Category Archives: Uncategorized

Whatever aspect of recent social history you research it is, by the nature of things, always just in time for something, and just, tantalisingly, too late for something else. Where have you so recently vanished to, Audrey Blackford, lifelong spinster … Continue reading →

Nipping through the bleeping, security protected doors of Maryvale Court, in Glebe Street, Caldmore, I regularly hurry past this inscribed foundation stone, always eager to see my Aunty Kathleen, who resides within, to reassure myself about the state of her … Continue reading →

Between the two World Wars, the soundscape of the roads in most small provincial towns, such as Walsall Wood, in South Staffordshire, altered radically and irrevocably as vehicles powered by the internal combustion engine were introduced, and animals – of all … Continue reading →

She comported herself with an imperiousness appropriate to the well connected memsahib she that was in her early married life half century before. In her black riding habit and veiled top hat, Mrs. Geraldine Thomas, the last private tenant of … Continue reading →

There were several months of speculation before a new Poet Laureate was appointed in 1972, following the death of the incumbent, Cecil Day-Lewis.  With unemployment reaching a record one million, and the S.A.L.T. agreement finally being signed by the Russian … Continue reading →

Over the years since my Uncle Bill’s death in 1982, I have regularly taken a less then necessary detour along Footherly Lane, and permitted myself intermittent wincing glances at Keepers Cottage.  Over the course of half a century, it was … Continue reading →

When I was a little girl in the 1960s, my father, a self employed builder, worked very long hours. If I was lucky, he arrived home on weeknights before I went to bed, and I was allowed to perch on his knee … Continue reading →

There are fashions in rose cultivation, just as there are in habits, costume, and coiffure. A nameless, ancient, pale shell pink rose used to ramble at will all over the old brick barn where my dad’s family lived at Keepers … Continue reading →

The Guardians’ Building is the only remnant of the Walsall Union workhouse, whose infirmary evolved into the adjacent Walsall Manor Hospital.  In its early Victorian, Italianate splendour, it is something to admire, whilst waiting on the car park for festive … Continue reading →

I felt that I had mildly special reasons to be excited about Terry Herbert’s discovery of The Staffordshire Hoard on Fred Johnson’s land in the summer of 2009. It fired my imagination to think that numbers of my family might … Continue reading →