A planning application to demolish historic cottages built by John Venn on Kyrle Street will be turned down by Herefordshire Council, officers say.

The Masonic Housing Trust had applied to demolish the two existing dwellings to facilitate redevelopment of 9 residential apartments with associated car parking, cycles and refuse stores.

A number of objections had been received, including from the City Council and Civic Society, on grounds of historical and architectural merit, the purpose of the original buildings, and environmental considerations around the density of the new development.

We hope to publish information on the history of these buildings shortly.

Hereford's leading architectural historian, David Whitehead, will report on the rich heritage of Victorian buildings and gardens still surviving and disappeared at an event organised by Hereford Civic Society on Thursday 19th this week.

Catcher Media have been busy with the Development Phase of the Herefordshire Life Through a Lens project. This involved meeting people, hearing stories, recording interviews, putting on seven taster exhibitions of Derek Evans photos and working with volunteers to assess the studios archive (which contains 200,000 negatives, 730 exhibition prints and journals). Alongside this they managed to raise £17,280 match funding from The Beaumont Trust; Ross, Leominster and Ledbury Town Councils; Wye Valley Brewery, The Elmley Foundation and to our individual crowd-fund supporters.

All of this work has meant they were able to submit a second round bid to Heritage Lottery Fund, which was submitted on November 1st. They will find out in February 2017 if the project is successful, and then hope to deliver a three-year project to capture the oral histories, share the photos, create films, offer opportunities and create accessible heritage for future generations.

Sign up to the project blog or Facebook page.

We have been asked to post a copy of the newsletter for Herefordshire Local History Society. Some of the dates have now gone, but there is plenty of information about things going on from now and into the year. Download the newsletter as a pdf here.

There were many historic mills in the Bartonsham area, and traces of some of them still remain in street names and buildings.

Discover more in a fascinating illustrated article which follows on from our guided history walk over New Year. You may be surprised!