Bristol Women – Helen Blackburn, 1842-1903
It may seem strange to start with an obituary, but this is the way I first came across Helen, when I was filling in the background to our Irish holiday, April 2025. For Helen’s...
Irish Odyssey Day 6, Part 2. Valentia Island: The Slate Mines & Miss Helen Blackburn, Bristol suffragette.
This is one of those blogs which starts off with one subject and lands up with another, connected, but completely unexpected. Whilst I was drawn to the desolate beauty of the island, surrounded by...
The short sad story of Harriet Guest, once of Brislington
The Newgate Calendar of Prisoners, 1785-1845 contains a notice of Harriet’s crime, the theft of three silver spoons valued at 20 shillings (£1), a sum of course, far greater in value then than today....
Charmouth Tales: “All he did was sell Monmouth some fish……”
Only a few days back from Charmouth in Dorset, so I’m still demob-happy, not yet ready to contemplate the list of historical ideas I’ve got for future blogs in the dark days and long...
The Family Tree of a Jam Pan
Today, 7 August 2023, I made five pots of Strawberry Jam in the Jam Pan. My young man grows fruit at the allotment but don’t worry if you don’t do the same. Strawberries are...
Is Your Name Comet?
As my small band of followers will know I have a family connection with Outer Space. Way back in the days of yore I was idling through the Brislington parish registers when I spotted...
Finding Pollie Wells
In 1874 a young woman called Pollie Wells wrote to her brother Charlie at Southampton. Exactly a hundred years later I saved the letter from the flames – her niece, an old lady called...
‘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...
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...
About Me
I have been researching the social history of the West Country for 50+ 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.
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