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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  • Local and Community History Month

    Article

    The aim of the month is to increase awareness of local history, promote history in general to the local community and encourage all members of the community to participate. Activities happen across the UK and include trips, library exhibitions and local lectures. It is a great way for groups to...

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  • Download Local History Month Posters

    Article

    Download this year's Local History Month Posters via the link at the bottom of the page. Everyone lives in an area of rich local heritage, even if they don’t know it yet. May is the time to investigate, explore and discover the history of the world immediately around you. Find...

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  • Public History Courses

    Article

    What is Public History? Public History is about understanding how the past has affected, and is used by, the present. It brings history to life and helps us understand the relationship between the past and the public at present. Public History can involve history in the community, and a Public...

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  • Exploring local sources

    Article

    Tim Lomas was correct when he said, in his article in the Summer 2019 edition of The Historian, that historians can see much more in medieval documents than the scribes intended.  Lay manors in Bedfordshire are a good example. Eggington manor, in the south-west, was part of a larger estate and held...

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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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  • 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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  • Crowdsourcing the heritage of the Second World War

    Article

    Stuart Lee, Ylva Berglund Prytz and Matthew Kidd introduce an innovative project to capture objects and the memories they hold.

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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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  • Robert Branford: a faithful servant of Southwark

    Article

    Stephen Bourne explains how he pieced together the story of Robert Branford, the earliest known mixed-race officer in the Metropolitan Police, who faithfully served the people of Southwark in the Victorian era.

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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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  • 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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  • Croydon’s Tudor and Stuart inns

    Article

    Trevor James offers a case study in how to define and identify inns as part of the historic urban environment. Croydon’s Tudor and Stuart inns Croydon’s Tudor and Stuart inns had a remarkable and formative effect on its urban landscape, an effect which still endures into modern times. Topographers and...

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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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  • 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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  • The experience of Bilston in the cholera epidemic of 1831–32

    Article

    Alannah Tomkins introduces a well-chronicled early example of how a local community dealt with cholera. In September 1832 James Holmes, the governor of the workhouse at Bilston in Staffordshire wrote a letter to the salaried parish overseer of Uttoxeter. The initial impetus for the letter came from the two parishes’ shared interest...

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  • Disease and healthcare on the Isle of Man

    Article

    Caroline Smith provides a perspective, past and present, of the experiences of epidemics on the Isle of Man.  In recent times health has been at the forefront of everyone’s minds. Epidemics and pandemics are not new, but the Covid-19 outbreak is probably the first to have such a noticeable effect...

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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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  • Building St James's spire: Louth's guilds and popular piety in the later middle ages

    Article

    Medieval historian Dr Claire Kennan continued our Virtual Branch series with a local history talk on the building of St James's spire, Louth.  In her talk Kennan traces the important role that Louth's major guilds of the Blessed Virgin Mary and Holy Trinity played in the building of the St James’s spire. Throughout the...

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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: 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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