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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  • My Favourite History Place - Barnard Castle

    Article

    Paula Kitching invites us to look at Barnard Castle with new eyes. Over the summer there was a lot of talk about Barnard Castle – I won’t go into the politics, but it did make me reflect on the actual town of Barnard Castle. Growing up, it was one of...

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  • My Favourite History Place: A Short History of Brill

    Article

    In this article Josephine Glover discusses the long history of her ‘favourite history place’, the Buckinghamshire village of Brill. She explains how there has been a human settlement there since Mesolithic times. Using various fragments of evidence, she pieces together the extent to which the village was important to early...

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  • My Favourite History Place: Edinburgh's Royal Mile

    Article

    Maggie Wilson whets our appetite for exploration of Edinburgh’s Royal Mile. Edinburgh’s Royal Mile runs between the Castle and Holyrood Palace. In addition to these and other well-known sites such as St Giles Cathedral, John Knox’s house, the Canongate Tolbooth and Canongate Kirk, and stories of Deacon Brodie, David Hume, James Boswell, Robert Burns and, obviously,...

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  • My Favourite History Place: Lord Street, Southport

    Article

    Trevor James introduces an international dimension to local history, revealing how a future French Emperor interpreted his affection for Southport’s Lord Street into the extensive redesign of Parisian streets.

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  • My Favourite History Place: The Beguinage at Bruges

    Article

    Richard Stone introduces us to a quiet neighbourhood in Bruges which has played its part in the development of women’s independence.  Close to the Minnewaterpark, on the fringe of the bustling historic centre of Bruges, with its medieval buildings and atmospheric cobbled streets, the Beguinage is a tranquil haven. Cross the...

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  • My Favourite History Place: The Guild Chapel

    Article

    Trevor James highlights a very important building to visit and celebrate during the HA's Annual Conference in Stratford-upon-Avon in May 2018.

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  • Newspaper Collection

    Article

    Richard Heaton's collection of newspapers consists of over 800 free searchable extracts and full transcripts of English and Irish, Georgian and early Victorian Regional newspapers. It is one the largest free collections on the web full of unique material bringing you one step closer to your ancestors and their world,...

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  • Norfolk and Suffolk Churches: The Domesday Record

    Article

    Norfolk and Suffolk Churches: The Domesday Record, David Butcher, Poppyland Publishing, 2019, 369p, £14-95. ISBN 9781909796614. This is a very specialist book with a seemingly rather local potential audience. However, those who, in the distant past, were much influenced by H. C. Darby’s examination of various aspects of Domesday Geography...

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  • Out and About in Derry/Londonderry

    Article

    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.

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  • Out and About in Hull’s Old Town

    Article

    Sylvia Usher explores a hidden gem in the East Riding of Yorkshire. Wenceslaus Hollar’s map of seventeenth century Hull can be a street guide for the Old Town even today. Modern Hull sprawls along the Humber estuary with residential areas fanning out for three miles or more. Hull as it was...

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  • Out and About in Oxford

    Article

    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....

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  • Out and About in South London

    Article

    In an unusual Out and About feature, the Young Historian Local History Senior Prize winner Flora Wilton Tregear shows us what her local area can tell us about the history of public health. Taking the DLR out from Lewisham you pass through Deptford Bridge station towards Greenwich. Here my father...

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  • Out and About in Upper Weardale

    Article

    Tony Fox introduces us to two battlefields and the work of the Battlefields Trust. Stanhope takes its name from the ‘stony valley’ in which it sits. It is the most significant town in beautiful Upper Weardale. Like many towns in this area Stanhope’s growth accelerated in the nineteenth century as...

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  • Out and About in ‘The most Loyal and Ancient City of Taunton’

    Article

    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...

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  • Out and About: Kennington and the Elephant and Castle

    Article

    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...

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  • Out and About: exploring Lancaster’s ‘glocal’ history online and on foot

    Article

    The city of Lancaster has many important historical landmarks from both the medieval period and the time of the Industrial Revolution. In this article Sunita Abraham and Christopher Donaldson describe the thinking behind a guided historical tour they have devised for the city. This involves engaging with modern technology, placing Lancaster within a...

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  • Real Lives: Charlie Mitchell, Tuke's top model

    Article

    Our series ‘Real Lives’ seeks to put the story of the ordinary person into our great historical narrative. We are all part of the rich fabric of the communities in which we live and we are affected to greater and lesser degrees by the big events that happen on a daily...

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  • Real Lives: Commonwealth War Graves Commission memorial: Edward George Keeling

    Article

    Trevor James introduces a victim of an earlier pandemic. As we explore churchyards and appreciate the range of memorials that are revealed, they convey a variety of emotions and other messages. Sometimes they still contain quite unexpected surprises.  The single Commonwealth War Graves Commission memorial in the relatively remote rural Staffordshire village...

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  • Real Lives: The Russian hermit of Cornwall’s caves

    Article

    Our series ‘Real Lives’ seeks to put the story of the ordinary person into our great historical narrative. We are all part of the rich fabric of the communities in which we live and we are affected to greater and lesser degrees by the big events that happen on a daily...

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  • Recent Advances in the Study of Surnames

    Article

    Many surnames have a straightforward meaning. It is obvious that names such as Smith, Wright and Turner come from occupations; that names such as Pickering or York are from the names of places; and that Roberts, Robertson, Robson and Robinson are derived from the same personal name. It is not...

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