When the number of blogs slow down, you can bet that the blogger is busy on other matters! Not necessarily on matters of local history of course. This is harvesting time on the allotments, holiday time for some of us, and catch-up time for the rest, who have jobs of various kinds waiting in the wings for the normal lack of opportunity to attend to them.
However, there have been several experiences or events to report.
A younger relative of an elderly gentleman contacted me this week after a visit they had made to the gentleman's childhood home. All was going well until they arrived at Marshalswick and they were trying to orientate themselves, and he to remember back through time exactly where the house was. They found the house, only to discover it couldn't be, since it was the wrong street. Was the man's memory wrong? I was able to set their minds at rest; the road was renamed c1960 to avoid confusion with an almost identical name close by. But I can imagine it was a confusing moment, just when his memory needed that final support, only to find a completely different street plate!
Occasionally I come across examples of stories that are mixtures of fact and repeated fiction. Such is the oft-told legend around the name of the Rats' Castle in Fleetville. Since there will be blog readers who have not been able to read my book, St Albans' Own East End Volume 1, I have launched a new Rats' Castle page on the website. The data currently on the page will be added to shortly, and I will find a better version of one or two of the maps. But it is a start.
An excellent example of diligent research around a story came my way recently, when I had sight of a thoroughly researched document about a bombing incident at de Havilland's in 1940. The author, Terry Pankhurst, had sourced nearly thirty eye-witness and other very different, and sometimes conflicting, accounts which had been recorded since the incident, teasing out the factually correct, the probable, possible, unlikely, and plainly wrong contents of the reports; and then, using the evidence available, attempting to write as correct a version as records, common sense and the passing of time would allow. I have no idea at this moment whether the report has been published. If it has been I will recommend everyone to read it as a lesson to all of us who are involved in disseminating information.
A delighted reader of St Albans' Own East End Volume 2 this week had discovered a family member who had been named as a member of his school football team in the 1920s, but she did not recognise the book which had provided that information and which I had acknowledged. I was able to show her, not only the reference, but also two photographs in Bob Bridie's book, now alas out of print, 100 years: a History of Schools Football in St Albans. A reference to the very same boy a few years later, in the Roll of Honour in Volume 2, enabled the reader to inquire about the young man's final resting place. Regrettably this was likely to have been "at sea." However, by using the admirable website of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, we were able to establish that his name is attached to the extensive Naval Memorial at Portsmouth. No doubt she will be arranging a visit in due course.
Finally, and on a more personal note, I discovered, after the event, that I had been sitting almost next to a man I had last seen in 1965, when he was 15 and I was working in the same establishment. We each of us realised the 'near miss' at the Community Archives Conference only when we each visited the same forum a couple of days later, and our names were revealed! Since then, a project has been launched to enable the stories of around 40 children of the time to relate their early experiences which led to their arrival in the UK at the Pestalozzi Children's Village in Sussex.
Other projects where have been, or are being, collated in and around St Albans, include Home from Home by Fleetville Diaries, and Smallford Memories by Smallford Residents' Association.
No comments:
Post a Comment