A document was produced recently to provide background to possible conservation work on "green and blue corridors" within the city by a newly forming City branch of the Wildlife Trust. This may be of interest in Bartonsham, especially to those residents who have been following the development of our walks and research on the area mills.

Download a pdf of the document on the link below. There is still wide scope for document research - other than maps - to add details to the brief suggested outline. If anyone is interested, please contact BHG and we will put you in touch with the author.

What do you remember about the Second World War? Concerned about the diminishing pool of people who can still recall the last war, Naomi Bell starts the memory ball rolling with her own recollections. Read her article here and add your comments - or email your recollections and photos to web@bartonshamhistory.org.uk. 

​Faith Ford has researched the stories, originally published in JABA our community newsletter, behind the names on the war memorial to the parish men who died in the second world war. Read the full article here.

A mysterious earthwork running along Bartonsham Meadows is to be investigated thanks to a £10,000 Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) grant. A group of local enthusiasts formed the Bartonsham Row Ditch Community Archaeology Project with the support of Historic England and Hereford City Council & now, thanks to National Lottery players, the Project will oversee the first ever scientific investigation into the distinctive, but enigmatic, earthwork called the Row Ditch. 
 
Formerly a high bank and deep ditch situated in Bartonsham Meadows, to the south-east of Hereford city centre, the remains of the earthwork, a scheduled ancient monument, can still be traced at the back of Park Street. Currently on Historic England's “At Risk Register”, due to neglect and farming activity, it is marked on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1888 as an “Intrenchment Constructed by the Scotch Army AD1645”, but other evidence suggests the Row Ditch has a much older history.
 
The Project's chair, Ian Broom said: “The grant will help us understand the purpose and origins of the feature. We will be working with the community and involving young people from St James' CofE Primary School and Hereford Sixth Form College, to develop a better understanding of the feature in the history of the environs of Hereford's medieval city. Bartonsham Meadows is an area popular with local residents and many have speculated on the origin of the Row Ditch. Is it a Civil War defence? A flood drain? A part of Offa's Dyke? A feature of a medieval field management system, or something else? We are very pleased to have been awarded this grant and our thanks go to those who made it possible by participating in the National Lottery.”
 
Herefordshire Archaeology, part of Herefordshire Council, has been appointed to provide management expertise and leadership in meeting the Project's objectives. Archaeologist Tim Hoverd said; “This is fantastic news! We are really looking forward to working with the local community to hopefully solve the mystery of Row Ditch. We hope that the excavations will be able to tell us exactly what this monument was used for and when it was being used.”  
 
Local people will be given the opportunity to experience and participate in a professionally managed investigation within the community. Building on preliminary work already conducted, the project will include the digging of surface trenches, deeper augering and analysis of the results. At the end of the project, a report will be published and an interpretation board installed on site for the information of visitors and residents to raise awareness and appreciation of the area.
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Vanessa Harbar, Head of the Heritage Lottery Fund West Midlands, said: “Sharing Heritage is a wonderful opportunity for communities to delve into their local heritage and we are delighted to be able to offer this grant so that The Bartonsham Row Ditch Community Archaeology Project can embark on a real journey of discovery. Heritage means such different things to different people, and HLF’s funding offers a wealth of opportunities for groups to explore and celebrate what’s important to them in their area.”

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!

On the World War 2 memorial just to the north of the main entrance to St James’ church in Green Street is an intriguing inscription to the help given to the rebuilding of All Saints Church Chilvers Coton following its destruction in the blitz.  It reads as follows:

Members of this parish have also furnished the chancel of the Chapel of the Three Kings in the rebuilt Parish Church of Chilvers Coton in the Diocese of Coventry destroyed by enemy action in May 1941.

Why did St James Hereford parishioners help with this specific church near Coventry? What was the link? Read a new article by local resident Naomi Bell explaining what she has found out.

We have had an interesting response to a query we made to the Wedgwood Museum, about these pottery pieces, found near the Royal Ordnance Factory, Rotherwas.

"Thank you for the pictures. You can just make out the 'Wedgwood &', and underneath 'Tunstall', which is useful.

I'm afraid that I can be of little help on this occasion as the ware in question is a product of Wedgwood & Co not Josiah Wedgwood (& Sons).
 
Originally founded around 1832 by Enoch Wedgwood in Tunstall, Stoke-on-Trent (Staffordshire), this factory (Wedgwood & Co) had nothing whatsoever to do with the firm known formerly as Josiah Wedgwood & Sons Limited, until 1980 when we were forced to take them over because of the ongoing confusion with the use of the Wedgwood name.  At the time of the takeover we were advised that their records had been destroyed in a series of fires in the 1950s, therefore we have no archive or other documentary material with which we can assist members of the public with enquiries relating to this former manufacturer.  You may however find this website of some use:
http://www.thepotteries.org/allpotters/1061.htm"

​We didn't know that before!

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