Galway is a county in the West of Ireland located in the Connacht region. With the Atlantic Ocean on one side, the mountains of Connemara to the north and the vibrant city of Galway in the middle, this county provides rich and numerous tales of smugglers, ancient ruins, eccentric scientists, disappearing lakes and wandering bards. Here are 10 fascinating facts on this enigmatic and beautiful county.

1.

Galway might be the second largest county in Ireland, have the second largest lake in Ireland in Lough Corrib and have the shortest river in Ireland, the Corrib, but the city and county and its people have been to the forefront of Ireland’s history and culture for centuries.

2.

The city of Galway is today a vibrant bustling urban settlement with a history going back to the 13th century and the remnants to show for it. Fourteen merchant families of the fifteenth century brought trade and prosperity to the town and left us Lynch’s Castle and St Nicholas’ Collegiate church as their legacy. The reputation of the city was such that in the fifteenth century Christopher Columbus came to visit and pray in St Nicholas’s. It was Cromwellian soldiers who labelled families such as the Lunches and the Martins ‘the Tribes’ and they were not being complimentary. Today Galway proudly calls itself ‘The City of the Tribes’.

3.

The county of Galway offers by contrast a rural tranquillity where the Atlantic washes the coastline and in Connemara, with its bogs, lakes and mountains, the Connemara ponies lazily look out over stone walls. In the east of the county the disappearing lakes intrigue geologists and lakes with artificial islands or crannogs are of interest to archaeologists.

4.

The Aran Islands at the mouth of Galway Bay have a landscape more in common with the barren Burren of Co Clare. On these three islands the Irish heritage of storytelling in the Irish language was preserved long after it had disappeared elsewhere in Ireland. In the late 19th century people like W. B Yeats, and Lady Gregory found inspiration from their simple way of life of the islanders, and their fluent lilting spoken Irish. From their experiences on the island the Celtic Literary Revival movement began. At Lady Gregory’s home at Coole Park near Gort, playwrights such as Yeat’s, Millington Synge, O’Casey and Lady Gregory herself, found a peaceful place to work on plays set in Ireland and about Irish people. These plays were then performed at the theatre founded by the movement in 1904, and located in Dublin: The Abbey Theatre. The visual arts also benefited from this revival of Celtic heritage with St Brendan’s Cathedral in Loughrea becoming almost an art gallery for Celtic revival stained glass windows and art work.

5.

Today the culture and heritage of Galway is kept alive through the county’s variety of festivals, old and new, which fill the summer calendar. From the racing of Galway hookers at Kinvara, to extolling the virtues of oysters and recognising the best films Ireland has to offer, the heritage of the past and present thrives in every corner of Galway.

6.

Two passions of the people of Galway are horses and Gaelic games. From horse fairs, horse racing and fox hunting a traditional love of horses is obvious. There is a passion for the Gaelic games of hurling and Gaelic football with the maroon and white clad faithful living in hope of a repeat of the 1960s three in a row All Ireland Gaelic football wins, when the Sam Maguire Cup came west.

7.

Singers from Bing Crosby to Ed Sheeran have sung about Galway, the former crooning about ‘Galway Bay’ and the Ireland of yesteryear and the latter praising the ‘Galway Girl’ about which there is not one, but two modern songs.

8.

On the subject of Galway girls, one who made history was Alice Perry who, in 1904, was the first woman in Britain or Ireland to be awarded an engineering degree.

9.

Galway has played its part in the history of Ireland. The little known battle of Knockdoe, when Irish, Anglo Normans and mercenary soldiers from every part of Ireland, fought along side each other and against each other in the battle which took place on a hillside near Tuam on a summer’s day in 1504 and brought an end to the reign of Gaelic lords in the west. There were dark days in 1882 when Galway hit the international headlines for murderous deeds. Even Queen Victoria had an opinion on the Maamtrasna Murders. During the struggle for Irish independence the Irish Volunteers of Galway heeded the call of their Dublin leaders and rose out in force on that Easter Monday in 1916, the only part of Ireland other than Dublin, to do so. Galway and its people even play a small part in the stories of the Titanic and Napoleon Bonaparte.

10.

From the ancient fort of Dun Aengus, perched on a cliff edge to the twentieth century Galway Cathedral which dominates the city skyline, the built heritage of Galway tells a story. The ruined abbeys of Ross Errily and Abbeyknockmoy, were abandoned by their monks and today only cawing crows remain. Kylemore Abbey’s story begins as a manor house, to convent to visitor attraction.

Although sometimes second to other counties, Galway and its people have made important contributions to the history, culture and heritage of Ireland.

Merrion and Booterstown is one of the most fascinating, as well as one of the most affluent and interesting areas of south Dublin, a prime residential spot. But it also has an equally fascinating history, going back to the middle ages, a history that’s often been overlooked. Here are 10 facts about this fascinating district.

1.

The first railway in Ireland opened between Westland Row, Dublin, and Dunleary in 1834. It was also the first commuter rail line in the world. When the line opened, there was a station at Merrion, which opened and closed four times before finally shutting in 1935. Williamstown also had a station but it only lasted a short time, until 1841. The present Sydney Parade station is in Merrion, while Booterstown station has been much improved since it reopened in 1975.

2.

Williamstown is the village that was moved from one side of the Rock Road to the other. In 1906 and 1907, Blackrock College was in the middle of a big expansion. The houses and pubs of Williamstown were on the Blackrock College side of the main Rock Road, so they were all demolished. The houses were rebuilt, along with one pub, on the opposite side of the road. The pub has long since gone, but the houses are still there.

3.

Booterstown was once entirely agricultural, renowned for its rich farming land. Its original name derived from the produce created, Butterstown, and this name lasted until the end of the 18th century. In those days, virtually the only building in the district was Booterstown Castle, which was incorporated into St Mary’s house, built in the 18th century and still there.

4.

The original Roman Catholic chapel or Mass House in Booterstown was built in 1686, while the parish dates even further back, to 1616. The present Church of the Assumption on Booterstown Avenue was built close by this site in the early 19th century and opened in 1813, so that it’ s one of the oldest Catholic church sites in Ireland. The church of Our Lady, Queen of Peace, on the Merrion Road, is far newer, having opened in 1953, eventually becoming a parish in its own right. The then Catholic Archibishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid, Insisted that the new church should have a fake round tower built beside it. The new church replaced the so- called ‘tin church’ that had been opened in 1940. During the Second World War, local people were able to grow fruit and vegetables on allotments beside the church.

5.

The Rock Road, which is the main road through Williamstown and Booterstown, is one of the five oldest roads in the country. It was originally called the Slíghe Chuluan, and linked Tara in Co Meath, the seat of the high kings of Ireland, to what is now Co Wicklow. The road was constructed about 2, 000 years ago. Nowadays, not only is the Rock Road one of the oldest in Ireland, but it’s also one of the busiest, with huge volumes of traffic every day.

6.

The Old Punch Bowl, at the foot of Booterstown Avenue, is the oldest pub in the district, dating back to 1779. Gleeson’s pub, also in Booterstown Avenue, was once Murphy’s traditional pub and grocery store. It was bought in 1954 by Frank Gleeson and the latest expansion by the Gleeson family on the site is a boutique hotel. The Merrion Inn, on the main road at Booterstown, was burned down in 2012, but was rebuilt and reopened the following year.

7.

Merrion has long had an insecure existence, as many parts of it are incorrectly claimed by Sandymount. Seamus Heaney, the world famous poet who died in 2013, lived for many years on the Strand Road in Merrion, and he added to this myth by always saying that he lived in Sandymount.

8.

Leon Ó Broin, who for many years was the Secretary of the Department of Posts & Telegraphs, as well as being a well- known writer, was the man who pushed hardest in the 1950s for Ireland to get its own television service. It started in 1962 and is now part of RTÉ. He lived for many years in Booterstown Avenue and his son, Eimear, became an orchestral conductor with the RTÉ orchestras.

9.

French missionaries founded what eventually became Blackrock College, in 1860. The college went on to become one of the most prestigious- and expensive- fee paying secondary schools in Ireland. Many students went on to become well-known, such as Bob Geldof, founder of the Boomtown Rats. The college is also renowned for sports, especially for rugby, having produced many Irish rugby stars. Blackrock College still has a Catholic ethos, while St Andrew’s College, which moved to Booterstown in 1973, is a co-educational day and boarding school, noted for its international ethos. It has students from some 40 countries around the world.

10.

One of the world’s greatest tenors, Count John McCormack, who had been born in humble circumstances in Athlone, spent the last years of his life, during the second world war, in an elaborate house, Glena, on the Rock Road in Booterstown. He died there in 1945.

Cumbria has only existed since 1974 when the counties of Cumberland and Westmorland were brought together under a local government act of 1972. Cumbria is the second largest county in England with an area of 6,768 sq km. Cumbria is exceptional in that there are three distinct types of terrain in the county. There is the flat marshy land of the Solway Plain, with the coastal towns of Barrow, Millom, Workington, Whitehaven, Maryport and Silloth.

Inland to the east there are the fells, valleys and lakes of the English Lake District with its three ‘English Munroes’ (mountains over 3000ft or 914.4m) of Skiddaw, Helvellyn and Scafell Pike. Further east of this mountainous area are the rolling hills of the Eden Valley, fine for dairy farming, winter grazing for the Lakeland sheep and building castles near rivers in Norman times.

1. Carlisle, the only city in Cumbria, once had a ship canal

This was not a narrow boat canal like the majority of canals in the UK. The ship canal, officially opened in March 1823, was to be 11½ miles (18.4km) long, 54ft (16.5m) wide and 8ft 6in (2.6m) deep. It was to have a total of 8 locks, including the sea lock. Each lock was to be 18ft 3in (5.6m) wide and 78ft (24m) long. Seagoing sailing ships up to 110 tons were built in the city and although the canal had a relatively short life (closing in 1853 to be replaced by a railway) it enabled the modernisation of industry in the city by reducing the cost of coal by a factor of four.

2. A monument to the ‘Bishop of Barf’

As one travels north from Keswick on the A66, the steep slate scree slope of a small mountain called Barf is seen to the left with a large white painted rock standing near the top of the scree. This is the Bishop of Barf, a memorial to a foolish wager. In 1783 the newly appointed Bishop of Derry, now Londonderry, was in the area and stayed at the Swan hotel in Thornthwaite (now unfortunately closed). He wagered that he would ride his horse up the side of Barf and onwards to the summit of Lord’s Seat (the adjacent hill). Unfortunately, on attempting this feat, his horse fell on reaching the height of Bishop Rock, killing both horse and rider. To commemorate this rather foolhardy enterprise the rock was painted white by patrons of the Swan, who maintain the Bishop in his pristine white coat to this very day. Since the hotel closed local villagers have continued this tradition. The Bishop was laid to rest at the base of the mountain, now marked by the white painted rock known as the Bishop’s Clerk. The fee paid to patrons painting the rock was set at one shilling and a quart of ale.

3. Edward I’s death monument

From AD 794 Scotland suffered continuous attacks from the Vikings which extended down into England. By the early 10th century Britain was partitioned into Alba (Scotland) and England. Athelstan of England decided there should only be one ruler and invaded Alba, the start of a 700 year conflict between the two great powers. The Solway to the west of Carlisle became a regular crossing point for invading armies. Edward 1 of England was remorseless in his attacks on the Scots gaining the nom de plume ‘Hammer of the Scots’ over many years of battle. In 1307 he returned to the north intent on fording the Solway at the ‘Sul Wath’ (Wath is the old name for a Ford) at Burgh By Sands, five miles west of Carlisle. But it was not to be. While preparing for his latest campaign he spent five months at Lanercost Priory as he was in poor health with dysentery, but he did not improve. He made his way to Burgh by Sands where he rested further but to no avail. He died whilst his attendants were raising him to give him food. A monument to his memory was built by Henry Howard in 1685 which stands to this day on Burgh Marsh.

4. Skiddaw beacons

An easily accessible mountain Skiddaw, with its broad rounded summit, was an important beacon station in years gone by with two beacons to be maintained. It was Macaulay in the last century who wrote a patriotic poem which described how the news of the sighting of the Spanish Armada was passed from beacon to beacon until the whole country was warned. The last two lines read as follows:-

“Til Skiddaw saw the fire that burned on Gaunt’s embattled pile, And the red glare from Skiddaw roused the burghers of Carlisle.”

The Armada, Thomas Babington Macaulay

Now research indicates that ‘Gaunt’s embattled pile’ is the hill in the middle of Lancaster. It is most unlikely that a beacon in Lancaster could have been seen from Skiddaw and much more likely that the message followed the coast from Lancaster to Beacon Hill, Barrow then on to Workington by Black Combe, Muncaster, Boothill and St Bees Head. The glow from Workington across the Solway Plain would be the signal to put the torch to Skiddaw’s two beacons.

5. Weather Lore – The Borrowdale Sop

The Borrowdale Sop is a small cloud that rises at times at the Head of Borrowdale, near Piers Ghyll. Gradually growing larger it floats away down the Derwent valley over Styhead Tarn. If it goes over towards the Vale of St John the weather will continue to be fine, but if it takes the direction of Langdale, rain will follow within the next twenty four hours.

6. Salvage from the Hougoumont

Allonby is a coastal village which still retains much of its original character. Allonby has a long sandy beach, with fine views across the Solway Estuary to the mountains of Southern Scotland. There was great excitement in the village in 1903 when the barque ‘Hougoumont’ ran aground there. No lives were lost but part of the ship’s cargo was scattered all over the shore. The villagers mounted a ‘salvage operation’. The crates contained tins of salmon, peaches and pears but were unlabelled. The only way to tell which was which was by shaking them; if the contents moved, it was fruit. A good time, and a few good meals, were had by all. This was at a time when there was much poverty in the area. Echoes of ‘Whisky Galore’?

7. The Parting stone and William Wordsworth

The inscribed stone which stands just off the path, a short distance east of Grisedale Tarn (above Grasmere) marks the spot where William bade goodbye to his brother John for the last time. Unfortunately, shortly after this last parting, John was to perish in the loss of his ship, the East Indiaman, the Earl of Abergavenny. On Friday night, 5 February 1805, the ship was wrecked on The Shambles, off the Portland Bill, through the incompetency of the pilot. Wordsworth records this sad happening in a poem of lament, composed at the parting stone. There follows a short excerpt:

Verses 1 and 3:-

“The sheep boy whistled loud and lo! That instant, startled by the shock, the buzzard mounted from the rock – Deliberate and slow: Lord of the air, he took his flight:

Oh! Could he on that woeful night – Have lent his wing, my brother dear, For one poor moment’s space to thee – And all that struggled with the sea – When safety was so near.

Here we did stop and here look round, While each into his self descends,

For that last thought of parting friends – That is not to be found….”

8. Long Meg and her daughters

East of Penrith near Little Salkeld, are Long Meg and her Daughters,a Bronze Age stone circle, the sixth biggest example known from this part of north-western Europe.Maybe we are lucky that they are still there as Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Lacy of nearby Salkeld Hall was once infamous for attempting to blow up the stones with gunpowder. However, commencement of the work coincided with a violent thunderstorm, which was interpreted by the workers as a supernatural warning and they refused to continue the work, thereafter Colonel Lacy had a change of heart. 

However Colonel Lacy is responsible for a more modern visitor attraction. Lacy’s caves are man-made caves, originally created as a decorative folly in the 1800s. They consist of five chambers carved out of the sandstone rocks directly above the River Eden at Glassonby, to the north of Little Salkeld.

9. Silica Brickworks near Wythop Mill 

The visitor walking the remote track past Wythop Hall towards Beck Wythop may wonder at the signs of past industrial activity presented by the remains of the old silica brick works. This was an ill-fated venture to produce fire bricks from the local quartz rock. A share prospectus to raise £120,000 was floated in 1932 and the building of the works provided work for 50 men over a two year period. The plant included kilns, a very tall chimney and a crusher were duly completed with an overhead cableway being commenced to link the crusher with the quarry. Meanwhile the kilns were fired up and about 50 tons of bricks produced in the first few days. Alas that was all that was ever produced! On the next firing the kilns were somehow overheated and they all collapsed. This was rather fortunate for the instigators of the venture as it turned out there were no workable reserves of quartz in the area. No local money was involved. People the author has spoken with locally maintain that everyone, including the directors, knew the venture was not viable and that it was an example of a swindle known as ‘share puffing’. The works have since been pulled down and all that remains are the foundations of the plant and, in the forest, the plinths for the proposed cableway.

10. Origins of the quartz cross on the summit plateau of Blencathra

There are two crosses of white quartz rock set into the ground on the summit plateau between Blencathra and Atkinson Pike. The larger of these was built as a labour of love over many years by Harold Robinson of Threlkeld. Harold, who died in 1988 aged 80, climbed Blencathra sometimes twice a day, each time carrying a stone for the cross. The stone came from the lead mine at Threlkeld where the Robinson’s worked. It was built in memory of Mr Straughan, a great friend of Harold’s, who was killed in active service in 1942. In civilian life Mr Straughan was the gamekeeper at Skiddaw House. Harold was a dedicated walker and fell runner. According to his brother, Sid, he preferred walking to using public transport. He regularly walked to Maryport and back, some 40 miles. The second smaller cross was built later by persons unknown using stones robbed from the larger cross.

The city of Bristol is, for reasons I have not yet properly deduced, a very special place for stories. The land itself seems to ooze with them. They crawl out of the muddy banks of the Avon, or they crouch in the caves along the gorge, muttering filth to the climbers and the gulls. Below are five Bristol tales that you might call ‘mysteries’—reason being that the phenomena there described remain shrouded in discussion.

Bristolians do not always find themselves agreeing as to exactly where the known ends and the unknown begins. Indeed, the debates around a few of these particular particulars have grown rather nasty from time to time. Now, I certainly don’t want to make any of the controversies worse, or get myself into trouble with this or that faction. All I say is, these are my top 5 Bristol head-scratchers.

Is the door of The Hatchet covered in human skin?

Back in the 1970s the aptly named Hatchet Pub on Frogmore St was always full of bikers (or greasers as they were known then). It was before my time of course, but I am told the place was a real ‘no go’ area. There were punch-ups galore, and if it was bar room brawls you were after you would have had to look no further to find some rollicking examples of the form.

In previous centuries the Hatchet was frequented by the gnarliest pirates in all of Bristol, which of course means the gnarliest pirates in the entire world. The persistent rumour is that the door of the Hatchet is covered in human skin. The skin is meant to have been flayed off pirates by some other pirates and then used to upholster the door. Whether this was done as a warning or simply to make use of a very durable material that happened to be going spare is not recorded. I did, of course, inspect the door, but one only encounters thick black exterior paint. One of the wizened old regulars, a chap called Dewayne Knoggin, offered a theory as to the reason why no one has had a mind to chip away at the paint to look if there is indeed a layer or two of leathery old story under there: ‘On the way in they needs a drink and the way out they’s too pissed!’ Mr Knoggin came up with this theory in jest, but I suspect that it is quite true.

Is there a man-eating reptile living in the waterways of Bristol?

Folks have laughed at Jolyon Rey for long enough. We all know the story of how the bus driver first sighted the croc in his wing mirror as he was driving over the Bedminster roundabout. People like to imagine he screeched to a halt and jumped about out waving his arms, but in fact he calmly continued his route until he found a safe place to stop and hail the police. In fact, the man that has acted with commendable sanity at every turn, even volunteering himself for drug tests to prove that he wasn’t on the wacky stuff at the time of the siting.

Perhaps Mr Rey would have been taken seriously if the next siting hadn’t turned out to be a hoax. The problem was compounded by the fact that the police rocked up at Snuff Mills clad in full riot clobber. The images of them poking around in shrubberies with their truncheons looking for an errant crocodile produced such a deluge of mirth that the force suspended the search to protect its reputation.

Experts said that due to the large volume of underground tunnels and waterways that run beneath Bristol, it would be possible for a large reptile to stay hidden. It could survive, argued biologists, on a diet of fish and waterfowl. Still, the most of the city still considered the story nothing but a laughing matter.

When it comes to the photographs, I have to admit that I dismissed them at first because of their extreme similarity to logs. However, we should consider this impression from an evolutionary perspective. The crocodilian family has survived for 80 million years because of their camouflage. They have evolved to look like logs, so it’s hardly surprising that when we look at one, we often think that it looks a lot like a log.

In the summer of 2017 a pair of water engineers were doing some routine work at Chew Valley Reservoir when suddenly they spotted, sunbathing on the concrete bank, what looked like a baby alligator or crocodile. The RSPCA were called, and the beast was given over to an expert handler. The boffins soon identified the little beast as a Caiman, which is neither crocodile nor alligator but rather another species belong to the ancient order of the crocodilians. It is bizarre to me that some people still consider this beast a joke, or even a mystery. To me the thing is now a plain fact: where there is a baby, it stands to reason there must be a mother and a father. Bristol now has a man-eating reptile problem, and all we can do is snigger.

What was the ‘Coronation Chicken’?

Folk did not always believe in the Coronation Chicken (CC) either, but it eventually made itself impossible to disbelieve. It viciously attacked hundreds of people over a period of perhaps 20 years, from the late 1980s until sometime in the early noughties. For those who don’t know it, this beast was a huge, wild cock that roamed Bedminster at night. No one knew where CC roosted, but it would often attack solitary walkers walking along Coronation Road. Because these people were alone and usually drunk, no one believed them. It is not known why the chicken attacked, although having heard a few first hand accounts it seems likely to me that these assaults were actually a string of muggings. Think about it: drunk people are often eating chips or a kebab. If you run toward them, squawking and flapping your wings, or if you jump out of tree and claw at their hats with your sharp talons, they tend to drop their food and run. Then you can eat the food. Simple. Eventually the evidence piled up, and there were just so many people from Bedminster arriving home with scratches and peck marks that they could no longer be explained away as evidence of trysts with overenthusiastic lovers. Some say that a bedmo resident’s group hired a vigilante hunter to kill the bird, and eventually had thing served up at a street party on Raleigh Road. They made CC into Coronation Chicken (how could they not) and the thing was so large that it filled over 200 tasty sandwiches. Others, of course, claim that the beast is still very much on the loose.

How did the rock slide get slidy?

For those who don’t know it, the rock slide is giant face of flat stone up by the suspension bridge that lies at a convenient angle to slide down. Of course, all day every day the thing is choca with sliding children, and the odd adult who goes down is shocked at the speed and danger of it. The mysterious thing is that while there is a kind of channel that has been worn smooth, everywhere else (where the rock is in its original condition) is too coarse for sliding.

Now, it is obvious the slide is made for kids by kids, but then children don’t have access to industrial floor sanders or whatever else it would take to carve out a slidy channel from coarse rock. In fact, my old mum says that it was already slidy in the 50s when she was a babber. The conclusion is obvious: at some point in history there were some children who heroically scraped and bumped their way down a bad slide. These children (Edwardian? Medieval? Roman???) ripped their pants and scraped their backsides to start the process of slidification. The mystery is how these pioneers could have been so selflessly forward thinking—not something kids are particularly famed for.

Interested in this puzzle, I went up to the slide and tried to talk to some of the sliders about it. They were prepared to discuss which clothing types had the fastest top speeds, the various ways of connecting to fellow sliders fore and aft to make a train, how many goes it is possible to get out of ‘one more go’, and a multitude of other points relating to form and technique. None, however, seemed at all interested in the mysterious origins of the slide itself. Eventually a little ginger boy with a sympathetic look on his face came up to me, shaking his head and saying ‘It’s just for fun mister, it’s just for fun…’

What makes the ‘Hummadruz’?

It is a noise that drives people to madness. It is a noise that alienates people from their communities. No one knows where it comes from, or if it really exists. It is the Bristol mystery that eventually brought curious investigators flocking from all over the world. They call it The Hummadruz.

The mysterious hum was noticed as far back as the 18th century, when naturalist Gilbert White reported hearing it on the downs: ‘Any person would suppose that a large swarm of bees was in motion and playing about his head.’ In the 19th century the phenomenon even enjoyed a period of citywide acceptance, and was believed to be the sound of the world spinning. In more modern times, a group formed to represent the hearers and defend them against charges of insanity. This has group managed to get the hum talked about, and a few national papers have reported on it. It was the Bristolian dialect itself, which has a particular sense of humour, that named the hum the ‘hummadruz’. The group accepted the name, in the hope that their city might accept them in return, and even took to referring to themselves as hummers. Their goal has always been to prove the existence of the hummadruz and locate its source. So far many have tried but no one theory has won out. Here is a potted history of some of the best attempts.

Those investigations with a bent toward conspiracy theory often trace the sound to Filton Aerodrome. However, British Aerospace has never ever let anyone investigate the site and so the thesis has been impossible to confirm or deny. This, of course, makes it all the more alluring.

Windy New Age types commonly ascribe the hummadruz to ley energy, pointing out that to the north west of Bristol lies a point of convergence of two great ley lines: the Malvern Ley running south from Worcestershire meets the ‘Perpetual Choirs’ line, which of course runs SE to NW, starting at Stonehenge, passing through the Lansdown camp in Charlcombe, and presumably moving on to somewhere pretty mystical in Wales.

A slightly more wacky theory, favoured by most of the scientific establishment, is that the hummadruz is the cumulative sound of thousands upon thousands of mating calls. The male midshipman fish lets out a low drone when searching for a mate. The fish are incredibly adaptable, but are particularly fond of underground caverns and caves. Their courtship call is famously loud, and the sounds that both sexes emit during intercourse are louder still. What is more, the fish mate pretty much continuously during their mating season, which comprises around nine tenths of the year.

The most recent theory, and I have to say my personal favourite, is authored by two scientists from Bordeaux. The theory they cooked up relates to high-pressure waves continually beating at the floor of the Severn estuary. These high-pressure waves turn into seismic waves that travel through the land itself, and when they get to Bristol they meet a city that is pretty much hollow underneath, due to the incredible volume of underground tunnels, caverns and caves that exist beneath our feet. The seismic waves then reverberate in these voluminous spaces, vibrating the city above.

Now, I am aware that some of you are not at all fond of the tune, but you have to admit that this theory in itself is pretty sweet: that Bristol, the actual town, all the buildings and everything they are built on, is one gert speaker with the bass turned up too loud.

Local history is a fascinating topic but it can often seem overwhelming when you are a beginner. Whether you are trying to piece together your family tree or starting your research for writing a local history book you are likely to have similar questions. Where should you start your searches? Who is the best person to talk to about that unusual local landmark? How on earth do you write up your research when you have finished?

Here at The History Press, we are passionate about local history and have worked with many brilliant local historians and writers over the years. We asked a few of them to share how they first got interested in the topic of local history (some answers may surprise you!), what the most important things to remember are and their top tips for success.

Samantha Bird

For me, I have always had an interest in local history. As a child my grandparents would often tell my stories of their childhood and about the local area in which they lived and I would find these tales fascinating. I also grew up in a small village which has a strong sense of community and as the years have gone by I have learnt an awful lot about the area that I live in, partly from the older people who again have told me stories of ‘days gone by’. I am convinced that my everyday surroundings are deeply rooted in history, there are many historic buildings within the village, and this is confirmed from having studied history academically.

It was from my academic studies that I was drawn to Stepney. I needed a topic for my Masters Thesis and through general reading on London in the Second World War came across the fact that Stepney was one of the worst hit areas and therefore pretty much destroyed during the war and then rebuilt in the subsequent years that followed culminating in the Festival of Britain where the area was showcased for its achievements in architecture. Having looked at the area during the Second World War and the years that followed, I then turned my attention to what happened prior to this. It is well documented that Stepney was the territory for Jack the Ripper but from those grim days to the Second World War intrigued me. I followed my intrigue through an academic level and this grew into my PhD thesis and my first book Stepney: Profile of a London Borough from the Outbreak of the First World War to the Festival of Britain, 1914-1951.

I think that the most important part of being a local history writer is your personal interest in the area you are writing about. If you have no interest in it, why will others? You are in the privileged position, generally, of writing about the reader’s home and will be informing them about the history of their day-to-day surroundings. You want to convey your love and interest in the history of their surroundings to your reader.

The challenge is always to find something really interesting to say about the area you are looking at. You want to be different, say something new, have found a new piece of evidence in the archives that no one else has found and therefore shed new light on the area you write about.

Books by Samantha Bird

Alan Hall

I’ve always been interested in writing. I had some interest in the history of my locality (Bradford) but it was only when I joined Bradford Civic Society a few years ago that I really had my eyes opened to what a fascinating city I’d lived in for most of my life. And from then on I just wanted to find out more and more about the history of the place.

I think it’s important to be able to write in an engaging manner, otherwise people are not going to read beyond the first couple of pages. It’s also important to offer comments as to why things happened, rather than just presenting a stark factual chronicle with no analysis. Also a local history should not be a PR exercise for a town or city – dark deeds and failures must be included as well as triumphs and noble acts. And no place exists in isolation; one might be writing an essentially local history, but it will always be part of a broader context – regional, national, even international – and this needs acknowledging.

I found that it paid to make friends with the custodians of local archives and local studies collections, also with members of local history groups and with old people who had relevant memorabilia and long memories. Otherwise one ends up relying too heavily on secondary sources and thus in danger of producing a ‘cut-and-paste’ history rather than something new and fresh.

Books by Alan Hall

Jill Evans

I can’t remember exactly when I became interested in local history – not at school, certainly, because we didn’t do any local history at all in those days (the 70s). I suppose I really got into it when I moved to a small town in Gloucestershire and got a job in a museum there. I soon discovered that it was exciting to find out what had happened right on my own doorstep, either in relation to the ‘big events’ (wars, religious upheaval, etc.), or just through learning about the everyday lives of people who had walked down the same streets as me. This feeling only increased when I became a professional family history researcher, searching for the most part for quite ordinary people, whose lives were of great significance to their ancestors. 

Concerning skills, I think they are the same for local history as for history in general – to be able to do thorough research and be objective. A local historian may have to be particularly objective when considering some types of evidence. That fascinating story someone told you in the pub may not be based on any documentary evidence, so check your facts.

As for special challenges for the local historian, it depends on the theme of your research, but I would say that it gets increasingly difficult to find surviving documentary evidence the further back in time you try to go, probably more so than it is for historians researching national events.

Books by Jill Evans

Robert Edwards

In the early 1960s as a young lad I got a job as a paperboy delivering newspapers and magazines to shops and businesses in Liverpool city centre. One of the places I delivered to was the Central Library, a place that most young boys wouldn’t normally visit. Walking around the library on a rainy days, whilst waiting for the rain to go off so I could deliver the rest of my publications, I stumbled across the enormous amount of reference books and archive material the library held. It wasn’t long before I joined and started spending my spare time studying the available information about the city and its past. I became fascinated by the history of the city and how it had developed and this passion and thirst for local knowledge has remained with me all my life.

In later years I began to collect old photographs of the city and to research the history behind the images from the city engineers department, this led me to create a local history website. I wanted to share the research I had conducted with as many people as possible and the internet seemed the ideal vehicle to do this, that was until someone suggested publishing my work, so why not I thought. The History Press – as the UK’s largest local and specialist independent history book publisher – seemed the logical publisher to contact, and so I did. A year or so on from my first contact I had written and had published my first book Liverpool in the 1950s.

The process was not without its difficulties and I hope this article will in some way help future authors.

For most local historians the idea of writing a history book, can be a daunting prospect, research is time consuming but very necessary. Illustrated books such as the Britain in Old Photographs publications from The History Press provide their own challenges. Photographs need to be of the best quality available – not always easy with archive material – and of a substantial enough resolution for them to be reproduced in a book.

Next comes the issue of copyright and obtaining permission to use images. I try to source my images, wherever possible, from one or two locations; local library archives are often a good starting point. Sourcing images in this way usually means that you can get permission to use them easily and with the minimum amount of effort. Using the internet isn’t a good idea, you are highly unlikely to get the quality images you need and provenance is hard to verify. So, having obtained the best quality photographs you can find you need to ensure that the accompanying text is 100% correct, even library captions on photographs can be wrong. It is also worth remembering that you are the expert, so you are the one that needs to ensure that locations, dates and descriptions are accurate, the publisher can proof read and ensure everything else is fine, but they won’t pick up on errors like dates or locations of photographs. Readers however will find your mistakes, and you can do nothing about them when the book has hit the shelves. So take your time, read and re-read your material and ensure your facts are accurate.

It can take a year to collate all the information for your book but was well worthwhile in the end. Hone your skills as a writer.

• Be methodical, keep records of all the material you collect
• Always think of the context in which you are using the material
• Don’t assume that only the most glamorous history is worth knowing about
• Decide on a layout for your chapters, chronological or by location or by theme
• Provide as much information as possible
• Include little known facts

The end result is worth the effort and when you see positive comments on websites selling your book, receive emails and correspondence from readers who have enjoyed your publication, it makes all that effort worthwhile.

Happy writing!

Books by Robert Edwards

Margaret Drinkall

I have always been interested in local history where ever I have lived. Having moved around quite a bit in my life I have always tried to find out more about the area, who lived there and how things have changed over the years. Often this can be done by checking out old pictures, which often sparks off ideas for a book. I think having a sound knowledge about a place is needed to write about it, so I like to do plenty of research before I begin. That has involved reading history books by other authors, checking out online websites and visiting the archives and local studies departments. When writing the book on Yorkshire Villains, I spent a week visiting York Archives and the Prison. I had access to the Calendar of Felons, which was a not of all the cases that would be tried at the Assize Court from all over Yorkshire.

One of the biggest challenges is to find out what information is available in the local archives. Once I found out about the Access to Archives website, this became much easier. That website tells you about artefacts kept in all the Archives in the country. For example, when writing the Rotherham Workhouse book, I found an almost complete set of Guardian Minutes in Rotherham, whereas the Sheffield Workhouse records were almost completely destroyed by bombing in World War II.

Books by Margaret Drinkall

John Dearing

I originally became involved as a by-product of other interests and the first substantial work I did was when editing a church magazine in 1978 and decided to serialise its history.

With local history you are for the most part addressing a non-academic market and the key is ensuring that the history is ‘a good story’ – so it needs to be readable, lively and fun where appropriate, without sacrificing accuracy and good scholarship.

Local history books are quite often collections of old photos with surrounding text. In my experience the best approach is to collect the photos first and then frame the captions round them. When writing Reading Pubs I collected about three times as much verbiage as I needed then adapted it to the photos as I was able to get my hands on – a much more long-winded approach!

Books by John Dearing

Penny Legg

I think I have always been interested in local history. I have lived in a number of places and have always tried to find out what made it ‘tick’ so to speak. The best way to do that is to look to the past. Without an understanding of the people and events in the past, you cannot understand the present as you do not know how it was shaped.

When I was researching my first book Folklore of Hampshire I delved into areas that did not, ultimately, end up in the final draft but they were useful in my subsequent work. I think the ability to see outside the box is a useful skill for a local history writer.If you read something that is not directly useful to what you are writing about now, but might be later, it is handy to be able to recognise it as something for later use.

The ability to negotiate is a handy skill for a local history writer. This is because, more and more often, those who have the information you need for a book charge for it. With no image budget, for example, this makes life challenging. Large museums often have exactly what you want but if you cannot afford to pay their prices, the book is the poorer for it.

There is also the question of ‘it’s mine!’ This refers to some historians who will not allow access to or allow reproduction of their work if they know you are researching for a commercial book. I have had historians ask for large amounts of money to use their research or to look at their papers. Or, more often, they ignore requests for access. This is frustrating.

All research is time consuming but it can be great fun. I remember the thrill of finding that a north of England newspaper covered a grisly nineteenth century Southampton murder in minute detail. It gave the case much more coverage than any of the local newspapers and this was a surprise. It just goes to show that local can often mean national.

Researching local history had led me to read some really interesting books. My favourite of all is the 1926 epic by A Smith: A Complete History of the Lives and Robberies of the Most Notorious Highwaymen, Footpads, Shoplifts and Cheats of Both Sexes, Wherein Their most Secret and Barbarous Murders, Unparalleled Robberies, Notorious Thefts and Unheard-of Cheats are set in a true Light and exposed to Public View, for the Common Benefit of Mankind (George Routledge & Sons). This did just what it said at length on the cover and is absolutely brilliant to read.

A tip to readers: local history societies are useful to join or be affiliated to. They often have the really local knowledge or have members with long memories! They do not always share their information with non-members though.

Books by Penny Legg

John Van der Kiste

Having been interested in general British history almost ever since I learnt to read, I found my fascination with local history in particular developed after I left school and went to work in Plymouth Public Libraries as a trainee prior to studying Librarianship full-time at Ealing Technical College. While working in the Department of Local Studies I had ample opportunity to examine source materials, including bookstock, local papers, illustrations and maps, and it helped to bring the subject alive for me.

Few cities in Britain suffered more severely during the blitz in the Second World War than Plymouth, and like everyone else in the department, I found it quite exciting to see just how much it had been altered in the course of post-war reconstruction. Plymouth is a curious mix of old and new – the modern city, which is still undergoing major redevelopment in places, side by side with the old Barbican waterside area which thanks to the indefatigable efforts of the Old Plymouth Society has still retained some of its old Elizabethan (i.e late Tudor) buildings and cobbled streets, as a result of facing down a few developers and local councillors who would have rather had it otherwise. We were also fortunate in having a City Librarian, the late Bill Best Harris, who was passionate about local history and eager to encourage his staff to share his enthusiasm in the subject.

As regards the need for particular skills, I think the most important are the obvious ones. Get to know what you can about the subject through reading, being aware of the standard works on the subject, and trawling every available source – books, newspapers, photographs past and present, online sources, and exploring the area on foot for yourself; have the basic ability to organise your material in an interesting way, whether your ultimate aim is a book, an article, a blog, a talk to a local group or society, or anything else; and above all, have a passion for your subject which enables you to communicate it to others.

Books by John Van der Kiste

Summer Strevens

My passion for history stems back to my early childhood – I have my mother to thank for that – and I have always revelled in mental immersion in the past. Submergence in the past and history of the places where I have lived has always proved an absolute delight, and I’ve had plenty of choice. Having moved home and region often, averaging 3 years in each of my fifteen addresses this should give you an idea of the variety of locals I have been fortunate enough to enjoy as well as my approximate age!

Themes, context and an open mind are key when researching local history – I really have to rein in my enthusiasm once I get the research bit between my teeth (and maybe throttle back on the cliches!) but it is imperative to get your facts straight – you wouldn’t take a substandard Victoria sponge cake to the local fete, take the same pride and respect with regard to the past of the community you are researching, particularly if it’s your local community; their forebears have built and established the place where you live and call home. And acknowledge that many will already have an abiding and deep interest in their local history themselves, so be prepared for some possible rebukes and corrections, but above all else enjoy what you write!

Books by Summer Strevens

Paul Sullivan

Why do I write about local history? All paths lead back to JRR Tolkien. I was part of a generation that waded through Lord of the Rings as a rite of passage. The thing that struck me most about the book was its sense of history and place. Tolkien had mapped out an entire mythology and was able to use it as the backdrop to the main events of the book. That inspired me to find out about the folklore, legends and mythology on my own doorstep, a quest aided enormously by two indispensable books, Katherine Briggs’ Dictionary of Fairies (still my favourite book on the toilet shelf), and the AA/Readers Digest Folklore, Myths and Legends of Britain, a showcase of editorial genius.

It’s a small hop from this kind of 1970s male, teen-friendly appeal to a full-blown interest in all aspects of local history.

I’m a bit of a lone wolf by instinct, so spending hours alone with on- and offline archives is my idea of a good night out. Stumbling upon an unlooked-for gem, or finally unearthing that ‘Eureka!’ piece of info are the kinds of thrills that other some adventurers get from extreme caving or bungee jumping. One of the things I love about history research is that it enables me to rewrite my knowledge of familiar places. Knowledge of local history lets you time travel. For example, you can walk down the main thoroughfares of Oxford in a choice of ten centuries – each time-span has in-your-face buildings, features and stories, giving you first-hand experience of living history.

I suppose that’s one of the fortunes of being in Oxford, a city that has managed to keep so much of its physical history intact. In many towns you need to accompany your time travelling with a book of old prints and photos, and a vivid imagination, to work out how the place used to look before the shopping precinct/municipal car park was dumped on it. But that challenge has its own rewards too and finding some ‘old bits’ amongst the modern sprawl (in places such as my original hometown of Grimsby) is always exciting.

The only real frustrations I’ve bashed my head against in local history are the dead ends. Questions that refuse to give answers. It can be like watching two episodes of a three-part TV series and missing the last one. (That analogy doesn’t work quite so well in this age of BBC iPlayer and other TV catch-up systems but you know what I mean).

All you can do in this situation is try your best. Get to know your local archivists and experts. Talk to vicars about church history and parish registers. Seek out long-established shop keepers and grill them. See if there are any likely-looking old locals in the pubs. It depends on which era you’re interested on – the old guy propping up the bar is unlikely to fill in those gaps about the Jacobite uprising in 1749, but he might know something about the post-Second World War depression in 1949 or the post-50s agricultural revolution. Go to folk clubs too and see what you can find out about the local traditions scene – it’s amazing how many leads you can pick up there. You might even learn a decent tune or two.

This is all essential groundwork. Which is why a professed lone wolf like me, totally addled after too much beer-aided research in pubs and clubs, gets such pleasure from recharging batteries in the archives. If you don’t know which archives to look at, the best starting point is the internet. You’re not going to find all the answers online, but you’ll unearth some leads. There’s an increasingly huge amount of digital stuff out there, but at some point you’re going to have to follow the yellow brick road that leads to the printed stuff in the archives.

What you do with all the info you gather is up to you. But it’s an ongoing fact that people are interested in their home patch, so getting the stuff published is doing everyone a favour. Personally, l began by penning history stuff for BBC radio in the 1990s, when my precocious folklore archive was recognised by an eagle-eyed producer. I provided notes and recorded songs (I moonlight as a musician, hence those subliminal folk club messages earlier in this article) for a tongue-in-cheek ‘What’s on this week in the wacky world of British traditions’ slot in a Radio 5 magazine programme. It later shifted to Radio 2 and was farmed out to some newspapers and magazines, by which time I’d written what I thought would be the last word on the subject, the folklore and local history compendium Maypoles, Martyrs and Mayhem, penned in conjunction with the radio show’s producer Quentin Cooper and published in 1994.

The spark refused to die, though, and I’ve been writing local history books ever since. I love it because it’s the history of ordinary people, their tribulations, triumphs and obsessions. It provides that rich back canvas of deeper meaning that Tolkien valued so dearly. Without that backdrop there’s a danger of encountering the world as nothing more than identikit High Streets, snooping cameras and garish people shouting on TV screens. Without its history, the present is two-dimensional. The strange thing is, I can’t get on with Tolkien books at all now. For all sorts of reasons. But hats off to the man who got me on this trail in the first place.

Books by Paul Sullivan