External Events and Announcements
As you will appreciate, many external events may change their details at short notice. We therefore ask you to contact organisations directly for up to date information about whether their events are going ahead as advertised. Please note that the RHC cannot provide further information on these events and announcements, nor be held responsible for any inaccuracies in what is posted below.
Liverpool and South West Lancashire Family History Society Talks
Tuesday 20 May at 7.30pm Angel Meadow – an infamous Manchester slum with Joe
O’Neill.
Tuesday 17 June 7.30pm Leigh in the 1940s and 1950s – war then austerity with
Michael Caine
The above talks are arranged by the Leigh group of the society and are held at Leigh
Town Hall, Market Street WN7 1DY. For more information, contact the Leigh group website
Mere Brow Local History Society Talks
Wednesday 21 May Orm - who gave his name to Ormskirk - and a short history of
Ormskirk withJean Gidman
Wednesday 18 June The Fleetwood Heskeths from Meols Hall with Stephen Taylor
Talks take place on the 2nd Wednesday of the month at Mere Brow Village Hall, 65
The Gravel, Mere Brow, PR4 6JX. Doors open at 7.00pm, talks start at 7.30pm.
Visitors £2.50 per talk, Annual membership £10.
Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society Zoom Talk
Wednesday 11 June 3.00pm Stephen Spencer will give a Zoom talk on Hoghton Tower, following on from an article he wrote in Transactions 114. The society awarded a research grant to Jane Smith for her work on the north entrance to the tower, where it is believed a chapel predating 1565 once stood. The talk reports on the findings of that project.
For more information, contact landcasociety@gmail.com
Ormskirk and District Family History Society Talks
Wednesday 25 June Ormskirk Library – facilities for Family/Local
History Research by Elizabeth Russ
Wednesday 23 July Down my Way – Emma Vickers (1894-1977),
Burscough’s Community Hero – her songs, stories and humour by
Peter& Barbara Snape
Wednesday 27 August The Lathom Almonry by Dot Broady-Hawkes
Meetings are held monthly on the 4th Wednesday of each month (except December) at the Guide HQ, Moorgate, Ormskirk, L39 4RU
Talks start at 7.30pm. Non-members are welcome (£2 admission). The full programme of talks and other events can be found on the odfhs website
Association for Industrial Archaeology Conference
|
Historic Society of Lancashire & Cheshire Online Talk
One-place studies – their place in the historical landscape by Janet
Barrie.
Janet Barrie, the chair of the Society for One-Place Studies, researches the
people and activities associated with the Springhill area of Rossendale. In this talk, originally given in September 2024, she examines the principles of conducting a one-place study. Available now on the Society's website
Working Class Movement Library Exhibition
To mark the 40th anniversary of the miners’ strike, the Working Class Movement
Library is hosting an exhibition The collectors, the cameraman, the poets and the pits until 25 July.
The artefacts on display are all taken from the library’s own collections. The photos
were taken by John Harris and were framed to show the dispute from the miners’
point of view. The poems were written by women, some of them the wives of miners.
Thus the exhibition gives the unique perspective of people who were there.
Venue: 51 Crescent, Salford M5 4WX.
Weaving History Podcasts
A brand new research podcast, Weaving History, has launched. It uncovers a forgotten piece of Lancashire’s working-class history and was created by two Lancaster University Alumni from the English and Creative Writing department. Combining Victorian poetry and interviews with leading experts, Weaving History tells the story of the Cotton Famine in a fresh and accessible way. It connects the cotton weaving industry in North-West England to the American Civil War, the fight against slavery, and Victorian literature. All six episodes are available to stream, so Listen to Weaving History episodes
Lancashire Archives and Local History
We're delighted to let you know that Lancashire Archives and Local History now has a Facebook page!
You can also follow Lancashire Archives on X
Also, back issues of the new Lancashire local history magazine 'Archives' are now available to purchase in all Lancashire County Council libraries and at Lancashire Archives, priced at £3. If you'd like to receive a copy by post, please contact the Archives at archives@lancashire.gov.uk.
If you have an idea you’d like to discuss, please contact archives@lancashire.gov.uk to discuss your suggestion.
Rookhow Open Days
Rookhow is a Historic Grade II* listed 1725 Quaker Meeting House in the heart of the Rusland Valley. Set in 12 wooded acres between Coniston and Lake Windermere, open days are held every 1st and 3rd Friday of the month.
Filmed Production of 400-Year-Old Play By Shakespeare's Contemporary Lady Mary Wroth
A 400-year-old play, which captures how the delights and difficulties of courtship have changed (or not), is now freely available on film thanks to Professor Alison Findlay, Professor of Renaissance Drama in the Department of English Literature and Creative Writing at Lancaster University and Chair of the British Shakespeare Association.
‘Love’s Victory’, by Shakespeare’s contemporary Lady Mary Wroth, was written c.1617-1619 and is the earliest surviving romantic comedy by an Englishwoman.
The performance is the result of nearly 30 years of work by Professor Alison Findlay. Her research project, ‘Shakespeare and His Sisters’ was set up to explore the works of Shakespeare and his female contemporary dramatists in site-specific locations. The 2022 production, directed by Emma Rucastle and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and Lancaster University, was designed to recreate the conditions of an early household performance. It was staged at the author’s home, Penshurst Place in Kent, in 2022.
Bob Dobson, Heritage Books
Bob Dobson has been dealing in second-hand Lancashire interest books for over 50 years and due to retirement is selling stock at half the catalogued price. From Lancashire Acts of Parliament to dialect poetry and old picture postcards, there is much to interest the local and family historian. To receive a catalogue, please email Bob at landypublishing@yahoo.co.uk. He can also be contacted on 01253 886103 or 0774 9838 444 (text preferred).
The Leyland Historical Society
Meetings have resumed in the Shield Room, Banqueting Suite, South Ribble Civic Centre, West Paddock, Leyland, PR25 1DH. £5 for visitors (but new members are always welcome). Visit The Leyland Historical Society to find out more.
British Association for Local History
The British Association for Local History has a new feature, the Ten Minute Talk, which has proved so popular that there are now ten talks and presentations available on their website, on subjects as diverse as nineteenth-century small businesses, marriage in early-modern Suffolk, construction of a Cambridge gas holder or the ‘Spanish’ influenza epidemic of 1918-19, so please do take a look.
Local and Family History Resources
Zoe Lawson of the Lancashire Local History Federation has kindly gathered a list of helpful resources. The following is a selection of free websites.
Genealogy Sites
Ancestry and Find my past are well known and offer a 14-day free trial.
Family search is the largest site to offer free access to records from old censuses, birth registers, etc. It includes the International Genealogical Index (IGI) which has parish records for several countries including Australia, Canada and the USA, as well as the UK.
Genuki doesn’t hold records but contains a vast amount of historical information that will help you find the records you need from anywhere in the UK.
Jewish genealogy website.
Births, Marriages and Deaths. The Register Offices in the county of Lancashire hold the original records of births, marriages and deaths back to the start of civil registration in 1837. The county's family history societies are collaborating with the local registration services to make the indexes to these records freely searchable at Lancashire BMD.
Free access to records of births, marriages and deaths for the whole of the UK is available at Free BMD, Note that not all records have yet been transcribed.
Archived catalogues are always a good starting point and many online catalogue entries provide significant detail, though not a substitute for looking at the original document when archives offices re-open.
Record Society of Lancashire and Cheshire
The Record Society of Lancashire and Cheshire seeks to promote understanding of, and public interest in, Lancashire and Cheshire’s past, through the publication of editions of historical documents. For an annual subscription of £20, members receive each year a hardback volume and an invitation to a historical lecture.
Women In Street Names
Women in Street Names is a project to highlight streets named after women, for the British Federation of Women Graduates, and Harper Adams University. It was launched at the Women’s Library at the LSE in July 2019. Carrie de Silva from Harper Adams explains that the aim of the project is “to highlight streets named after women, (and to highlight how few there are!), and to remember such women as are commemorated. Outputs will be a booklet of mini-biographies of women named and a paper to consider political and social culturalisation, conscious and unconscious, through the names we see in our streets”. Information is requested from across the UK, and from villages, towns and cities. More obscure royalty will be of interest (the collection won’t be including Queen Victoria or Queen Elizabeth II). Obscure or less well-known saints are also welcome. Of particular interest will be little-known local women who nevertheless made a large contribution to their area. Carrie will welcome the name on its own, even if the sender knows nothing else about the named woman. Please forward the street name with district, town, city, village, etc with the woman’s main achievement or area of operation (if you know it) to: Carrie de Silva: cdesilva@harper-adams.ac.uk. (07583 144622).
Cumbria Prehistory Resource
Cumberland & Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society (CWAAS) have produced a learning resource to help teachers in the county’s schools support the teaching of prehistory, from the Stone Age to the Iron Age, within the History curriculum. The pack was produced with input from archaeological experts and feedback from teachers and learners after a pilot session in a Maryport school. It comprises an introductory slide show; in-school activities (covering topics like artefacts, burials, food and the home); on-site activity suggestions (using Cumbrian sites, artefacts and museums); background information and signposts to further information.
The resource pack is free and can be downloaded from the Cumbria Past website.
Or search Cumbria Past in Google, then open the tab Grants, and look under Schools Area.
If you would like to submit an article for this page or our newsletter, please contact us: rhc@lancaster.ac.uk 01524 593770.