The Kennet and Avon Canal is a fantastic piece of engineering work that is rightly enjoyed and celebrated by many. Like a lot of history there are a number of misconceptions connected to the canal. This post is a brief history, there is far more history than I will cover, in this post at least. …
In an earlier post I described my Raspberry Pi webcam setup and noted I used an external microphone. Having had some comments I thought some may like to know more about the latter. I had survived on the built in microphone for years, although to be honest it was rare that I would need to …
In my various history researches I always come across interesting information, some such as noted below, I dig a little deeper on, but are not my direct focus at the time and usually don’t get beyond a note in my research. Going back through my research, some of it, I thought I might share some …
During 2020, as many others will have done, I have spent an awful lot of time in front of the computer, a lot with various online teaching, training, meetings and talks (local history). I have used my built in webcam for this, whilst the webcam was not the best image quality, for my use it …
You will not find Newbury in any documents before the Norman conquest, what you will find is Thatcham Hundred consisting of a number of manors. One of those manors is Ulvritone. This was a small settlement somewhere in the Newbury area, possibly in the “City” area. Grey notes in his “The History and Antiquities of …
Continuing with my potted history of the local pubs, three more are described below, only one of which survives to this day. Please note that there was/is a difference between alehouse, beerhouse, tavern, inn, hotel, etc. although the definitions of many are now more clouded. Below I will typically refer to pub to encompass everything. …
A number of years ago I gave a talk in which I mentioned how a group of people from the area, Newbury, Berkshire, UK, moved to North America. The people included Rev. Thomas Parker and Rev. James Noyes. In 1634 they arrived in Ipswich (then known as Agawam) and later in 1635 moved along the …
I mentioned previously about the roadside water pumps, the other thing people often ask about are the milestones. Milestones have a long history going back to at least the Romans. They marked every thousandth double step, hence the latin for thousand, “mille”. This equated to 1618 yards or 1479.5 meters. Throughout history the measure of …
There are a number of pumps dotted around Thatcham and I am often asked about them at history talks. This is a write up of my understanding of the roadside pumps along the A4, I am aware there are other pumps around, in gardens for example. In 1763 people in the Colnbrook area complained about …
For years I have wanted to be able to read some of my old, non-PC, floppy disks. A few years back I decided it was time I made a start (see posts here). The initial idea was to use an Arduino, with a PIC32MX as a fallback, connecting it to an external Amiga floppy drive …
