which start in 1431. My regular readers will know that I am just ever-so slightly obsessed with churchwardens’ accounts, having spent a great many years researching and analysing the Essex town of Great Dunmow’s Tudor churchwardens’ accounts.  Great Dunmow’s accounts start in the 1520s, when Henry VIII was on the throne and still married to Katherine of Aragon, and England was still a staunchly Catholic nation.  Bishop’s Stortford’s, although incomplete, start in 1431 – nearly a hundred years earlier, when the boy-king King Henry VI had been on throne 10 years, and the main protagonists of the bloody War of the Roses from the Royal Houses of Lancaster and York had either not yet been born, or were still peaceful law-abiding young men. Pretty impressive for medieval manuscripts – regarding the workings of a small English parish church – to have survived for so long.

Windhill and parish church of St Michael’s, Bishop’s Stortford in the 1900s

Unlike Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts – which were beautifully bound in a tooled leather volume – Bishop’s Stortford’s accounts were loose-leaved and lying scattered in the parish chest.  Amongst the churchwardens’ accounts were other manuscripts, including the “reckonings” (accounts) of the vermin catcher(s) for the years 1569 to 1571.  They make fascinating reading – so I have reproduced them here – exactly as J.L Glasscock, Jun, transcribed them over hundred years ago in 1882.

St Michael’s parish church, Bishop’s Stortford in the 1900s

The Destruction of Vermin
The Accounte and Reconynge of me Edward Wylley of Stortford, Collectore of all man’ of veyrmane of ij [2] yeres past both of Charge and Dyscharge as here aftr folloth frome the xij [12] daye of App’lle in a° [i.e. Anno Domino]1569 to this yere of a 1571.

On the first page is what he terms his “charge,” which is an account of moneys received by him from various persons “at v [5] tymes;” he received altogether “lij.s. vij½d” [52 shillings and 7½ pence]. Then follows his “Dyscharge,” which consists of various payments made by him to the destroyers of vermin :

He paid for:

• Hedge hoggs heads . 2d each
• Crose [crows] eggs 2d per doz
• Pyse [magpie] eggs 2d
• vj [6] crose [crows] hedds 1d
• vj [6] hawkys hedes 1d
• xij [12] Ratts hedes 1d
• 1 mowlle [mole] ½d
• xij [12] myse [mice] heddes 1d
• xij [12] starlyngs hedes 1d
• a wysells [weasel] hede 1d
• v [5] hedds of the kyngs fyschers [king fishers] 5d
• a powlle cats [pole cat] hed 2d
• 1 boulle fynches [bullfinches] hed 1d

During the two years over which this account extends I find that vermin was destroyed within the parish of Stortford to the following extent, viz :

141 hedgehogs, 53 moles, 6 weasels, 202 crows’ eggs, 128 pies’ [magpies’] eggs, 18 young crows, 80 rats, 18 crows, 2 bullfinches, 5 hawks, 24 starlings, 5 kingfishers, 1 polecat, 1,426 mice; and besides these there are 118 heads of crows, hawks, and “cadows” (jackdaws).

Note: “There used to be a standing committee in every parish for the destruction of ‘noyfull fowles and vermyn.’ The practice still exists in some rural parishes. But many readers may be surprised to learn that this object was formerly felt to be so important that the practical use of it already then existing in many parishes received the express sanction of general suggestion by statute. A committee, consisting of the churchwardens together with six other parishioners, is named with power to tax and assess every person holding lands or tythes in any parish yearly at Easter, and whenever else it may be needful, in order to raise a sum of money to be put in the hands of two other persons, who are to distribute it. And these distributors are to pay this money in rewards for the different sorts of vermin brought in. The record is curious, and interesting enough on its own account to be rescued from forgetfulness, if only for its bearing on the natural history of the country.” Toulmin Smith, “The Parish and its Obligations and Powers“, 1854 p. 232.

The Records of St Michael’s parish church, Bishop’s Stortford,
edited by J.L Glasscock, Jun, 1882, p156-157

Some of the English wildlife captured and killed by the vermin man of Tudor Bishop’s Stortford 1569-1571

As someone who was brought up listening to the bedtime English tales of Mrs Tiggy-Winkle, The Wind in the Willows, and The Little Grey Rabbit – along with the American tales of Thornton W Burges and Old Mother West Wind  – I find Tudor tales of killing these creatures thought-provoking. Some, now as then, still vermin; whilst others are now much loved members of the English countryside’s wildlife.

A Tudor Rat Catcher

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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.

Thank you for reading this post.

You may also be interested in the following
– Index to each folio in Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts
– Great Dunmow’s Churchwardens’ accounts: transcripts 1526-1621
– Tudor local history
– Pre-Reformation Catholic Ritual Year

Do you believe in serendipity and synchronicity? The strange forces at play when various unrelated events appear to coincide with each other? As 2013 drew to a close, I had my own piece of inexplicable synchronicity.

In my last post, when I reflected back on two years of writing a blog, I told how it came about that my severely dyslexic son is now in a school for dyslexic children. This hasn’t just been a change for him but also for me as it’s meant the end to my career and working life in London. His wonderful school is in the wrong direction to London and there are absolutely no means by which I can do the school run both ends of the day whilst working in London. So, I’ve had to give up my London-based career of 30 years, and once he settled in his new school last term, I was about to start looking around for a new one.

Just as I was about to start making my plans, into my email inbox flew an unsolicited email from a commissioning editor from Amberley Publishing – a mainstream publisher of local and specialist history book. The editor had read my blog and wanted to talk to me about commissioning me to write a history book! Much toing and froing of emails went backwards and forwards between us until finally, just before Christmas, they agreed to commission not just one, but three history books from me.  I now appear to have a new career as a fledgling author of local history books.  A strange coincidence that just when, for the first time in my adult life, I had time on my hands to write and needed a new career, Amberley Publishing were looking for new authors and stumbled across my blog. Coincidence or synchronicity?

So now, I’m officially researching for my books and will be writing each of them in the coming months and years.  If you have read my blog over the last two years, you will know that I am an obsessive collector of old vintage postcards – particularly those depicting our country’s rich past – moments in time captured by our ancestors through their camera lenses.  It will be no surprise to you, therefore, that each of my books is based around vintage postcards on a particular theme or subject.

Here are the titles and release dates for each of my books.

Bishop’s Stortford Through Time
(publication date: late 2014)
This book continues Amberley Publishing’s Through Time series of fully illustrated books which traces towns and villages of Britain by comparing vintage postcards to modern-day photographs.  My book will tell the story of this Hertfordshire market town through postcards dating from the first half of the twentieth century, compared to modern day photographs of the same locations. Bishop’s Stortford has a rich heritage and rural past before urban regeneration took place and transformed it into the large sprawling town it now is, with a growing population of just under 40,000.  I hope to capture some of its past in my book and show the town as it once was in its Edwardian and pre-First World War heyday.

Bishop’s Stortford – The Old Boar’s Head

Bishop’s Stortford – Cricket Field Lane

Bishop’s Stortford – The River Stort

Sudbury, Lavenham and Long Melford Through Time
(publication date: Summer 2015)
Continuing Amberley Publishing’s Through Time series of illustrated books about Britain’s towns and villages, this book will trace these three beautiful medieval  Suffolk wool towns through Edwardian, pre-First World War and inter-war postcards. It is ironic that the continuing existence of many of Suffolk’s outstanding medieval buildings bear testimony to the collapse of the wool trade in the area.  This collapse led to rural poverty, which, in turn, meant that many medieval Suffolk buildings were left in tact and were not “enhanced” or replaced by the enterprising Victorians. Many Edwardian postcards of these three towns show these medieval buildings – which were once homes and trading-places of fabulously wealthy merchants – but in the Edwardian period reduced to unsanitary and poverty-stricken living quarters.  Modern photographs will show how these buildings have been restored in modern times to their former medieval glory.

Lavenham, The Guildhall of Corpus Christi

Long Melford, The Green

Sudbury, Thomas Gainsborough’s birthplace

Postcards from the Front: Britain 1914-1919
(publication date: Summer 2016)
During the Great War (and in the years immediately afterwards), soldiers, sailors and nurses regularly sent home postcards to their loved ones. With the censors removing anything which could give away the sender’s location or military strategy, most soldiers posted simple messages sending their love to all at home. In amongst the hundreds of thousands (if not, millions) of postcards sent home from the Front, some postcards have short messages giving fuller testimony to experiences of war. This book recounts the stories of a few of Britain’s men and women who served in the Great War through their postcards home. This book was entirely inspired by my post Postcards from the Front – from you loving son.  I am so happy that I have been given the opportunity to turn this one post into a full book and so can retell the stories of some of the men and women who gave their today for our tomorrow.

Postcards from the Front: Christmas Day in the trenches 1916

The flag we are willing to sacrifice our lives for in order that they may continue to float over free peoples. What I tale I will have to tell you all later of a Xmas day in the trenches. Fred

The future of my blog?
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to persuade Amberley Publishing to commission a Through Time book on Great Dunmow as the population of the town isn’t big enough.  A shame in one respect because I have so many previously unpublished postcards of the town, but good in another respect because it means I can keep blogging my stories about Great Dunmow – which, for contractual reasons, I wouldn’t have been able to do, if I was writing a book about the town.  So my blog will continue… when I have time to write posts.

I would also like to find a publisher for a book retelling some of  my stories about Tudor Essex. For example: the witches of Tudor Essex; the assize judge who condemned many Essex people to death; and the (not so) invisible women of Tudor Essex.  If any publisher or e-publisher would like to commission me to write a book on Tudor Lives of Essex, I would love to hear from you.  In the meantime, I hope to continue to write stories about the Tudor Lives of Essex folk on my blog.

A plea for help…
If you can help me in any way with vintage postcards of subjects for any of my books, please do get in touch with me at thenarrator[at]essexvoicespast.com. Or, if you can help me with access to any areas – schools, churches, stately homes – so that I can take modern-day photographs of the towns and villages I am writing about, please do contact me.

Serendipity?
There is one final part of strange coincidences to this story. Amberely Publishing are based in the small Cotswold town of Stroud – the very town where I grew up and spent my formative teenage years. A town I once knew and loved well.  I hope to be spending some happy hours revisiting my childhood roots when I visit “my” publishers.

© Essex Voices Past 2014