Posts focused on specific locations (e.g., village, town, church). Locations and Parishes
Two Welsh-speaking children born illegitimate in rural Denbighshire, only twelve miles apart. Did they meet in the countryside or later in Wrexham? The story of Francis Owens Hughes and Mary Elizabeth Roberts spans farms, collieries, Canada, tragedy at Gresford, and a pocket watch that survived when its owner did not.
Britain’s first lager was brewed in Wrexham. From Victorian German founders and North Wales water to the Titanic, Khartoum, football chants and modern revival, this is the remarkable story of Wrexham Lager.
A thirteen-year-old boy in the 1881 census appears in the Oswestry workhouse at Morda, while his siblings were placed elsewhere. His story, and a visit to Llanfyllin, reveal how close this history really is.
What began as a short piece about my great-great-grandfather Thomas Edwards, a cabinet maker in Wrexham, soon became something much more. First mentioned in the newspapers in connection with keeping animals in unsanitary conditions, the story took an unexpected turn as I followed the records.
Tracing the family through the streets of Wrexham revealed a picture of everyday life in the Victorian and Edwardian years, a hardworking family raising children and building their lives. Along the way, it became clear that Thomas wasn’t the man responsible for those animals after all.
But the research uncovered far more than I expected, including a family secret that had remained hidden for a generation.
When I first started my family tree, I thought I was being careful—until I trusted a well-researched tree that quietly sent an entire branch in the wrong direction. Two first cousins, the same name, the same birth year, and the same village.
Read the blog to see how I untangled it—and what I learned along the way.
Born exactly one hundred years apart, my great-grandfather John Hinton and I entered two very different worlds. By setting his life alongside mine — from Victorian farm service to nurse training, from the Suez Canal to the Moon landing — this story explores how much changed between 1865 and 1965, and how much quietly stayed the same.
The Shoes on the Danube Bank memorial commemorates Jews who were murdered on this stretch of river during the winter of 1944–45. They were killed by members of the Arrow Cross Party, a Hungarian fascist militia operating during the final months of the Second World War.
Some parish registers offer little more than names and dates. Others, very occasionally, tell stories so vivid they feel almost intrusive. The burial register for Prees, Shropshire (1782–1799) records causes of death, burial locations within the churchyard, and — unusually — family relationships, even for adults. Together, they reveal lives, losses, and clerical honesty rarely preserved for this period.
A moving encounter with the World War I Ossuary at Passo Tonale, reminding me that history and sacrifice are never far from the places we travel for pleasure.
The Church of Notre-Dame-de-l’Assomption in Orgelet is a fortified 15th–17th-century church preserving a rare 17th-century clock mechanism, an unusually shaped tower with an octagonal belfry, and a remarkable 13th-century tiled pavement displayed inside. Together, these features make it one of the most historically layered landmarks in the Jura.
