Where-ever you are in the world – whether you have already celebrated the New Year, or you are about to – I wish a very Happy New Year.

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This blog
If you want to read more from my blog, please do subscribe either by using the Subscribe via Email button top right of my blog, or the button at the very bottom.  If you’ve enjoyed reading this post, then please do Like it with the Facebook button and/or leave a comment below.

Thank you for reading this post.

You may also be interested in the following

– Happy Christmas 2013
– Christmas Greetings from the Trenches 1914-1918
– Christmas in a Tudor town
– Medieval Christmas Stories

© Essex Voices Past 2014.

Wishing all my readers a very Happy Christmas. I hope Father Christmas has brought you your heart’s desire.

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This blog
If you want to read more from my blog, please do subscribe either by using the Subscribe via Email button top right of my blog, or the button at the very bottom.  If you’ve enjoyed reading this post, then please do Like it with the Facebook button and/or leave a comment below.

Thank you for reading this post.

You may also be interested in the following
– Christmas Greetings from the Trenches 1914-1918
– Christmas in a Tudor town
– Medieval Christmas Stories

© Essex Voices Past 2012-2013.

Today’s post shows images of some of the silk postcards soldiers sent home to their loved ones during the First World War.

You may also be interested in my 2014 Christmas Advent Calendar
– Christmas Advent Calendar 2014

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This blog
If you want to read more from my blog, please do subscribe either by using the Subscribe via Email button top right of my blog, or the button at the very bottom.  If you’ve enjoyed reading this post, then please do Like it with the Facebook button and/or leave a comment below.

Thank you for reading this post.

You may also be interested in
– Great Dunmow’s Military Funeral: A follow-up
– War and Remembrance: It’s a long way to Tipperary
– War and Remembrance: Great Dunmow’s Emergency Committee
– War and Remembrance: Great Dunmow’s Military Funeral 1914
– Postcard home from the front – The Camera never lies
– Postcards from the Front – from your loving son
– Memorial Tablet – I died in hell
– Memorial Tablet – I died of starvation
– Memorial Tablet – I died of wounds
– The Willett family of Great Dunmow
– Postcard from the Front – To my dear wife and sonny
– War and Remembrance – The Making of a War Memorial
– Great Dunmow’s Roll of Honour
– For the Fallan
– Aftermath

© Essex Voices Past 2012-2013.

After a gap in my blogging, I don’t normally say why I haven’t been around; I’d just start re-blogging again. However, I have received several concerned emails from cyber-friends to ask ‘am I ok’. Yes, I’m perfectly fine but over the last few months, the effort of getting my small child back into a school has overtaken my entire life. You may recall that I wrote about some of my battle in my posts on our School Trip Friday for the Academically Challenged. This week, after an 18 month legal battle and with my son out of school for exactly one year, I finally faced Essex County Council in a court of law in front of a judge. I have no idea yet what the judgement will be, but whatever it is, I know I have done absolutely the best for my child and he will be returning to school in September.

Sadly in amongst the fight for my child, I have neglected blogging and my writing skills – linked totally to my emotional well-being – have been repressed. I am hoping that my writing abilities will return. In amongst the fight for my son, we have still continued our School Trip Fridays, but I haven’t written up any stories yet. I also hope to shortly be able to return to the local history of Tudor England and, in particular, Great Dunmow.

But for the moment, here is a picture of my child, who I have fought so long and so hard for, during one of our most spine-tingling School Trip Fridays for the Academically Challenged

Here’s looking at you, kid

You may also be interested in
– School Trip Friday – Walk in our shoes
– School Trip Friday – St Michael’s Mount and the Tudor Pretender, Perkin Warbeck
– School Trip Friday – Weald and Downland Open Air Museum
– School Trip Friday – Chapel of St Peter’s on the Wall, Bradwell
– School Trip Friday – Imperial War Museum Duxford
– School Trip Friday – Of Cabbages and Kings
– School Trip Friday – Hadrian’s Wall
– School Trip Friday – Messages from England’s Roman Past
– School Trip Friday – What did the Roman’s ever do for us?

© Essex Voices Past 2013.

Yesterday and today I am publishing my most viewed 12 posts from the last year. My top 1 to 6 posts were described yesterday – so today I am sharing with you my top posts from 7 to 12.

7. The Medieval Spinsters – The medieval ladies from Raymund of Peñafort’s Decretals of Gregory IX with glossa ordinaria (the ‘Smithfield Decretals’)

8. Mappy Monday – My top 7 websites for medieval, early-modern & modern maps of London & Great Britain

9. Tudor tradesmen of Great Dunmow – John Parker, the Fletcher, of Great Dunmow: the richest man in the parish.

10. Primary sources – ‘Unwitting Testimony’ – Research techniques for a trainee historian.

11. Coronation and Diamond Jubilee Goldwork – My time at the Royal School of Needlework mastering the technique of goldwork embroidery.

12. The Dunmow Flitch – Can you prove that you’ve been happily married for a year and a day without a cross word passing between you? Read my account of the 2012 Dunmow Flitch.

Which were your favourite posts and why?
Please do leave your thoughts on my blog below.
Thank you!

© Essex Voices Past 2012-2013.

A year ago today, I published my first post, Great Dunmow’s Medieval Manors, on this blog.  Originally, I created my blog to publish some of my dissertation research ‘Religion and Society in Great Dunmow, Essex, c.1520 to c.1560′ from my Cambridge University’s Masters of Studies in Local and Regional history awarded to me in January 2012 (sadly, the degree no longer appears to be running).

However, over the year, this blog has evolved into a patchwork of posts all loosely based around the local history of the North Essex town of Great Dunmow, English medieval history, early-modern England and Tudor history. To celebrate my blog-anniversary, today and tomorrow I will be publishing my most viewed 12 posts from the last year.  Thank you for reading my posts, writing lovely inspiring comments, and ‘talking’ to me on twitter.  I look forward to writing another year of posts and sharing with you my view of England’s rich heritage and history.

Below are my most viewed top 6 posts from the last year.

1. Interpreting primary sources – the 6 ‘w’s – For all historians-in-training – analysing primary sources.

2. Images of medieval cats – Cats, as illustrated on the folios of medieval illuminated manuscripts now in the care of the British Library.

3. Queen Elizabeth’s visit to Great Dunmow – The story of Queen Elizabeth’s I’s Royal Progress through Essex and Suffolk during the Summer of 1561.

4. The clergy in pre-Reformation England – The vicars and ‘Sirs’ of the pre-Reformation Catholic clergy with particular reference to the 1520s clergy to Great Dunmow.

5. Blacksheep Sunday: Witches, witchcraft and bewitchment – The tragic story of a neighbourly conflict in Great Dunmow during the 1560s which exploded into the accusations of witchcraft and bewitchment.

6. Thomas Bowyer, weaver and martyr of Great Dunmow d.1556 – The story of how an established family from the town of Great Dunmow produced a son who in 1556 was burnt at the stake for his Protestant faith.

Join me next time to discover my next top 12 posts (6-12)

Which were your favourite posts and why?
Please do leave your thoughts on my blog below.
Thank you!

© Essex Voices Past 2012-2013.

On the final day of the old year, I wish you a peaceful and happy New Year.

If you have read my stories of Christmas in a Tudor town and Medieval Christmas Stories, you would be forgiven for thinking that I am a Christian.  I am not.  I am just someone who is fascinated by history and captivated by traditions, ancient stories and powerful evocative words.  And someone who studies the past to escape from a chaotic present.

My Christmas has been spent as per the Louis Wain postcard below – or rather I went nowhere, but my lovely, lively family visited me.  Stay-over visitors included a terrapin – complete with tank and his (or her – how can you tell?) own personal entourage of fishes, one vivacious daughter, a calming soon-to-be son-in-law, an ancient Italian mother-in-law with the onset of dementia, and a hyperactive profoundly mentally retarded brother-in-law.  They added to the permanent residents of 3 cats (one who is elderly, virtually toothless, and selectively incontinent), 3 fish, an ADHD/dyslexic/dyspraxic 9 year old son, an energetic teenage daughter and a vague/absent-minded very loud Italian/Polish/British husband!

I wouldn’t change any of them for the world.

Paying Visits postcard by Louis Wain (1860-1939)

Postcard by Maurice Boulanger

Postcard by Maurice Boulanger

Postcard by Maurice Boulanger

Postcard by Maurice Boulanger

PS The terrapin will be going home minus one of his fishy entourage. We’re not quite sure who was the culprit but ‘someone’ enjoyed an extra special Christmas treat!

I am looking for amateur historians to share their passion for history and contribute guest posts to my blog. I am open to anything as long as it sort-of-fits with the posts already on my blog. If you would like to submit something, here are some (very loose) ideas.  I have put links to my own posts alongside each idea to help you decide if you can contribute:-

• The local history of a village or town within Essex and its Medieval and/or Tudor past
  The pre-Reformation Catholic ritual year

• The Great War and its impact on a town/village/family within Essex
  Memorial Tablet – I died in Hell

• The impact of the Reformation on any town/village in England
  Thomas Bowyer, weaver and martyr of Great Dunmow d.1556

• Witchcraft in early modern England (any county)
  Witches, witchcraft and bewitchment

• Research techniques for being a historian
  Interpreting Primary Sources

• Tudor trades
  Medieval and early Tudor Trades

• An English custom celebrated today which originates from our medieval/Tudor past
  The Dunmow Flitch Trials 2012

Please email me at thenarrator[at]essexvoicespast.com with your ideas/posts.  The pay is lousy (none!) but the reward is sharing your historical knowledge with readers from all over the world.