Beware Family History! In the early stages of my research, nearly fifty years ago, long, long before computers, even before the majority of parish registers found their way into archives offices, when appointments had...
The following names were inscribed on gravestones at Whitfield Tabernacle, Kingswood. As sent to me, provenance and date unknown. These are the known people whose gravestones are set to be relocated” THOMAS BRITTON 1893...
This book has been written as a companion volume to ‘Killed in a Coalpit – Lives of the Kingswood Miners’. It was scheduled for publication in 2020 but became a victim of Covid 19...
In the summer of 1788 Henry Watts sued William Luton in respect of Rights of Common on Rodway Hill, Mangotsfield, Gloucestershire. The court heard that in 1754 the estate was let to Luton’s father...
The people of medieval Bristol were so closely linked to a German port in the Baltic Sea that the two populations shared a unique type of worm living in their guts. The bizarre discovery...
I became interested in the Peninsular War period through the TV series “Sharpe”. This is predominately a male tale of derring-do but when visiting the National Army Museum in London (www.nam.ac.uk) I discovered the...
My great great grandfather Henry FRAY was so afraid of being incarcerated in Keynsham Workhouse that he fatally cut his throat with a razor in 1900. “The Workhouse” cast a terrible shadow over the...
Bristol was still reeling from the aftermath of the Reform Riots of 1831 with the condemned rioters in gaol awaiting their tragic fate, when a new peril appeared over the horizon: the Cholera Morbus,...
“The Budgetts”, originally written about forty years ago, was my first attempt at the story of a family and therefore I call it part of my “Juvenilia”. It arose out of a conversation with...
Find me a scientist was a challenge issued by my late brother Colin Pillinger. At Christmas I would send him a story about our numerous ancestors but the nearest approximation to science I came...
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.
My life on the Ocean Wave: “Some like Betty Grable….”
02 September 2026
Miracles take a little longer: Dorothy Vinter and me.
29 August 2026
