My Booklets for Sale – Proceeds to Charity
To those, like me, who prefer to read from a hard copy, I still have a few of my booklets from the days when I photocopied and bound them for interested parties. They are...
‘No Place like Home’ – Clements & Hodgetts: a Family Story
Chapter 11 of my book, ‘Killed in a Coalpit’, about the lives of the Kingswood district colliers is entitled ‘A Young Hero – Edward Albert Powell’, who was known as Ted. At the age...
Alfred-Up-The Zoo
Whenever my Mum’s sister, (who we called Pem, never Auntie) arrived on her bi-annual visit from London, and her job at the Shepherd’s Bush Post Office, Mum, (Flo), my little brother, Colin, and me,...
A Trip to Hopewell Colliery, Forest of Dean
On 27 July 2022, my son Kevin took me for a grand day out to celebrate my 85th birthday. The venue chosen was the Hopewell Colliery at Coleford in the Forest of Dean. We...
My Pillinger Women: No. 3 Julia Pillinger
It will be no surprise if I say I am interested in those women who in days of yore, when it was doubly or trebly difficult, managed to have a life outside the domestic...
My Pillinger Women: No. 2 Amelia Pillinger (1835-1882)
In the present year, 2022, Amelia is number 3 in the top one-hundred girls’ names. Before we get to Amelia Pillinger let’s start with…two historical Amelias: The name first became popular when the German...
Killed in a Coalpit – revisited
I was recently contacted by Andrew Plaster, a fellow member of Bristol & Avon FHS who, via the Facebook Group (Bitton, Hanham, Longwell Green & Oldland Memories, (administered by Julie Johns) discovered a...
My Pillinger Women: No. 1 Hephzibah Day Pillinger
The first in my new series of my Pillinger women ancestors starting with Hephzibah Day Pillinger. When I began my family tree back in Palaeolithic times like most newbies I was guilty of racing...
‘WANTON WENCHES’ AND ‘INCORRIGIBLE ROGUES’ CHAPTER 3: The Bristol First Fleeters
The majority were young men all convicted by the Bristol courts for (usually) petty thefts committed in the city. Most had waited years in Newgate gaol, and suffered further imprisonment and hard labour in...
Fireside chatter: Are there still coal men?
We had a coal fire at home at 33 Victoria Park, Kingswood. (I was born in 1937, so I’m thinking of about 1945 onwards.) Dad had already left for work at the Gas Company...
About Me
I have been researching the social history of the West Country for 45 years. During this time I have collated information on a wide range of people living and working in the West Country including miners, ethnic minorities, petty criminals, sailors, tommies, benefactors, brassmakers and many more. The thing that I find amazing is that ordinary people always lived extraordinary lives. I hope you like my blog that brings together my lifetime of research.
