The Essex local paper Saffron Walden Reporter have printed a review of my local history book about the town of Saffron Walden and its surrounding villages of Audley End, Littlebury, Wendens Ambo and Little & Great Chesterford, Saffron Walden and Around Through Time.
Saffron Walden Report – 24 September 2015, page 24 Click the picture to read the review
Saffron Walden Report – 24 September 2015, page 25 Click the picture to read the review
I particularly like the reporter, Abigail Weaving’s, final line about my book “In fact, as [Kate J] Cole demonstrates, a mere window frame, memorial in a churchyard or an engraving on a wall, are not signs of an inaccessible past, but of one that is very much part of Saffron Walden today.” This, to me, absolutely sums up and clarifies local history; the past is a living, breathing organic “thing” that is all around us and just waiting for new generations of townsfolk to discover their past. And, as Abigail Weaving implies, local history is not an inaccessible past, but part of our everyday present.
Pargetting of an early nineteenth-century stage coach, on the side of a house in Gold Street, Saffron Walden. History really is all around us.
Click the picture to be taken to Amazon’s page for my book.
*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*
This blog
If you want to read more from my blog, please do subscribe to it. If you’ve enjoyed reading this post, then please do click Like button and/or leave a comment below. I read every single comment and value the thoughts of my readers. Thank you for reading this post.
I am delighted to tell you that my third local history book, Saffron Walden and Around Through Time, has now been published by Amberley Books and is available in “all good bookshops”.
Click the picture to be taken to Amazon’s page for my book.
Saffron Walden is a beautiful market town in the north west corner of Essex, and a town I knew very well from my own past, when I lived for many years in the nearby town of Great Dunmow. I have shopped many a time in the splendid shops and market within the town. But, more importantly to me, I had spent many a happy hour when my third child (now a strapping pre-teen) was just weeks old as I daily pounded the streets of Saffron Walden in the attempt to get him to sleep. It was whilst walking through the grounds of Saffron Walden’s church, St Mary the Virgin, that he first looked up at me from his push chair, laughing at his own joke that he’d managed to pull off his socks and toss them over the side of his buggy. I should have been warned then that he was to become a child full of laughter and practical jokes! Saffron Walden plays as special place in my heart for those early days of exhausted motherhood to my boy. It was also during those sleep-deprived days of endless walks that I fell in love with Saffron Walden’s ancient streets and buildings.
The beginnings of my book In the late summer of 2014, I was sitting in Amberley Publishings offices in the beautiful Cotswold town of Stroud, having just delivered the manuscript for my first book, Bishop’s Stortford Through Time. I was musing with one of the company’s Commissioning Editors over other books I could write for Amberley. It popped into my head that Saffron Walden would make a good book, and a town which I would personally like to research and photograph. Fortunately Amberley agreed with me, and thus was born my third local history book Saffron Walden and Around Through Time, to become part of Amberley Publishing’s phenomenally successfully Through Time local history book series. Foolishly I agreed with Amberley that I could write it at the same time as my second local history book, Sudbury, Long Melford and Lavenham Through Time
So there I had it. Two books to be written and delivered at the same time…
What is the “Around” of my book?
As you will see from the title of my Saffron Walden book, it is an “and Around” book, so includes other villages nearby to Saffron Walden. My brief from Amberley was to write about Saffron Walden the town, but to also include chapters on other nearby villages. They didn’t want me to wander too far from the main town, but left it totally open to me which villages I could include as my “Around” (but also dropped heavy hints that they’d like to see the Chesterfords included!). So that was my brief…Saffron Walden and Around. All to be fitted within no more and no less than 96 pages.
I would like to say that I purposely decided which villages to include. But I have to say that writing my book was very organic. It seemed to take on a life of its own and it dictated to me what villages were to be included. In the end, my “Saffron Walden and Around” comprises
Saffron Walden
Audley End
Littlebury Parish
Wendens Ambo
The Chesterfords (Little and Great)
Tales of long ago Because I use so many sources for each of my books, I write quite detailed captions to all my pages and try to tell a significant story for that street or view, or of the people who once lived in the houses and roads. So in my book on “Saffron Walden and Around”, you may read things about the town and villages which you may not have known about. For example, that Audley End (then known as Brook Walden) became infamous in 1579 as a place where the witch, Mother Staunton of Wimbish, practiced her witchcraft. That in 1601, William Newton a shepherd from Great Ambo was convicted of stealing nearly 100 sheep throughout Essex. That the infamous high wayman Dick Turpin held up the Walden and Stortford stagecoaches in Epping Forest in 1737…
There are so many stories to tell about this beautiful part of north west Essex.
Bridge Street, Saffron Walden. Near this spot, the chief constable of Saffron Walden, William Campling, was murdered in 1849.
Audley End House, with the spire of Saffron Walden’s parish church showing in the centre-left edge. In 1742, Daniel Defoe wrote that the House was in ruins and decaying.
Littlebury village. The village was on the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries stage coach routes between London and Newmarket or Norwich.
Crown House, Great Chesterford. In 1671, the diarist John Evelyn journeyed on a stage coach from London to meet King Charles II who was watching the races at Newmarket. The horses on Evelyn’s stagecoach were changed at this coaching inn.
The trials and tribulations of photographing a modern-day town In common with all books in the Through Time series, each page of my book contains:-
First World War VAD Hospital, Saffron Walden
A “then” picture. An historic photograph of a building or street dating from between the early 1900s and the 1920s, for example a vintage postcard or old photograph.
A short caption and narrative about the view, detailing the view/building and setting it in its historic context.
A “now” photograph. This had to be an (almost) exact replica of the vintage view. So I had to locate and stand in the same location as the early 20th Century photographers, and capture a replica modern-day view. This in itself caused quite a few challenges; the main one being that Edwardian photographers did not have to contend with lorries and cars hurtling through the streets, but I did! As a consequence, many of my photographs had to be shot early in the morning; more often than not, on a Sunday. But even photographing early Sunday morning didn’t stop cars taking a prominent role in some of my images. Saffron Walden’s market place and high street were particularly troublesome in getting car-less photographs. I don’t think I managed a single photograph of the market place without at least one car being ever-present. Even at 6am on Easter Sunday morning there were still cars in the area!
Ironically, my own car appears on the “now” photograph on the front cover of my book. I didn’t mean it to be in shot… It took me countless early Sunday morning trips to the top of the high street to get that famous vista of Saffron Walden. Some days, the rain was too heavy for photographs; other days there were too many cars and people for my photographs to be “good shots”; to add to my problems, the light was bad on more days then I can count. For some reason known only to my early-morning-not-totally-awake self, one time (and one time only) I parked my car right in the line of my camera’s lens. And that shot (out of countless hundreds of others) was the best view of a relatively car-less (except mine) high street….
Some of the sources I used
If you have read my blog posts about writing my other books, you will know that writing such as book is a source of great personal satisfaction and delight for me. I wrote a month or so ago on my blog a post Suffolk Voices Past: Sudbury, Long Melford and Lavenham Through Time detailing my life-long hobby of postcard collecting and combining that with being social historian. I also wrote about the sources that I use for each of my books, such as history books, newspaper reports, county archaeology/conservation reports, Victorian census returns, The National Archives.
British Newspaper Archive – click the picture to explore this rich online archive from the British Library
1881 Census return from Audley End’s almhouses for pauper women. This particular census return took me on my journey of discovery of Rebecca Law, a remarkable woman who lived in all the towns and villages described within my book and died aged 103 in 1916. The story of Mrs Law’s long life is told in my book.
Click the image to be taken to FindMyPast, a 3rd party online ancestry resource helping you to research your own family history.
1579 pamphlet “A detection of damnable driftes practized by three witches arraigned at Chelmifforde in Essex“. One of my favourite sources – it told the tale of the Mother Staunton of Wimbish who bewitched a baby’s cradle in Brook Walden (now Audley End)
Saffron Walden and Around Through Time I hope you enjoy reading my book. I would love to hear from you with your comments on any of my three local history books.
Market Hill in the early 1900s, Saffron Walden
Audley End Village in the early 1900s
Littlebury in the early 1900s, looking towards Queen’s Head Inn
A pretty spot in the 1920s – Wendens Ambo
The Vicarage in the 1920s, Great Chesterford
*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*
About the author, Kate Cole
I have a Masters in local and regional history from Cambridge University, a BA in history from the Open University, and an Advanced Diploma in local history from Oxford University – all studied whilst a mature student. Amberley have commissioned me to write 5 books in their Through Time series, and a further book on the First World War. I also give talks about various aspects of East Anglian history (such as the English Reformation in Tudor Essex and the Essex Witches from the Tudor period) to local history societies and groups. I live in Maldon, Essex, and regularly write about the local history of Essex and East Anglia on this blog. Before starting my second career as a local historian, for over 30 years I was a business technologist and computer consultant working in the City of London.
*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*
This blog
If you want to read more from my blog, please do subscribe to it. If you’ve enjoyed reading this post, then please do click Like button and/or leave a comment below. I read every single comment and value the thoughts of my readers. Thank you for reading this post.
It is widely known that following Henry VIII’s break with Rome in 1533, he went on to forcefully dissolve and destroy all the numerous religious monasteries across England. This he achieved by the end of the 1530s. Dissolved religious houses included priories, abbeys, and friaries from all the religious orders; the Augustinians, the Dominicans, the Cistercians, the Franciscans, the Carmelites. The monasteries were a massive medieval mechanism with houses and institutions all over England. From large and complex abbeys such as Furness Abbey in Cumbria, to smaller houses such as Little Dunmow Priory in Essex.
Artist impression of the remains of Little Dunmow Priory in 1820 (now part of Little Dunmow’s church)
Whether the hundreds-years old medieval monastery-system was a corrupt and decaying hulk deserving to be destroyed, or a network of religious houses who gave much needed relief to the poor and sick, is still widely debated today.
What isn’t so widely known is that there was mass whole-scale looting of the religious houses as each shut its doors. During my research on Great Dunmow (Essex) and for my two new local history books on Sudbury (Suffolk) and Saffron Walden (Essex), I came across two instances of looting which had been carried out, quite openly, by parish churches from dissolved religious houses.
Great Dunmow’s parish church and Tilty Abbey Tilty Abbey in North West Essex was surrendered to the king’s commissioners on 3 March 1536. It had been present in Essex since the middle of the twelfth century and was probably founded in September 1153. By the time of its surrender, it had a net yearly value of £167 2s 6d with a gross value of £177 9s 4d. This was considered to be a small house, so would have been forcefully dissolved under the First Suppression Act of 1536 if its abbot hadn’t voluntarily surrendered it. On the same day, an inventory was taken; the abbey had goods to the value of £19 19s 0½d, along with forty-three ounces of plate valued at £7 18s 8d. [1]
Artist impression of the remains of Tilty Abbey in 1784 (now part of Tilty church)
This was just the tangible goods which could be carried away and sold off. The abbey also had valuable building material in its very structure. In the churchwardens’ accounts for St Mary’s Great Dunmow, it can be determined that both the vicar and the churchwardens openly took advantage of the nearby dissolved abbey which was just four miles away. Sometime in the months between April 1537 and September 1538, Richard Parker sold 24 paving tiles from Tilty Abbey to Great Dunmow’s churchwardens for 2s 8d. He also sold lime sand for the tiles and charged the churchwardens 7d to bring them from Tilty Abbey to St Mary’s. Another person, Richard Barker, was paid 6d for laying the paving tiles in the church. To put this into context, at this time, the average day’s wage for a labourer was approximately 4d.
Great Dunmow churchwardens’ accounts folio 28r[2] – Tilty’s paving slabs
Item payd for lyme sande & for fecchyng
24 pavyng tyle from Tyltey ——————————————————7d
Item payd to Rychard P[ar]ker for the sayd 24
pavying tyle———————————————————————————2s 8d
Item payd to Rychard Barker for laying the
[a]forsayd pavying tyle in the church ——————————————6d
The accounts are silent as to how and why the 24 paving tiles were in Richard Parker’s hands in the first place. However, between 1525 and 1533, Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts had documented several times that Richard Parker was a “tyler” living in Windmill Street (now Rosemary Lane). How many other paving tiles did Richard Parker, the tiler, sell off to nearby churches? Did he also sell paving tiles to Great Easton church? Little Easton church? Thaxted church? There were enough churches in the immediate area of Tilty Abbey for him to have furnished them all with fine tiles from Tilty Abbey. We will probably never know how many he did manage to sell, as the relevant records have not survived in other nearby parish churches. Also, we don’t know what type of tiles these were, but perhaps they were hard-wearing stone slabs worthy of 11d per dozen. I like to think that this is the first recorded instance of the Tudor equivalent of an Essex man in his white-van doing dodgy door-step trading.…
There is some excellent unwitting testimony about the paving tiles. Firstly, the churchwardens had very openly disclosed that they had bought the tiles by documenting them within their financial accounts for the church. Secondly, at this time, churchwardens’ accounts were open documents available to the scrutiny of not just the parish clerks, vicar and churchwardens, but also any king’s commissioners who just happened to be passing by (remember, this was the late 1530s – troubled times for parish churches within England). Finally, churchwardens’ accounts were read out in church to the entire parish after evening service at the end of each accounting year – probably by the vicar himself. Therefore the whole parish (from the local elite to the paupers) would have heard for themselves that 24 paving tiles from Tilty Abbey had been bought from Richard Parker. So this was not a hidden transaction but had been openly declared and was probably considered to be of good positive benefit for the church in Great Dunmow. This really was not “dodgy dealings”.
In a similar manner, but less detailed in the churchwardens’ account, St Mary’s church in Great Dunmow bought a tabernacle from the recently dissolved Hatfield Regis Priory. The tabernacle was an ornate vessel which was used to hold the Eucharist when it was not in use during mass. Hatfield Regis’ tabernacle cost the churchwardens 20 shillings. This was a considerable amount of money. It is likely, therefore, that the priory’s tabernacle was very ornate and probably made of silver. Ironically, this “loot” was likely to have been given up to Henry VIII’s son, when church plate had to be handed over to the king’s commissioners during Edward VI’s reign.
St Mary the Virgin, Great Dunmow. Does the church still contain 24 paving tiles from nearby Tilty Abbey?
Saffron Walden’s parish church and Sudbury Priory
There is a legend that when John Hodgkin became the vicar of St Mary’s in Saffron Walden in 1541, he brought with him the chancel roof of the recently dissolved Dominican priory in Sudbury. John Hodgkin, who was made suffragan bishop of Bedford in 1537, had previously been a friar at Sudbury[3]. Lord Chancellor Thomas Audley (c.1488-1544) is alleged to have helped Hodgkin with the task of bringing the roof to Saffron Walden’s church. Whether this is true or not is open to debate. I have not seen any primary source evidence that it happened, and in my research for my book on Saffron Walden, I could not find any secondary source evidence that referenced Thomas Audley’s help. However, whilst researching my other book on Sudbury, I did find secondary source supporting this theory [4]. Of course, Thomas Audley himself was living at nearby dissolved Walden Abbey, which Henry VIII had granted to him in 1538 (now known as Audley End House). Therefore, if the roof from Sudbury’s priory had come to Saffron Walden’s church, then Thomas Audley would have been ideally placed to help.
Sudbury Priory’s remains in 1748
Moreover, as we have seen in the case of Tilty Abbey, it is indisputable that looting by parish churches of former monastic buildings had happened. It is therefore possible that Hodgkin had taken the priory’s chancel’s roof with him. The involvement of someone as senior and influential as the Lord Chancellor in this “looting” and that Hodgkin was a suffragan bishop demonstrates that this was perfectly legitimate practise for the time.
Thomas Audley,1st Baron Audley of Walden, Lord Chancellor of England 1533-1544
Rich pickings from themonasteries It has always been well known that extensive looting by locals for their own houses is the reason why former monastic buildings now stand in ruins. However, it is often thought that this looting was carried out some years – or even centuries – later. Townspeople taking stone for their buildings; eighteenth century gentleman touring Britain, taking home a little souvenir with them. However, the evidence at Great Dunmow/Tilty and Saffron Walden/Sudbury shows that this looting happened as the monasteries closed their doors. Moreover, this looting had occurred whilst Henry VIII was still alive and on the throne. The King’s will had been absolute. The monasteries had been closed by him. And there was no going back. The people were in no doubt that this was not a short lived whim of the king, but the new way of life and the new status quo. Furthermore, this was not “looting” but was a legitimate business transaction between interested parties. All open, and all above board. The firm evidence of Tilty Abbey’s paving tiles used in St Mary’s church in Great Dunmow, along with the more circumstantial evidence of Sudbury priory’s roof used in St Mary’s church in Saffron Walden, both suggest that dissolved former monastic buildings were, at least in north Essex, “rich pickings” for entrepreneurs and local parish churches in the immediate aftermath of the dissolution of monasteries.
St Mary’s, Saffron Walden in the early 1800s Did some of its 1530s’ roof come from Sudbury Priory?
Footnotes [1] ‘Houses of Cistercian monks: Abbey of Tilty’, in A History of the County of Essex: Volume 2, ed. William Page and J Horace Round (London, 1907), pp. 134-136 http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/essex/vol2/pp134-136 [April 2015].
[2] Great Dunmow’s Churchwarden accounts (1526-1621), Essex Record Office, reference D/P/11/5/1.
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 click Like button. Or like my page on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/KateJCole/. Thank you for reading this post.
Where do common phrases and terms in the English language come from? I asked myself this question recently whilst I’ve been researching my two new books Sudbury, Lavenham, and Long Melford Through Time and Saffron Walden and Around Through Time (both books due out from Amberley Publishing in the next few months).
During the writing of my books, I have been avidly scouring newspaper archives for reports and articles about all the towns I am researching. I came across the newspaper report below of a riot in Saffron Walden.
The “Proclamation being read” and “timely Notice” are both referring to the fact that the Riot Act had to be read out to the crowds in Walden. This was a 1714 Act of Parliament which stopped a group of 12 or more people from being assembled. When the Riot Act was (literally) read out (normally by a local big-wig from the town), the crowd HAD to disperse otherwise face being forcibly dispersed and/or arrested. If the crowd didn’t disperse within an hour of the Act being read, then the authorities could take further action such as calling for troops and militia to be sent in. From the newspaper account, it would appear that Walden’s crowd dispersed once the Act was read to them (but still managed to carry away a trophy!).
Later on in history, the reading of the Riot Act caused the infamous Peterloo Massacre (Manchester) of 1819. One of the last times the act was used in East Anglia was in 1885 when it was read in the village of Long Melford. In this case, the reading of the Riot Act did not work and the people of Long Melford and nearby Glemsford continued to riot throughout the village of Long Melford. So the troops from nearby Bury St Edmunds came into Long Melford via the train and dispersed the rioters using brute force with fixed bayonets. (My new book Sudbury, Lavenham and Long Melford Through Time looks at Long Melford’s riot of 1885 in more detail.)
As the Act was only repealed in 1967, the term is still used today. It is where we get the phrase “I will read you the riot act” – still used today by many to control unruly children!
*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*
My book
My local history book on the historic East Hertfordshire town of Bishop’s Stortford is still available. Please do click on the image below to buy my book.
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 click Like button and/or leave a comment below. Thank you for reading this post.
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.
This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Find out more about how our site works and how we put you in control by navigating the tabs on the this pop-up window.
Strictly Necessary Cookies
Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.
If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.
Bishop’s Stortford – The Old Boar’s Head
Bishop’s Stortford – Cricket Field Lane
Bishop’s Stortford – The River Stort
Lavenham, The Guildhall of Corpus Christi
Long Melford, The Green
Sudbury, Thomas Gainsborough’s birthplace
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