Time on your hands? Try a new web blog that will open up our region’s heritage

Robert Howard has a long association with transport, which has led to the creation of a brilliant new web blog called ‘History in and around Nottingham by bus’. The site currently holds around eighty heritage locations that you can reach direct by bus from Nottingham City Centre and also a further twenty for Derby, Leicester and Rutland. For those with plenty of time on their hands, this website will open up our region and give you wonderful new places to explore. You can find the blog at here.

Local Historians Wanted

A local television company, Notts TV, is due to launch in spring 2014. They are currently creating programmes for the channel and are looking for people who have a strong knowledge of Nottingham’s history. Their first feature is on the Lace Market and the trams of Nottingham and they hope to cover many other topics also. If you have any local stories, ideas or opinions for the show please contact Kate Chaplin by email or telephone her on 07792499920.  Or write to Inclusive Digital at 49 Stoney Street, Lace Market, Nottingham NG1 1LX.

Could you lead one of our forums?

After three years and eleven Angel Row Forum sessions, Robert Howard is planning another three for 2014, the first to be held on 25 March at Angel Row Library in Nottingham, and the others in September and December. In addition to the Forum meetings a group visit has been proposed to Hurt & Son Ltd, on Chilwell High Road, who have been manufacturing fine shawls, scarves and wraps since 1912, but have looms which go back much further in time. The date and time will be announced on the website, at Forum meetings and via our newsletter and Facebook page once details have been finalised.

If you are interested in leading a Forum meeting in 2014, please contact us via Facebook, email or see Robert at the next meeting. If you would like to share your interests and enthusiasms with other historians, whatever aspect of local history it may be, please get in touch.

 New County Archivist

Following Mark Dorrington’s appointment as Keeper of Manuscripts and Records at Nottingham University,  Ruth Imeson has been appointed to replace him as Team Manager, Archives and Local Studies at  Nottinghamshire County Council and has now  taken up post. Ruth was formerly Principal Archivist (Records Management) at Nottinghamshire Archives and previously worked in Oxfordshire.

Peter Gaw, Group Manager,  Libraries, Archives, Information & Learning, said: ‘Ruth takes on the leadership of the Archives, Records Management and Local Studies services at a time of great challenge as we develop the archives office to provide better access, extended storage capacity and meet new archives standards whilst responding to a very difficult financial situation for the County Council.

 Rededication of memorial

The rededication of Nottinghamshire’s Spanish Civil War Memorial on 27 July 2013 has been recorded on DVD.  It’s a moving reminder of a day when speakers and Nottingham Clarion Choir led a public gathering to see the memorial return to the front of County Hall after it was removed in 2009, and to remember the Nottinghamshire volunteers who went to Spain to fight fascism, 1936–1939. Available from NUM Ex & Retired Miners Assn., 1st Floor, Byron House, Commercial Street, Mansfield, Notts NG18 1EE. Price £2 collected or £3 posted. Email: exandretiredminers@hotmail.co.uk.

Sarah Seaton, News Editor