For over a hundred years until it closed in 1981, Henry Tate’s flagship sugar refinery at Love Lane dominated the Liverpool skyline – and was the beating heart of the local community. More than 10,000 workers passed through the doors of the factory during its lifetime, with some families counting four or even five generations […]
Uncovering Jersey’s wartime resistance
79 years after the occupation of the Channel Islands ended, novelist and journalist Kate Thompson writes about visiting Jersey, where she uncovered an island full of stories about wartime resistance. I fell in love with Jersey on a trip to the Jersey Festival of Words in September 2019. I defy anyone who visits not to. […]
Edinburgh’s New Town and the 200-year history of 10 Scotland Street
Leslie Hills looks back at what intrigued her about her house, and how it set her off on a decades-long search for the history of 10 Scotland Street in Edinburgh’s New Town — the subject of her newly-published book. When finally I paid off the mortgage on my home, number 10 Scotland Street, a Georgian […]
Researching rural Devon in the 1920s and 1930s
You’d think setting your interwar years novel where you live, in rural Devon, would make research easier. Not necessarily so, as Vanessa de Haan found out; the lives of ordinary people in the 1920s and 1930s hadn’t seemed worth recording. Walking the country lanes and talking to people was an important part of her research, […]
Piccadilly: The Circus at the Heart of London by Midge Gillies
There’s nowhere quite like Piccadilly Circus. From the moment they emerge, blinking from the underground station, visitors to Piccadilly Circus face a sensory onslaught. Its streets and alleyways merge into an intoxicating thoroughfare, with the power to propel an individual onwards to adventure, romance, or something more sinister. Ever since its iconic Eros statue appeared […]
Delving into the history of a house
It’s a good week for anyone interested in the history of houses; a new series of A House Through Time begins, and the paperback edition of the book of the same name is out. If you’re inspired to delve into house history to find out more about the building you live in, or you’re a […]
A House Through Time by Melanie Backe-Hansen and David Olusoga
In recent years house histories have become the new frontier of popular, participatory history. People, many of whom have already embarked upon that great adventure of genealogical research, and who have encountered their ancestors in the archives and uncovered family secrets, are now turning to the secrets contained within the four walls of their homes […]
The living history of traditional folk songs
Voices from the past can still be heard today through the living social history of songs passed down through generations, whether they’re still sung by tradition-bearers, recorded by folk song enthusiasts or printed in broadsides or books, says Fiona Mountain. She tells Historia how the story of a murder committed over 200 years ago lives […]