Today’s post is a postcard sent home just before New Year of 1915. It’s poignant messages states: “O.A.S Dear Madam, I have the pleasure of writing to you and thanking you for the parcel which I received. Hoping you have a Happy Xmas and a bright New Year. From One In Belguim“.
Wishing all my readers a very Happy New Year.
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This year, my run up to Christmas has been very hectic with some very last minute excitement as a historian and blogger.
On the 18 December 2014, just over a week ago, I published on my regular monthly slot on the Worldwide Genealogy Blog, a post about the First World War’s Christmas Truce of 1914. You can read my post here – Christmas Day Truce 1914. It is the full story of the famous Truce between the British and the Germans as it was reported day-by-day throughout the length and breadth of Britain in local and national newspapers.
My story was picked up by the British Library – whose The British Newspaper Archive own the digital archives for these newspapers – and a shortened version was printed on their website on the 19th December: The story of the 1914 Christmas Truce, as reported by WW1 newspapers. From this, one of the producers of the BBC World Service read my story and asked me to do an interview for the radio station about the Christmas Day Truce. So I did two audio interviews (from my kitchen!) – one very late on Monday 22nd December, and another early in the morning on Tuesday 23rd December – the latter being a live broadcast so was very nerve-wracking.
One of the main points asked in my interview was, did the Germans and the British play a game of football in no-man’s land? My answer is: There’s a lot of hearsay that several “kick-abouts” either happened or were proposed to take place. But I could find no evidence or eye-witness accounts in the local newspaper within the British Newspaper Archive that a formal match had taken place. Below are extracts from reports in newspapers dated December 1914 to January 1915 where a game of football (or a kick-about) was mentioned.
From the evidence below, you decide. Did one (or more) football matches take place between Britain and Germany along the Front Line on the Western Front at the Christmas Truce of 1914? All are eyewitness accounts, mainly written down in letters sent home by soldiers in the Front Line and reprinted in local newspapers.
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“The Germans left some of their trenches and came over to talk with our men, and I hear a football match has been arranged for New Year’s Day. I cannot swear to this statement, but seeing that they did visit us on Christmas Day, the event is possible.”
Hull Daily Mail, Wednesday 30 December 1914
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“The day after Christmas, they cried across if we would play them at a game of football, but as no football was forthcoming, there was no match.”
Aberdeen Journal, Friday 1 January 1915
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“On Christmas Day we agreed to a play a football match, and we got a football but their colonel would not let them play, so we had a bit of a game on our own.”
Liverpool Echo, Saturday 2 January 1915
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“Higher up the line – you could scarcely believe it – but they were kicking a football about between the trenches.”
Gloucester Journal Saturday 2 January 1915
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“Elsewhere along the line I hear our fellows played Germans at football on Christmas Day. Our own pet enemies remarked that they would like a game, but as the ground in our part is all root crops and much cut up by ditches, and as, moreover, we have not got a football, we had to call it off.”
Western Daily Press Wednesday 6 January 1915
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Did a football match take place between Germany and Britain?
You decide!
Nottingham Evening Post – Saturday 02 January 1915
Daily Mirror – Friday 08 January 1915
All extracts and images above appear by kind permission of The British Newspaper Archive / The British Library Board.
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Wishing all my readers a very happy Christmas. I hope your Christmas celebrations are much more relaxing than the Louis Wain cats shown below.
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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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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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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
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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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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I have written much on my blog about my young dyslexic son and my battle to secure him an education he can access. I haven’t written much, if anything, about my other much loved and cherished children. Today, my eldest – my first born, my darling girl – is getting married. She came into this world kicking and screaming 23 years, 9 months , 2 weeks and 6 days ago – and I fell in love with her the minute I held her for that very first time – a love that has strengthened and increased with each passing year.
My beautiful girl.
Now a young woman and about to marry her love and embark on a new life as a wife – and one day in the (hopefully not too distant) future, a mother.
Many, many years ago, in another life and another century, I lived in the beautiful Cotswold town of Stroud, Gloucestershire and my elder brother lived in a rented cottage in nearby Slad. The very cottage which was owned by the famous author, Laurie Lee, and the very cottage where Cider with Rosie was written (and, indeed, where most of his books were written). It is to Laurie Lee that I turn to now, and his words to tell you about my precious first born by way of his short essay (much abridged by myself) on his darling girl, his First Born, which was first given to me when my girl was merely days old.
She was born in the autumn and was a late fall in my life, and lay purple and dented like a little bruised plum, as though she’d been lightly trodden in the grass and forgotten. Then the nurse lifted her up and she came suddenly alive, her bent legs kicking crabwise, and her first living gesture was a thin wringing of the hands accompanied by a far- out Hebridean lament.
This moment of meeting seemed to be a birth time for both of us; her first and my second life. Nothing, I knew, would be the same again, and I think I was reasonably shaken. I peered intently at her, looking for familiar signs, but she was convulsed as an Aztec idol. Was this really my daughter, this purple concentration of anguish, this blind and protesting dwarf.
Then they handed her to me, stiff and howling, and I held her for the first time and kissed her, and she went still and quiet as though by instinctive guile, and I was instantly enslaved by her flattery of my powers.
Only a few brief weeks have passed since that day, but already I’ve felt all the obvious astonishments. New-born, of course, she looked already a centenarian, tottering on the brink of an old crone’s grave, exhausted, shrunken, bald as Voltaire, mopping, mowing, and twisting wrinkled claws in speechless spasms of querulous doom. But with each day of survival she has grown younger and fatter, her face filling, drawing on life, every breath of real air healing the birth-death stain she had worn so witheringly at the beginning.
She is of course just an ordinary miracle, but is also the particular late wonder of my life. So each night I take her to bed like a book and lie close and study her. Her dark blue eyes stare straight into mine, but off-centre, not seeing me.
My darling girl. My love. So so proud of you and all you have achieved. I have loved every minute and every second of being your mum. I have watched, awe-inspired, as you grew from a child, to a teenager, to a young woman. Beautiful in heart, mind, personality and looks. I am so very much looking forward to this next part of your life as a couple with your love, and all the joy you will have together – first as a couple, and eventually as a family.
Please join with me in wishing my darling girl and her lovely new husband all the very best in their new life together as husband and wife, Mr and Mrs D.
The images below are from Harrison Fisher (1877-1934), an American artist who had the gift for drawing beautiful Edwardian and art-deco scenes. There is a final, 6th, postcard in this series, but not wanting to jinx our young couple’s future, I’ll leave it to your imagination what the final card depicts.
The proposal
The trousseau
The wedding
The honeymoon
The first evening in their own home
All my love to you both, A & A – the new Mr and Mrs D – now and forever
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.
Exactly two years ago this week, I created this blog and published my very first post – a verbatim transcript of the first page of the 1520s financial accounts of a church: the churchwardens’ accounts of Great Dunmow, a small town in Essex. Not a dry dusty document consisting of monetary figures, but a living breathing document which opened up to the modern reader, some small insight into the workings of an East Anglian town, during the turbulent reign of Henry VIII and his children.
Local History of a small East Anglian town
My initial post came-about because originally, my blog’s sole purpose was to publish some of my research for my dissertation ‘Religion and Society in Great Dunmow, Essex, c.1520 to c.1560′ from my Cambridge University’s Masters of Studies in Local and Regional history awarded to me in January 2012 (sadly, the degree no longer appears to be running). Before creating my blog, I had decided that I wanted to record for myself a semi-permanent record of the results of the research I undertook for my dissertation, along with verbatim transcripts of Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts – an incredible primary source dating from the 1520s which formed much of the basis of my dissertation.
So my blog was created for purely self-indulgent purposes of furthering some of my dissertation’s research and recording some of the research I had already carried out. However, to my surprise, I found that as I started to write more and more posts, I began to collect a great many readers from all over the world who appeared to enjoy my posts and were interested in my research. So I carried on researching and writing posts about Great Dunmow to be shared with you, my readers.
Local Essex history and the First World War
Previously to my masters research in Tudor Great Dunmow, I had spent many years researching the men of Great Dunmow who had marched away to war in distant lands during the years of 1914 to 1918, never to return. Families and localities torn apart by wars fought in far distant lands – far away from the rural peace of East Anglia. I decided to include my research into these stories onto my blog too. By using contemporary postcards of the time, I have been able to retell the stories of many men of Essex – including my own ancestors, my grandfather’s cousins, the Kemps of Great Dunmow.
Gordon Parnall Kemp – my grandfather’s cousin – in the early 1900s, before he was killed amongst the mud and horror of the Battle of Passchendaele in 1917. His father, James Nelson Kemp, a respected publican in Great Dunmow is standing in the doorway of his pub, the Royal Oak.
Victorian and 20th century history of Great Dunmow My research into Great Dunmow in the First World War naturally led me into researching other aspects of the town’s Victorian and Twentieth Century history:-
One of the original ‘Essex Girls’ – a Victorian miss dressed in her Sunday-best, captured through the lens of Great Dunmow’s Victorian photographer.
Local history of Essex’s past My dissertation wasn’t my first adventure into the past of Essex – the county which I have lived in for exactly half my life and nearly all my adult life. I had long been researching various other aspects of Essex life and during the last two years published on my blog some of that research. I have many many more articles lingering on my computer written during my time in Essex – I need to dust them off and polish them up so that I can then publish them here – which I hope to do over the coming months.
The apprehension and confession of three notorious witches. Arreigned and by iustice condemned and executed at Chelmes-forde, in the Countye of Essex, (Joan Cunny, Joan Upney and Joan Prentice) (1589)
The wider historical context
Of course, any micro-historical study of a tiny aspect of local history also has to consider the wider environment. The events of 16th Century Great Dunmow and Essex did not happen in isolation: they were a result of the actions and edicts of the Tudor kings and queens. So on my blog, I have posted articles about the kings and queens of fifteenth and sixteenth century England.
Henry VIII praying in his bedchamber from The Psalter of Henry VIII (England, S. E. (London), c1540-1541) shelfmark Royal 2 A XVI f.3.
Medieval illuminated manuscripts Whilst researching some of my posts on the Tudors, I also discovered some of the most beautiful primary sources in existence: exquisite medieval illuminated manuscripts.
School Trip Friday for the Academically Challenged Unknown to me, at the same time of creating my blog, my small son’s time at one of Essex’s oldest public schools was coming to a disastrous and awful end because of his severe dyslexia. To cut a very long and painful story short, I removed him from the school, home educated him for over a year whilst fighting my local educational authority through the courts to make them provide him with an education he could access. This resulted in two highly stressful Tribunals within a 10 month period – with one going to a full contested Hearing consisting of expert witnesses and a leading educational barrister, in front of a Judge and Panel, to decide my son’s educational future. Fortunately the Judge agreed with myself and all the experts (which ironically included the local authority’s own experts) and my son is now in a tiny wonderful school which specialises in children with dyslexia and other related educational needs. (If you told me two years ago that I would have to go to a court of law, and instruct solicitors and barristers to enable my son to have an education, I would have laughed at such a ridiculous notion. I know better now.)
I can honestly say that this was one of the most stressful and painful experiences of my entire life – not only having to come to terms with the extent of my son’s disabilities, but also because of the appalling manner the local education authority conducted themselves during this time. This is not the place to document this awful experience – suffice to say that it is now in the hands of the Local Government Ombudsman who have launched an official investigation against the local education authority into my son’s case. The appalling and morally corrupt process in this country for making local authorities put in place an education a child with special educational needs can access, has left me a fervent campaigner about the rights of disabled children, and their right to an education. A basic right most people think as a “given”- but which is sadly not for many thousands of disabled children in this country. You may have seen me on Twitter commenting on this.
During my fight for my child, I came to hate the very name of my blog because the very county I loved so much and whose history I had written about with such great affection, had turned in on myself and my son. Unfortunately, despite having national laws protecting vulnerable children, these laws are very much open to interpretation by the local authority in which the child lives – an accessible education for a disabled child really is a post-code lottery. At the height of my fight, after being told to leave Essex by my barrister and move to a local authority which treated children with special educational needs better, I hated Essex so very much that I was determined to destroy my blog, all my research and all my postcards and sources I have about Essex. But fortunately, I realised in time that this would be a foolish knee-jerk action and would only hurt myself and other Essex historians. The self-serving department within Essex County Council that my action would have been aimed at are far too ignorant to have cared one jot.
However, one bright point in this horrendous situation was personally teaching my son to love history. One of his teachers at his previous school unkindly told me that my son was “academically challenged”. It was with her words ringing in my ears that I decided to blog about teaching my son a love for history: School Trip Friday for the Academically Challenged. During our year together, my son (and I!) learnt a great deal about our great country’s history. There’s not many small children who can boast that they have personally visited the site of Richard III’s burial under a council car park in Leicester! I have thoroughly enjoyed sharing my love of history with my son by way of our field trips, and then writing about our visits to share with you. Whilst he cannot read my posts on my blog, he takes great interest in what I write and we often sit together looking at the photos on this blog of our trips around England. Ultimately, we went on many more trips then I had time to write-up – I was also working part-time whilst home educating him during this period. So my blogging came after his needs and my fast learning of the educational law of England.
Using vividly painted 1930s cigarette cards and 1900s postcards to teach my son the chronology of English kings and queens. The tableau above was when we learnt about the Princes in the Tower, and who we thought murdered them. This image came from my most viewed post of the last year (or so!)School Trip Friday – Of Cabbages and Kings
Looking towards the future of my writing…
Finally, apologies about the length of this post. But two years is a long time in the life of a blog, in this fast moving internet age. It seemed that the time was ripe for me to reflect back on my blog and self-indulgently share those reflections with you.
I now want to share with you the future of my blog and of my writings. 2014 is a new year and a new beginning for many members of my family – including my son in his new school. I too have a new beginning which I want share with you, my kind and encouraging readers, who have spurred me on to keep writing during the highly stressful year that was my 2013.
Next week I will tell you my own “news” about the future of my writings.
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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
Windhill and parish church of St Michael’s, Bishop’s Stortford in the 1900s
St Michael’s parish church, Bishop’s Stortford in the 1900s
Some of the English wildlife captured and killed by the vermin man of Tudor Bishop’s Stortford 1569-1571
A Tudor Rat Catcher
The proposal
The trousseau
The wedding
The first evening in their own home
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
