Local & Community

In the UK millions of people volunteer to support activities in their local area and communities. The preservation of historical places, artefacts and sites is a valuable part of that community volunteering, while the research and promotion of local history to the communities that it can affect is an important way of connecting people to history and to each other. In this section articles and information will be included on local history activities such as ‘Local History Month’, the activities and concerns of local history societies, and community action and engagement projects around particular aspects of history.

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  • The use of personal heritage in education

    Multipage Article

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

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  • Together on Tape?

    Article

    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...

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  • Tracing Your Ancestors in Lunatic Asylums: a Guide for Family Historians

    Article

    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...

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  • Untold Lives - Sharing Stories from the Past

    Article

    Untold Live - British Library History Blog The British Library's collections contain stories of people's lives worldwide, from the dawn of history to the present day. They are told through the written word, images, audio-visual and digital materials. The Untold Lives blog shares those stories, providing fascinating and unusual insights...

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  • Victoria County History

    Article

    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,...

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  • Willington and the Mowbrays: After the Peasants’ Revolt

    Article

    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,...

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  • Woodland in the East Staffordshire landscape

    Article

    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...

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