(Continued from part one)
So it was, on Tuesday 11th June 1861 the train which had passed over the bridge less than an hour earlier fully laden, left Leamington Spa station ...
With today’s interpretation of the Health & Safety laws it is easy to forget the rather laxed attitude towards H&S that prevailed in times past. Unfortunately, this was an attitude ...
(Continued from part four)
In 1939 came the second world war. Jimmy was very busy taking workers to AP (Lockeed), Flavel’s, Tachbrook Aero, Ford’s and other factories. One day, two gunners came ...
(Continued from part one)
The family were chapel goers. They all went to the Wesley Chapel at Bishops Itchington. Years ago there were three chapels as well as the church, but there ...
Identifying ancestors who worked the canals can be problematic and researchers have found that canal boat ancestors may not have registered the births of their children, or even their marriages. ...
Frank Whittle was born in Earlsdon, Coventry, in 1907. His family moved to Leamington Spa where he attended Milverton School and then Leamington College for Boys. He worked in his ...
The steam roller is an 8 ton ‘C’ class roller built by Aveling & Porter Ltd of Rochester, Kent and supplied new to the Royal Borough of Leamington Spa in ...
Two cards were given to me by my neighbour, they’re part of a large collection of postcards, of local people.They’re photos from the late 1800s, some of them.
These postcards refer ...
The first new car registrations for 2017 come out in March, but this article takes us back to the very first vehicle registrations in Warwickshire in 1903.1
Although vehicles had been ...
We’re accustomed these days to the sad news of fatal car-accidents on a daily basis, but in 1899 petrol-driven internal-combustion vehicles had only recently been invented and were an uncommon ...
In part one, I discussed the background to the Suevic running aground off the Lizard and the account of a passenger, Warwickshire woman Mrs. Ireland.
When the ship first hit the ...
With Warwickshire having two locations that claim to be the centre of England, the old cross at Meriden and the former Midland Oak at Lillington, it is probably pretty safe ...
My earliest memory of Rootes was the annual visit to the pantomime at the Coventry Hippodrome with the other kids of Rootes workers. We all got a Christmas stocking of ...
Rugby is of course well known for its train station, and part of the reason for the town’s dramatic growth in the Victorian era is its status as an important ...
Local man sails away into the blue from Kent to Kettering (Tasmania). How a long weekend on a Thames sailing barge turned into the voyage of a lifetime on a ...
Near Hatton is a flight of 21 locks where the Grand Union Canal ascends 146 feet over a couple of miles. The original locks on the Warwick and Birmingham canal were ...
Drama! Excitement! Derring-do!
We take air travel pretty much for-granted nowadays, but it’s not so long since the exploits of magnificent men in their flying machines could capture the public’s imagination. ...
Henry James Stretton-Ward was born in Coventry in 1895. He was the son of James Ward (a lodging house keeper) and Florence Rose Squirrell (the eldest daughter of the Rev. ...
There’s a new exhibit in the Market Hall Museum in Warwick – a Victorian toy hansom cab that came from my great-grandfather. He built up a construction business in the ...
A local schoolmaster Mr Hassall mentions this station in his school logbook:
Jan. 15th 1892. The new books for the library to the worth of £4. 10. 0 arrived at Brandon ...
Warwickshire has many familiar images including Warwick Castle, Shakespeare’s Stratford, Rugby School to name but three. Another image surely still familiar to many residents, and which also acted as a ...
As a Warwickshire County Record Office volunteer, I have been sorting through and then cataloguing the late Roger Smith’s collection of photographs (PH1239) – transparencies mostly of Warwick, Leamington Spa, ...
Naturally, the changing industrial landscape of Coventry and Warwickshire means there are a number of car manufacturers who have fallen by the wayside over the years. This article sketches the ...