More great websites
This month’s expert Kate Tiller is currently directing Communities of Dissent, a project investigating chapels and chapel life run with the Family and Community Historical Research Society, whose website fachrs.com is well worth a visit – you can find out more about Kate’s project, and the society’s other activities and publications, on its ‘Projects’ page.
Tithe maps and accompanying apportionment data are useful sources for local historians. TheGenealogist has a growing collection for England ( thegenealogist. co.uk), including colour tithe maps of the North Riding and the East Riding of Yorkshire, while you can explore maps and apportionment documents from across Wales via the National Library of Wales’ website places.library.wales.
The National Library of Scotland’s portal at maps.nls.uk gives access to many thousands of high-resolution Ordnance Survey (OS) maps, charts, land-use surveys and town plans from 1580 to 1919, many of which cover all parts of the UK, while at the Vision of Britain site ( visionofbritain.org.uk) you can input a postcode to explore places via OS maps, statistical trends and historic travel writing.
The First World War centenary has seen a huge quantity of local research projects across the UK, some of which you can find via the exhaustive A–Z on the Imperial War Museums site 1914. org. Examples include Poole ( pooleww1.org.uk), Preston ( prestonremembers.org.uk), Staffordshire ( staffordshire greatwar.com) and Surrey ( surreyinthegreatwar.org.uk).
Although some of the pages need updating, there’s still useful information on Local History Online ( local-history.co.uk) including societies, groups and projects. Other national groups and resources include Building History ( buildinghistory.org); curiousfox.com, a forum which encourages local and family history researchers to contact other researchers interested in the same village; the University of Leicester’s Historical Directories of England and Wales ( bit.ly/specialcollections); HistoryPin ( historypin.com); the Local Population Studies Society ( localpopulation studies.org.uk); the National Federation of Cemetery Friends ( cemeteryfriends.org. uk); and the Women’s History Network ( womens historynetwork.org). Finally, there are lots of good local history sites offering useful resources for researchers. Examples include Anfield Cemetery ( friendsofanfield.com), Arley Hall ( arleyhallarchives.co.uk), Brighton and Hove ( mhms.org.uk), Conisbrough Manor ( hrionline.ac.uk/conisbrough), Droitwich ( historicdroitwich. org.uk), Gloucestershire ( gloshistory.org.uk), Huddersfield ( huddersfieldhistory.org.uk) and Steyning ( steyningmuseum. org.uk). For photographs try Francis Frith ( francisfrith.com/uk).