5th December 2025 07.43

Ah, I remember my mother baking her own bread daily during the bakers' strikes. Cottage loaves rising gently under a clean tea towel on top of the floor standing boiler. Dipping the last crust into a mug of cocoa at supper time. Fun for us kids but hard work for her. Feels like a long time ago...

18th November 2025 07.48

Matt Houlbrook's book is on my wishlist, but also I'm so interested in his thoughts on the use of microbiographies. I have been intuitively doing something similar in my #OnePlaceStudies but lack the wider reading and vocabulary to fully understand and articulate my approach.

Details matter! #FamilyHistory

A municipal cemetery is maybe not the first place you'd go looking for a pair of sleepy mallard, but here they are! #DucksOutOfWater #RutherglenCemetery

Squirrel with acorns in the porch at St Kentigern’s Church, Crosthwaite near Keswick in Cumbria. #Woodensday

Presentations from #WikiTreeWeek2025 will be available for 30 days. Glad to be able to catch up after the event - last week I was too busy to watch live but this week is much quieter. Time to review how I'm using WT for my #OnePlaceStudies and plan my next steps. #PutTheCoffeeOn #OnePlaceWednesday

The combination of #WW1 and #Cumbria puts this one on my Christmas book list.

Norfolk Record Office - Soldiers' Wills @fourteeneighteen.co.uk

Honoured to lead a tour of #WW1 war graves in Rutherglen Cemetery on Saturday morning and then give a talk about the work of #CWGC to 221 Sqn, 154 RLC in Cambuslang in the afternoon. We will remember them.

A poignant find... #WW1 #RemembranceDay

Pleased to see project research featured in this week's 'Petersfield Post'! It looks at the life of signalman Arthur Churchill, from time in the LSWR orphanage to his work on the railway & his family. The best bit is it was co-written with Arthur's son, Gordon! #Railway200

In 2020, forty years after the CWGC memorials were removed, in a joint project with Wates Living Space, Victoria Cross Trust and the Royal British Legion, the Friends of Wardsend Cemetery found and marked the 16 graves with wooden crosses inspired by the temporary markers widely used in WW1.

@rutherglen900.bsky.social this might be of interest to your followers

Lots of war graves tours taking place over the next two weeks to mark #RemembranceDay, including a tour of #RutherglenCemetery at 11am on 8th Nov. Come along to find out about the work of the #CWGC and the stories of those they commemmorate. Free but booking is required. www.cwgc.org/visit-us/eve...

#31DaysOfGraves Day 26: Figure As the nights draw in, I like to walk up to the top of #RutherglenCemetery to watch the sun set. One figure stands out against the skies over Glasgow. I've photographed her many times. Here she is with crescent moon and Venus. Her name is Minnie.

Day 19 #31DaysOfGraves and the prompt is 'Social Group'. I dont know anything about this grave marker, but I like it. 📍All Saints, Faringdon, Oxfordshire

#31DaysOfGraves Day 18: Mistake (a day late - oops!) Nobody really knows whether the spelling of Christina's surname is a mistake, because it seems that nobody ever knew how to spell her surname in the first place. I'm willing to bet that it wasn't BEUEATE though! #RutherglenCemetery #OPS

#31DaysOfGraves day 18. The #Mistake would be yours if you thought this was a gravestone hidden in the woods. It is, in fact, a gale stone, marking an entitlement granted to a #FreeMiner to mine coal or iron-ore in the #ForestOfDean. See: www.forestfreeminers.org for more information.

My Lamcashire great grandma could knit beautiful children's gloves (with little tiny fingers) on four needles with no pattern. And she was a lightweight compared to the Terrible Knitters of Dent!

#31DaysOfGraves Day 17: Relocated Grave monument of General Juan Manuel de Rosas of Argentina, who died in exile in England in 1877 and was buried in Southampton Old Cemetery. He was repatriated in 1989 and interred in the family vault at La Recoleta Cemetery, Buenos Aires.

Our kirkyards are at their very best just now so get your bones along to catch an angel or two

#31DaysOfGraves Day 16: Obelisk Somehow I dont seem to have good photos of any of the obelisks in #RutherglenCemetery (except the one I shared on Day 2) so let's play a game of 'spot the obelisk' instead.

16th October 2025. 07.35

#31DaysOfGraves Day 15: Damaged Sadly, many of the gravestones in #RutherglenCemetery are damaged, mostly due to neglect. Some have been in bits for decades, but the Plunkett gravestone fell and cracked in two some time during 2023/4. Please take care in cemeteries, especially near larger stones.

#31DaysOfGraves Day 12: Notable woman From a visit to Llanaber Church, Barmouth, Wales in the summer, the grave of Fanny Talbot (1824-1917). A friend of John Ruskin and a generous philanthropist, she is noted for gifting the first property, Dinas Oleu, to the newly formed National Trust in 1895.

Sunday read: "And so I stand beside the latch, comforted by the collective thumbprint. Through the imperceptible hollowing of its burnished curve, it cradles an immortality defined through touch" www.digest.andymarshall.co/andy-marshal...

Day 11 of #31DaysOfGraves - Military Many churches in Scotland house markers that once marked the graves of fallen soldiers of World War One until they were replaced by the permanent headstones erected by the (now) CWGC. This one in Clackmannan Parish Church once marked Cpt Robert Bruce's grave.

#31DaysOfGraves Day 11: Military There are 49 WW1 & 38 WW2 war graves in #RutherglenCemetery. Some are marked by familiar #CWGC headstones, others have family gravestones or monuments. There are also many memorials to war dead who are buried elsewhere or have no known grave.

For #31DaysOfGraves, day 11: military, my favourite stone in all of Scotland. I'm not sure if it's really a grave, so much as a memorial, thought to be depicting a battle between the Picts and the Northumbrians under King Ecgfrith, way back in 685AD. The wonderful Aberlemno Cross.

#31DaysOfGraves Day 10: Urn Urns seem to have been a popular choice as grave monuments during the earlier phase of #RutherglenCemetery (late Victorian). They're vulnerable to the ravages of neglect and vandalism, but those that remain in place are very photogenic.

An excellent letter by @abrackenbury.bsky.social in The Times and, in reposnse, an excellent short thread from @hallierubenhold.bsky.social, on the importance of the history of ordinary people.

#31DaysOfGraves Day 9: Hand The gravestone of Henry Alfred Muirhead (1862-1928) bears the crest of Clan Muirhead - two hands holding aloft a sword - and the motto Auxilio Dei (By the Help of God). #RutherglenCemetery #OPS And I'm caught up... just in time to go away again tomorrow!

A look back at the second half of #AATP25, with links to videos and more, in All About That Place 2025: Days 6 to 10). Plus, an invitation to get vlogging, as well as blogging, about your #OnePlaceStudies (members – our YouTube channel needs 👉🏻you!👈🏻).

#31DaysOfGraves Day 8: Glass Another one from Southampton Old Cemetery - the grave of Ethel Maude Newman (1875-1940), Lady Visitor for the Titanic Relief Fund. I'm not sure I like the garish blue glass chips but the story of her work with victims' families is a fascinating bit of social history.

#31DaysOfGraves Day 7: Angel An unmissable opportunity to share the stunningly beautiful angel who watches over the grave of suffragette Henria Helen Leech Williams in #CathcartCemetery. A place of pilgrimage, adorned with the purple, green & white ribbons of the #WSPU. May she rest in peace.

#31DaysOfGraves Day 6: Gender In Scotland, a monumental inscription relating to a married woman typically gives her full maiden name alongside the name of her husband. This doesn't mean she wasn't married! Some examples from #RutherglenCemetery #OPS.

#31DaysOfGraves Day 5: Bird My local municipal cemetery is home to foxes, squirrels, bats & many species of bird, including a mob of noisy jackdaws & a family of mistle thrushes, but I didn't expect to find a pair of mallard among the gravestones! Also, a lovely stone dove. #RutherglenCemetery #OPS

Lovely to see the final resting place of the writer Radclyffe Hall - somehow it seems very fitting. I would very much like to pay a visit, soak up the atmosphere of the place and pay my respects to this most extraordinary person.

#31DaysOfGraves Day 4: Languages Another selection from Southampton Old Cemetery. War graves for Belgian soldiers, inscribed in French & Flemish/Dutch(?), Latin inscriptions on the Belgian war memorial, and a CWGC headstone in the Jewish section, in English but surrounded by MIs in Hebrew.

#31DaysOfGraves Day 3: Tomb. There are no grave monuments grand enough to be described as tombs in #RutherglenCemetery, but I have been playing away this weekend, visiting the firstborn in Southampton & exploring Southampton Old Cemetery between rain showers. So many tombs!

I'm taking part in #31DaysOfGraves this month. I'll also be talking about my #OnePlaceStudy of #RutherglenCemetery at the Society's monthly webinar on Tues 14th Oct so if you're thinking about a cemetery #OPS, why not join up and join in.

#31DaysOfGraves Nautical. Monument erected by Thomas Morton in memory of his wife Mary Ann Tame Flening and their daughters Ella and Cissy, who were lost presumed drowned when the SS Drummond Castle went down off Ushant, Brittany on 16 June 1896. #RutherglenCemetery #OPS

#31DaysOfGraves Flower. A stone posy of flowers lies in the grass beside the monument to Archibald Park Campbell (died 1916) and his wife Janet McMaster (died 1917). #RutherglenCemetery #OPS #OnePlaceWednesday

Lazy Sunday afternoon at Lochwinnoch. Today's highlights - kingfisher fishing for shiny silver fish, noisy but elusive water rail, dragonflies sunning themselves along the boardwalk. Autumnal bliss.

Today's find - a pdf facsimile of a history of the Incorporation of Tailors of Rutherglen, which includes lists of Deacons from 1753 and Members from 1892, with - rather fabulously - their full addresses! #OnePlaceStudies gold! Published online by the Trades House of Glasgow in 2019.

From the All About That Place video archive, for #AATP25 Day 2: Health & Medicine. In The Dangers of Village Wells our member @turnstonegenie.bsky.social Jane Barton explored the challenge of providing safe water to a small rural village in Cumberland—part of her Westward and Boltons #OnePlaceStudy.

This is such a nuanced and big-hearted piece on the evolution of autism as a diagnosis, by an anthropologist of mental health who is also the dad of a now-grown daughter on the spectrum. Great reading (gift link) www.nytimes.com/2025/09/24/o...

🚨What's that?🚨 You want FREE access to 17 brilliant #RailwayHistory articles from the @jtransporthist.bsky.social? All yours! For #Railway200 the JTH has put together a virtual collection of articles, & until 15 October they're free! Download & read now: journals.sagepub.com/topic/collec...