'I would set off, with some sense of what I might be looking for, and see what I stumbled across...' Is going for a walk a valid methodology for a historian? And if so, how much theory do you need to read before you start? Some thoughts in my latest blog post: manyheadedmonster.com/2026/02/10/i...

Yes, the 90s is now History... 🗃️

Privileged to be working with the archives of the Commercial Travellers' Benevolent Institution, charting its history from 1849 to the present. Such organisations provided critical financial and social support recorded through a rich bureaucracy. 🗃️ how-to-history.com/2025/12/31/f...

📣Bookings now open! 👉Celebrating 50 years of the Social History Society with our 'Festival of Social History' @ihr.bsky.social Panels, zine-making stall, tours, lunch, a roundtable, & keynote by Naomi Tadmor 📅 24 Apr 2026 💷 from £10 for members All welcome! socialhistory.org.uk/events/festi...

New month, new blogging, vlogging and social media prompt! For February we have #OnePlaceNetworks – an opportunity to explore networks involving people in our #OnePlaceStudies, who were linked by a variety of familial, financial, business, charitable, religious, recreational and other relationships.

If you want to stop this because the price is too high in terms of commuting misery, impact on the heritage buildings, and placing the local community in the shadow of another tall building, please object here: Here's our helpful Guide: bit.ly/4jLWsim #SaveLiverpoolStreetStation

This is such a facile argument. Sure, let's have a conversation about how universities should be funded. But let's also talk interest rates, debt that functions like an extra tax, repayment thresholds, and what that's actually doing to millions of young people who did everything they were told to do

my dad didn’t go to university and he was extremely happy to pay taxes for his four children to do so; and, indeed, for the doctors who treated him at Addenbrookes to have gone to university as well.

Researching the history of an organisation which in 1850 declared it would 'Undertake nothing that it cannot perform, and to perform everything that it undertakes’, which feels like excellent life advice. 🗃️

Excited to be speaking at the IHR Food History seminar on 12 February 5.30 pm to 6.30 pm. Book a place to hear about cheesemaking and women’s dominance of the dairy in early modern England. Online via Zoom so no real cheese this time I’m afraid.

Spoke to Shleagh Fogarty yesterday sbout why the Chancellor is wrong: our “student loan” system is not remotely fair. It’s regressive and embedding inter and intra generational wealth inequality. It’s not a loan system, it’s a bad grad tax in all but name. youtu.be/uOC6Arrf2us?...

This is a very useful thread. The government is touting this training as ‘the most ambitious training scheme since the launch of the Open University in 1971’. Which is insulting to the OU, quite frankly.

Excellent demonstration of the variations in early modern spelling. Four versions of William Hawkes (from the Posting Book ... for Staking Out of Foundations in the Runs of the City of London). #EarlyModern 🗃️

Antiquarianism, by Joe Saunders. Antiquarians have served an important part in the study of history over the last few hundred years, and their work has helped the development of the modern historical sciences. how-to-history.com/2026/01/28/a...

The Parish of St Saviour, Southwark: Information about Parishioners, from Various Sources, 1550 to 1650. Fantastic site with a huge amount of transcribed material. Example shown, Sewer Commission records. #LocalHistory #EarlyModern 🗃️ stsaviour.folger.edu/index.html

📣3 days to go until the deadline - we can't wait to see you for our 50th anniversary in Lancaster!

Today is #PloughMonday. Thomas Tusser called it one of the feasts 'belonging to the plough' that employers in #earlymodern England should never forget. Here I explore these holidays where work & play mingled: how the festive shaped #labour relations. ludicrushistories.wordpress.com/2026/01/12/f...

Today is Plough Monday, the first Monday after Epiphany, when agricultural labourers would start to plough the fields in preparation for sowing and planting crops. Hopefully the end result would be as beautiful as these fields, from a manuscript map of Hunsdon House, Herts, c1820 @bodleian.ox.ac.uk

This new blogpost from @ihr.bsky.social by Daisy Mansfield, a volunteer with our @vch-london.bsky.social project, currently working on the parish of St Anne #Soho looks at what we can learn abut the life of the area in the 18th century from the works of William Hogarth. 🗃️

This #MapMonday we're taking you back in time ⌛ We've just added over 9,000 out of copyright Ordnance Survey maps published in 1975 to our Map Images website. What did your neighbourhood look like fifty years ago? 🗺️ 🔗: maps.nls.uk/additions/#191 #MoreMaps

#ICYMI: Calling all BALH members! Join us on 29 January 2026 to have your say at our Special General Meeting. Find out more: www.balh.org.uk/event-balh-b... #WeAreLocalHistory #LocalHistoryForAll

Amazing new publication of Thomas Machell's 17th century 'Collections Towards a History and Topography of Westmorland' edited by Jane Platt. A fantastic source for study made freely available online by Cumberland & Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological society. 🗃️ cumbriapast.com/cgi-bin/cumb...

#ICYMI: Join us on 27 January to learn about how an Atlas of London in 1666 has been researched! This webinar is in collaboration with the Historic Towns Trust @historictownstrust.bsky.social Find out more: www.balh.org.uk/event-balh-r... #WeAreLocalHistory #LocalHistoryForAll

I know it feels a long way off, but for those of you who think your August is missing a little early modern crime...why not sign up for the University of Oxford's summer school? I promise it will be more fun and less grim than you may think! lifelong-learning.ox.ac.uk/courses/crim...

Join us on 2 May for a one-day conference all about the Yorkshire Dales! Find out more: www.balh.org.uk/yorkshire26 #WeAreLocalHistory #LocalHistoryForAll

Calling all BALH members! Join us on 29 January 2026 to have your say at our Special General Meeting. Find out more: www.balh.org.uk/event-balh-b... #WeAreLocalHistory #LocalHistoryForAll

Join us next month to learn about how an Atlas of London in 1666 has been researched! This webinar is in collaboration with the Historic Towns Trust @historictownstrust.bsky.social Find out more: www.balh.org.uk/event-balh-r... #WeAreLocalHistory #LocalHistoryForAll

Friendly Societies, by Joe Saunders. Prior to the development of government and employer health insurance and financial services, friendly or ‘benevolent’ societies were an important part of many people’s lives. how-to-history.com/2025/12/31/f...

Did medieval people buy each other Christmas gifts? New Year's Day was the main gifting day, but little is known about everyday people's present giving. Our project on London's customs records has uncovered a wealth of affordable items imported around this time: gloves and hats to toys and rattles🧵

#Skystorians #LocalHistory Join us early next year for three new 'Discovery Courses' covering maps, towns and buildings, and archaeology for local historians. Details in the link! @balhnews.bsky.social @oneplacestudies.bsky.social

Did Oliver Cromwell Really Ban Christmas? by Anna Cusack. In a word, no… there was a ban, but Parliament introduced it. A festive read about Christmas past! 🔔 how-to-history.com/2025/11/26/d...

Delighted to be continuing as a research assistant on the London on the Eve of the Great Fire project. To support the creation of this Atlas and Gazetteer of 1665-6 London then consider a donation to the project. @historictownstrust.bsky.social 🗃️ shop.historictownstrust.uk/product/donate

Animals of St James' Park, shown on Morgan's map of London, Westminster and Southwark (1682). Beautiful, but not-to-scale. Map free to view on Layers of London. 🗃️ www.layersoflondon.org/map/overlays...

We have a range of seasonal #History posts you can read to inform and entertain over the festive period, including: Did Oliver Cromwell Really Ban Christmas? how-to-history.com/2025/11/26/d...

With thanks to @balhnews.bsky.social for the invitation, it was a pleasure & an honour to give the 2025 Dymond Lecture last night. We flagged the #LocalHistory connections in the Railway Work, Life & Death project - particularly fitting in the #Railway200 year!

Submit a proposal to speak at the Social History Society conference in 2026! 🗃️

#TimeTravelAdvent #Day12. I think you all know that 'Bum-fodder' is one of my favourites! This chapter takes us onto the streets of London in early 1660 - and a fabulously scatological broadside ballad mocking the arse-end of the Republic's failed 'Rump Parliament'. #AHistoryOfEnglandIn25Poems 1/2

Tonight is the night! Join us at 7pm for our Annual Dymond Lecture. This year's speaker is Dr Mike Esbester, who will be exploring the hidden human stories behind Britain's railways. Find out more: www.balh.org.uk/dymond2025 #WeAreLocalHistory #LocalHistoryForAll

Archaeologists have found the earliest evidence yet of fire technology — and it was created by Neanderthals in England more than 400,000 years ago. www.livescience.com/archaeology/...

As someone who gets lots of local history queries, can confirm there's been a big increase in people starting their history research with GenAI/LLM (which just spews out fake facts and hallucinated rubbish) who then wonder why they can't find anything at all to corroborate it.

The #BigGive #ChristmasChallenge is in progress! This is your chance help Free UK #Genealogy deliver its FreePROBATE service – and to have the value of your donation doubled by those (including the Society for #OnePlaceStudies) who have pledged match funding. To find out more and to donate... 👇🏻

An early Christmas present for all you Court of Requests fans. *All* the calendared Elizabethan proceedings [TNA REQ 2/26-294], over 20,000 items in total, are now searchable on The National Archives' online catalogue. Ho ho ho 🎄 discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/browse/r/h/C...

The Really Useful Podcast is back for our fifth series! We have gathered many great guests to discuss a wide range of topics. All six new episodes are available on the Federation’s websites and through the major podcast providers. #FamilyHistory #Genealogy www.exploreyourgenealogy.co.uk/podcast

Join us next week for our Annual Dymond Lecture. This year's speaker is Dr Mike Esbester, who will be exploring the hidden human stories behind Britain's railways. Find out more: www.balh.org.uk/dymond2025 #WeAreLocalHistory #LocalHistoryForAll

"Having looked at some deaths of MPs involving vegetables ..." is an unimprovable line

Cleaning up after the IDF www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

"Of the 991 history exam questions set in 2023, 357 featured a named individual, but only 31 were women – and nine of those were references to Elizabeth I or her reign." Dr Natasha R. Hodgson of Nottingham Trent University writes this week in The Conversation bit.ly/49ZqTiq

🚨TWO WEEKS TO GO!🚨 Railway Work, Life & Death project co-lead Mike is privileged to give the 2025 @balhnews.bsky.social Dymond Lecture! ‘Heads – you lose!’ Working for the railways in Britain before 1939 Thursday 11 December 2025, 7pm, online #LocalHistory #Railway200 www.balh.org.uk/dymond2025

Looking for new learning experiences, enrichment and inspiration? Try our new IHR Discovery Courses : Historic Maps, Townscape and Architecture, and Archaeology for Local History. www.history.ac.uk/news-events/... www.history.ac.uk/news-events/... www.history.ac.uk/news-events/...

What's particularly exciting about our suite of new @ihr.bsky.social 'Discovery Courses' is the '2+1' model: two days of expert teaching, including guest lecture & fieldtrip, plus a free optional add-on day of guided research in the @ihrlibrary.bsky.social, with bespoke advice & support. #training