Just a reminder of the invitation to come to the launch of Bill Law's new book 'Herefordshire's Home Front in the Second World War'. Details are below:

Just a reminder that Marsha 0'Mahony will be giving her River Voices talk on the river Wye this Tuesday - 5th February 7.30pm at the Barrels.

All are welcome. Free but donations gratefully received.

As a result of exhaustive research in a range of records, and from knowledge built up over the years of living in Foley Street, Win Morgan-Brewer gives a thorough history of each house in the street in terms of when it was built, who was living there at any one time and their occupations.

A picture emerges of a number of families settled in the street for the long term – 110 years and counting in one case – and of a number of lodgers, often taken in to help cover bills, who pass through. Many interesting themes emerge – the number of residents who worked on the railways or in the tile industry; how many families adopted children; the widespread place of birth across the British Isles of those who lived in the street at any one time; the age at which many of the boys, especially, began working.

In addition, a chronological list of events that have shaped Hereford is provided, giving some interesting details about life and times in the city as a whole.

Win Morgan-Brewer came to live in Foley Street in 1977 and by the early 1980s she had started researching the family history of both her paternal and maternal relatives. In 2007, with retirement not too far away, she decided to start writing, which resulted in published articles in newspapers and magazines. Around 2010 she started to delve into the history of her house and the people who occupied it, research which snowballed into this history of Foley Street.
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Paperback, 160 pages, over 25 colour and 120 black and white illustrations, mainly photographs ISBN 978-1-910839-14-0 Price £10

There will be an illustrated talk by our own Bill Laws at 6.30pm on Thursday 15th September 2016 at Herefordshire Archive & Records Centre (HARC), Fir Tree Lane, Rotherwas, Hereford HR2 6LA.

Herefordshire in 1913 was an old fashioned shire under the benevolent rule of the Church and the gentry. Its bishop was opposed to war and his successor was opposed to women’s suffrage. Many of its farmers refused to plough on a Sunday: many more regarded women as being incapable of farm work. By 1919 the shire was in mourning for over 4,000 men. It had employed over 4,000 women on munitions and another 2,500 on farms. It had put to the plough more rich, milk meadows than any other county in England or Wales. And it had deprived more children of a proper education than any other English county.
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Herefordshire’s Home Front in the First World War is the story of what happened in those inter- vening years during the con ict they called the Great War.

The author, himself a former provincial journalist, has trawled the local press and history sources for a host of stories that reveal how people coped with the conflict at home: how the king turned former chauffeur George Butcher into England’s most famous ploughman; the persecution of Socialist war protester Stanley Powell; the gaoling of plucky Welsh munitioneer Elsie Abel who saved the Rotherwas National Filling Factory from an explosion; the fate of the German mistress Mary Bernstein and her child, caught hiding in Hereford; and the Belgian baby they called the Little Refugee. From the widowed Walford clergyman who tried to keep his seven servants from the front to the wounded Orcop soldier given his family home by public subscription, this is the story of a county at war at home.

Paperback, 176 pages with 85 illustrations, mainly photographs ISBN 978 1 910839 06 5 Price £10

Published by Logaston Press: www.logastonpress.co.uk, tel: 01544 327344