The Cheshire Motor Vehicle Registrations, 1904-07, ed. by Craig Horner

For those members who attended Craig's excellent and informative talk last night, you may be interested in his book, published by the Record Society of Lancashire & Cheshire and which can be bought directly from their website 

The link that tells you all about the book is http://rslc.org.uk/blog/new-volume-shines-headlights-on-motoring-history/ and to purchase please contact Dr Fiona Pogson at Liverpool Hope University.  The following link will take you to the publication page: http://rslc.org.uk/purchase-a-publication/   -  it's a bit of a tortuous process to be honest but worth it in the end!  Craig is planning to have Vol 2 published in 2023, which will cover 1908-1911 

Ancestry acquires Forces War Records

Offer ends 31st May 

From now until the end of this month (11.59pm London time on 31st May, to be precise) you can save 30% on a 3 or 12 month subscription to the British Newspaper Archive offering virtually unlimited access to over 300 million articles from millions of issues, mentioning billions of names and places. A 3 month sub will cost just over £18 and a 12 month £56 with this offer, so perhaps worth looking at.

If you need any assistance with the searching the newspapers at all then please feel free to contact me on  and I'll do my best to help  

You just need to enter the promotion code LIBRARY30 [as shown in the image below] at this link - https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/account/subscribe

Scottish Indexes adds 100,000 prison register entries

As members may be aware, in 2019 Cheshire Archives and Local Studies received a grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund to develop plans to relocate the service to two new ‘history centres’ in Chester and Crewe.

It is important that the project engages more people with the service and with archives, and the project team is currently speaking to people across Cheshire about what they would most like to see from the new service.

The project would therefore like your views and have written a short survey to help capture these. This will help to define priorities for the future service.

It is expected that a further funding bid will be submitted to the National Lottery Heritage Fund early in 2022. If this is successful, the project will be carried out from mid 2022 until 2025/2026.

The survey is open until Sunday 13^th June 2021 and can be found at the following link - https://www.smartsurvey.co.uk/s/YPH70S/

Thank you for your support. For the latest news from the service, please see our newsletter, which can be read by clicking on this link - https://www.cheshirearchives.org.uk/latest-news-and-events/Cheshire-Archives-and-Local-Studies-Newsletter.aspx

(◕‿◕) #𝕎𝕙𝕒𝕥𝕤𝕆𝕟

Great British Railway Journeys
BBC2 Monday 10th May at 6:30pm

Crewe to Shotton

Michael Portillo is in Crewe, a town steeped in railway history and immortalised in Victorian music hall, to investigate the making of the iconic cinema classic The Night Mail during the 1930s.

Following his Bradshaw’s Guide, Michael takes the train to Chester to discover the interwar origins of Britain’s most popular zoo. Michael learns how the work of Chester Zoo’s enlightened founder continues, and he helps to feed a young greater one-horned rhino.

Across the border in north Wales, Michael reaches the village of Gresford, the scene of one of Britain’s worst mining disasters, where 266 men lost their lives in 1934. Michael hears how it happened and how it is remembered in the community today. The Ifton Colliery Band plays Gresford - The Miners’ Hymn.

Over the River Dee, at Tata Steel in Shotton, Michael discovers a wartime boost to steel production on the site, where John Summers & Sons manufactured up to 50,000 Andersen shelters a week. The steel shelters and others designed by the company for people’s back gardens protected families from aerial bombardment by German planes.

I have just uploaded the latest Lancahsire Local History Federation Newsletter, some cross boundary items of interest for instance:

HISTORIC SOCIETY OF LANCASHIRE AND CHESHIRE Friday 21 May 17.30 The Mike Stammers memorial lecture: Salt, stone and steam: making the Mersey a coastal shipping hub The Mersey developed as the west coast’s major centre for shipping because of its geographical position, and as an outlet for industrial products from the north and Wales. It grew because of its trading links with Ireland and as an Atlantic gateway. The talk outlines how these and other factors contributed to the growth of Liverpool and other Mersey ports. (Free tickets available via Eventbrite.)

Plus news from all their member associations.

 You will find it in our Docuemnt Library in Members' Documents