Research notes and curious things I’ve discovered while researching the history of Amersham Old Town
I went to the Weston Library in Oxford for a meeting. About maps, obviously. In the Blackwell Hall there is an enormous tapestry map, one of four, each of which covers one of four counties: Oxfordshire, Worcestershire, Gloucestershire and Warwickshire. The part…
I attended a talk on the Victoria County History (VCH) recently, and was reminded of what a great source they are of local historical information. I realised I’d somehow neglected to look at the entry for Amersham, so took a look as soon as I got home.
Georeferencing the 1838 tithe map to use as a guide for creating historical maps
I’ve been looking at mapping tools and decided to have a play with Folium, a python library for mapping. The aim was to see how easy to use it was, and whether it had the flexibility to present geographical data in a…
An interesting entry in the 1911 census gives the address as ‘Travelling gipsy – sleep-shed at Bottom House Farm’. The details of the names of the people in this entry are hard to make out as the page is badly water damaged on the left side, but the end page shows his name is Sam Smith
I’ve been creating my maps so far in QGIS, which is excellent as well as being free and open source, but thought I’d give some other tools a try. I’ve been looking at Felt, an online mapping tool. It allows you to…
Looking through the 1871 census, I found a resident who gave his profession as professional cricketer. It struck me as unusual that there was a professional sportsman in Amersham at such an early date so I’ve tried to find out a little bit more about him.
I’d been idly wondering whether any of William Cobbett’s rural rides passed through Amersham. An initial scan through didn’t bring up the name at all, but when I looked for Chesham, I realised he had actually passed through Amersham in June of 1822 on his way between Chesham and High Wycombe
The helpful house names of many of the buildings in Amersham are a boon to the local historian trying to investigate the past uses of some of the buildings. As I’ve been researching the town, I’ve been trying to find out more…
I’m a modern historian, so the 11th century is not really my area, but I decided to take a look at the entry in the Domesday Book for Amersham. As it turns out, this was a lack of knowledge on my part:…