-
My Favourite History Place: The Chantry Chapel of St Mary on Wakefield Bridge
Historian feature
Wakefield Bridge Chapel, by the River Calder, is thought by many to be the finest of four bridge chantries, the others being Bradford-on-Avon, Derby and Rotherham. The chapel at Wakefield was originally founded and endowed by the people of Wakefield and district between 1342 and 1359.
In 1397 Edmund de Langley,...
My Favourite History Place: The Chantry Chapel of St Mary on Wakefield Bridge
-
My Favourite History Place - All Saint's Church, Harewood
Historian feature
Harewood House, a few miles north of Leeds, attracts many historically-minded visitors to enjoy the work of Adam, Chippendale and Capability Brown but to my mind the real treasures of Harewood lie elsewhere. After negotiating the payment booths take the path immediately on your right, leading to the redundant church...
My Favourite History Place - All Saint's Church, Harewood
-
My Favourite History Place: Mountfitchet Castle
Historian feature
In the first of an occasional series Alf Wilkinson, HA CPD Manager, explores Mountfitchet Castle, in Essex - his favourite history place.
As every schoolchild knows, William the Conqueror landed near Hastings in 1066, pursuing his claim to the throne of England. He was accompanied by the Pope's blessing, but...
My Favourite History Place: Mountfitchet Castle
-
My Favourite History Place - Nuneaton's Old Grammar School
Historian article
Near the centre of the largest town in Warwickshire, an oasis of calm encompasses the area of Nuneaton parish church, vicarage and Old Grammar School. Of the three buildings, the Old Grammar School may be the least impressive but its history is just as eventful. Nuneaton’s Boys’ Free Grammar School,...
My Favourite History Place - Nuneaton's Old Grammar School
-
My Favourite History Place - Sackville College, East Grinstead
Historian feature
Sackville College almshouse in East Grinstead, Sussex, was founded in 1609, by Robert Sackville, 2nd Earl of Dorset, when he wrote his will. He died 17 days later without seeing one stone laid, yet the College still stands, providing affordable accommodation for local elderly people of limited means. It is...
My Favourite History Place - Sackville College, East Grinstead
-
Herbert Art Gallery Coventry - History Centre
Visit
Herbert Art Gallery and Museum's brand new History Centre is a treasure trove of information on the history of Coventry and its citizens from medieval times to the present .The huge range of original documents includes books, maps, newspapers, electoral registers and building plans. Photographs, oral history, microfilms and internet sources...
Herbert Art Gallery Coventry - History Centre
-
Sharing The Past: Northamptonshire's Black History
Book Review
Northamptonshire Black History Association Pub 2008; ISBN:978 0 9557139 1 0; £12.95 [+£2.30 p and p] from: NBHA, Doddridge Centre, 109 St James Road, Northampton, NN5 5LD.
How fortunate Northamptonshire history teachers are! With the current emphasis on community cohesion and diversity in the New Secondary Curriculum, they are presented...
Sharing The Past: Northamptonshire's Black History
-
My Favourite History Place: David Pearse explores St Petersburg
Historian feature
If you want to understand Russian history from Peter the Great up to at least the 1917 Revolutions, you have to visit St Petersburg. Like Versailles, St Petersburg was built for an absolute monarch, on an unsuitable site, at the cost of many labourers' lives. Unlike Versailles, it was designed...
My Favourite History Place: David Pearse explores St Petersburg
-
Ruins in the woods: A case study of three historical ruins 'hidden' in the woodland of Derbyshire
Historian article
Ruined buildings shrouded in trees, masonry crumbling into the undergrowth. It sounds like the backdrop for an Indiana Jones movie, the sort of thing people trek across Central America or the wilds of Cambodia to find. But Britain has its own share of enigmatic relics. Three very different such historical...
Ruins in the woods: A case study of three historical ruins 'hidden' in the woodland of Derbyshire
-
Out and About: Kennington and the Elephant and Castle
Historian feature
The HA's very own Martin Hoare takes us on a tour of Kennington and Elephant and Castle, to some lesser-known gems that ought to be higher on the London tourist trail.
Over the years of working for the HA I’ve quite often used my lunch break to take walks around the areas...
Out and About: Kennington and the Elephant and Castle
-
Out and About in Wheathampstead
Historian feature
Dianne Payne examines the structural local history of Wheathampstead and provides a template for wider comparisons.
The rural village of Wheathampstead in Hertfordshire, situated about four miles from St Albans, lies on the River Lea. The village and surrounding land has a long history and in ancient times was owned by the...
Out and About in Wheathampstead
-
Out and About in ‘The most Loyal and Ancient City of Taunton’
Historian feature
The Somerset town of Taunton featured prominently in the highly significant political and religious conflicts of the seventeenth century. Isabella Peach examines Taunton’s role in these events and the impact they had on the town. Her article is based on her winning entry in the 2023 Young Historian Post-16 Local...
Out and About in ‘The most Loyal and Ancient City of Taunton’
-
Out and About in Derry/Londonderry
Historian feature
Jenni Hyde was out and about in Derry in 2016 and describes how the sights of the city tell the story of a history which is so much more than just the legacy of the Troubles.
Out and About in Derry/Londonderry
-
Out and about in Sheffield
Historian feature
This article was commissioned by the Sheffield Branch of the Historical Association in response to an editorial invitation for items of wide Local History interest to be submitted for publication. It is hoped that John Salt's insight will encourage members to visit Sheffield and also give them ideas on what...
Out and about in Sheffield
-
Out and about in Tamworth
Historian feature
Trevor James introduces the wider context in which Tamworth’s history has developed.
Modern-day visitors to Tamworth immediately observe its very extensive out-of-town shopping areas and industrial estates and then, in stark parallel, notice that the signage is welcoming them to the capital of historic Mercia. Investigating this conundrum is the...
Out and about in Tamworth
-
Terriers in India
Historian Article
Peter Stanley is working on the largely unexplored history of the thousands of British Territorial soldiers who served in India during the First World War using their letters and diaries. He is trying to discover what happened to these men when they returned to Britain. Did their service in India...
Terriers in India
-
Out and About in Oxford
Historian feature
The Sheffield Branch of the Historical Association is a very active one. In addition to our monthly meetings we organise a range of study visits, from one-day trips to longer residential tours in the UK and occasionally in mainland Europe. In recent years, these have included visits to Portsmouth, Lincoln and Newark, Newcastle and Northumberland, and the battlefields of Waterloo....
Out and About in Oxford
-
Out and About in Washington DC
Historian feature
Not everyone loves the capital of the United States. To Ulysses S Grant, it was a ‘pestilential swamp’; to novelist Gore Vidal, a ‘city of the dead’. It is true that Washington still has its problems. The District of Columbia has the highest crime rate in the United States, and the...
Out and About in Washington DC
-
Out and about in the East Yorkshire Wolds
Historian feature
East Yorkshire is a somewhat neglected area for touring. Yet, the villages in the chalk Wolds possess much charm and a lot of surprising history to reward those who would explore them. In my youth, I toured these villages many times both on foot and by bicycle. This route is...
Out and about in the East Yorkshire Wolds
-
Out and About in Runnymede
Historian feature
The Runnymede area is rich in historical associations. Nigel Saul looks at other places of interest near where King John gave his assent to the Charter in 1215.
The birthplace of our democratic heritage is a broad meadow on the banks of the lower Thames near the meeting-point between Surrey...
Out and About in Runnymede
-
Out and About in Madagascar
Historian feature
Madagascar is one of the world’s more intriguing destinations. If it is famous for anything – apart from sharing a name with a truly terrible film franchise – it is probably for its wildlife, much of which is found nowhere else. But whereas most people have at least an idea of...
Out and About in Madagascar
-
The River Don Engine
Article
Sarah Walters explores The River Don Engine - her favourite history place.
The River Don Engine, though strictly an object, is almost big enough to be labelled as a place in its own right. It certainly needs its own high-ceilinged museum annex and it is in this room that I...
The River Don Engine
-
Out and About on Uzbekistan’s Silk Road
Historian feature
“For lust of knowing what should not be known— We make the Golden Journey to Samarkand.”
So wrote poet James Elroy Flecker in 1913, who had perhaps an unduly romantic view of what motivated many of Uzbekistan’s earlier visitors. A more realistic explanation was proffered in the thirteenth century by the Persian...
Out and About on Uzbekistan’s Silk Road
-
J.L. Petit: Britain’s Lost Pre-Impressionist
Book review
J.L. Petit: Britain’s Lost Pre-Impressionist, Philip Modiano, RPS Publications, 122p. 2022, £20. ISBN 978-1-9164931-2-4.
Philip Modiano’s championing of prolific Victorian water-colourist and pioneering campaigner for the preservation of ancient buildings, Reverend John Louis Petit [1801-1868], continues to raise the profile of this neglected Staffordshire artist. His new book follows on...
J.L. Petit: Britain’s Lost Pre-Impressionist
-
Out and about in Glasgow
Historian feature
Glasgow's George Square statues -‘Through the looking glass'
History is often illumined by writers of genius but Glasgow did not produce a Zola, a Balzac, a Dickens or even an Arnold Bennet. We are, therefore, thrown back on looking at other manifestations of a powerful and wealthy city to augment...
Out and about in Glasgow
