Paula Kitching introduces a very remarkable First World War memorial to a specific group of Yorkshire workers.

The recent attacks on Karl Marx’s grave in Highgate Cemetery have added impetus to the public debate about how we memorialise the dead and the public and private costs of mourning.

Alannah Tomkins introduces a well-chronicled early example of how a local community dealt with cholera. In September 1832 James Holmes, the governor of the workhouse at Bilston in Staffordshire wrote a letter to the salaried parish overseer of Uttoxeter. The initial impetus for the letter came from the two parishes’ shared interest...

This local study by Steve Doe draws together the human effects of what happened at the Battle of Jutland in June 1916 with accounts of how the families of those who fought in the battle and the wider local community dealt with the tragedy.

Frances Houghton examines how and why the popular memory of the Second World War continues to be contested. Early on the morning of Monday 21 January 2019, still-wet white gloss paint was discovered to have been thrown across the Bomber Command Memorial in London’s Green Park. The bronze sculpture of a...

In this podcast Dr Nick Barratt discusses the use of personal heritage in education.

Within British universities oral historians have had to fight hard to seek acceptance for what they do. But within the wider historical community they have found a far more welcoming reception, with local history acting as a particularly warm recipient of their work. There is little mystery as to why...

Tracing Your Ancestors in Lunatic Asylums: a Guide for Family Historians, Michelle Higgs, Pen and Sword, 2019,  196p, £14-99. ISBN 978 1 52674 485 2 My great-great-grandmother Emma Wood’s brother, Theophilus Wood, died in the Warwickshire Lunatic Asylum in 1871. It was his extraordinary fore-name that initially attracted my attention...

Kate Brooks’ interest in her family history led her to trace the life of her great grandfather, Joseph Lowe. His life story provides insights into 19th-century life, disease, orphanages, and child labour, but she also reflects on the ways in which the past can sometimes resonate with the present in unexpected...

Local history is the study of places and communities. It dates from the time of the great antiquarian county histories from the sixteenth century onwards. Local history is taught in universities, often at postgraduate level, and each county as well as many villages and towns, have their own societies. Family history,...

Victoria County History  Founded in 1899 and originally dedicated to Queen Victoria, the VCH is an encyclopaedic record of England's places and people from earliest times to the present day.  It is without doubt the greatest publishing project in English local history, having built an international reputation for scholarly standards. Based...

In an article based on his award-winning essay for the Young Historian competition, Christopher Barnett describes the development, decline and potential resurrection of West Yorkshire’s tram network...

Willington and the Mowbrays: After the Peasants’ Revolt, Dorothy Jamieson, Bedford Historical Record Society Vol 95, Boydell Press, 2019, 241p, £25-00, ISSN 0067-4826. At one level this scholarly and meticulous study introduces us to the Willington neighbourhood in Bedfordshire. Based on Dorothy Jamieson’s careful transcription of its manorial court rolls,...

Richard Stone explains that the natural landscape can be a resource for anyone exploring local topography. The idea for researching this topic came while reading Oliver Rackham’s excellent Trees and Woodland in the British Landscape. Calculations based on woodland recorded in Domesday Book revealed my home county of Staffordshire, with...