Most counties or regions in England have record societies, some dating back over 100 years, that have published books of local historical interest. There are transcriptions of old documents, court rolls, churchwardens accounts, wills and inventories, diaries and more. He singles out the Suffolk Record Society as one of the leading examples.
A good starting point to find what societies exist, and thence to their publications catalogue, is online courtesy of the Royal Historical Society at https://royalhistsoc.org/publications/national-regional-history/. They're not just for England.
Yes John, most of the county record offices DO have such libraries of local interest, some as specific as village interest. For my research about the Eeley family (for Geoff's Mum in Brackley) I was pleased to get her line back to the early 1700s. By visiting the Oxfordshire Records Office and Libary, local history books enabled me to easily get back a century earlier to 1635, in Enstone, Oxfordshire.
ReplyDeleteIt is easy for Canadians to forget how much longer the British written record goes back, in comparison to ours. Ours is so short. While there was history going on, here there were no written records for it. Geoff's Mum Joyce received the full story on her family, including dozens of newspaper reports, lucky because the family were well known locally, in October this year. Cheers, BT