The July FHSC Cheshire Research Buddies topic of the month is Chester - Do you have ancestors in the town, or are you researching a local family and want some help, perhaps on the other hand you live in the locality and could offer help with photographing gravestones or buildings. This is the chance for members to help each other, I'm sure there are many members out there with knowledge of the area that they could share. If you have a research question then please feel free to email me on  and I will circulate it among attendees beforehand.

You will need to register to attend, to do so please click on the 'Register [Individual]' button below on the left and process your registration, you will receive an email confirmation and the zoom links/meeting protocol will be forwarded the morning of the helpdesk meeting. If you run into any difficulties with this then please contact Margaret Roberts on .

NOTE that registration closes at 10am on the morning of the meeting.

A light-hearted walk through a variety of genealogical records, designed to being a smile to your face, while also reinforcing the value of scrutinising original documents.  Chris is a native of Hackney, London, Chris studied modern languages at Nottingham University in the early 1970s, before embarking on a 40-year-career in Banking. Prior to his ‘retirement’, Chris’s interest in family history was sparked by a request from his father to find his biological parents. Chris describes genealogy as an all-consuming passion upon which he now spends most of his waking hours, leaving his wife to joke that she is a ‘genealogy widow’. Chris is a graduate of the Institute of Heraldic and Genealogical Studies, Canterbury, where he feels privileged to be a course tutor. He also runs a family history research and education business (www.chance-encounters.co.uk) from his home in Suffolk, specialising in East Anglia and Heraldry. In addition, he is chairman of the Alde Valley Suffolk Family History Group and promotes the study of family history at every opportunity.

This event is for members only and registration opens on 1st August, when the ‘Register [Individual]’ button will show on the bottom left of the Event details on the FHSC website for you to click and then process your registration, you will receive an email confirmation. Registration will close on  19th August.

The zoom links/meeting protocol will be forwarded the day before the talk.  If you run into any difficulties with this, then please contact us on the dedicated seminar email address – or see the 'Seminar Talks and how to Register' section under 'Online Talks and Meetings' in the FAQ section of the website.

The August FHSC Cheshire Research Buddies topic of the month is Northwich - Do you have ancestors in the town, or are you researching a local family and want some help, perhaps on the other hand you live in the locality and could offer help with photographing gravestones or buildings. This is the chance for members to help each other, I'm sure there are many members out there with knowledge of the area that they could share. If you have a research question then please feel free to email me on  and I will circulate it among attendees beforehand.

You will need to register to attend, to do so please click on the 'Register [Individual]' button below on the left and process your registration, you will receive an email confirmation and the zoom links/meeting protocol will be forwarded the morning of the helpdesk meeting. If you run into any difficulties with this then please contact Margaret Roberts on .

NOTE that registration closes at 10am on the morning of the meeting.

James Wright is an award-winning buildings archaeologist and a self-confessed Alan Garner fan. He runs The Weirdstone Walk website which seeks to track down every location mentioned in the Weirdstone Trilogy. Alan Garner himself has described the venture as: “the first to give the subject a proper treatment.” James has two decades professional experience of ferreting around in people’s cellars, hunting through their attics and digging up their gardens. He hopes to find meaningful truths about how ordinary and extraordinary folk lived their lives in the mediaeval and early modern periods. He is the author of the popular Mediaeval Mythbusting Blog. This talk follows James’s attempt to walk the locations from Alan Garner’s Weirdstone Trilogy (The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, The Moon of Gomrath and Boneland) with an especial focus on archaeological sites. It includes prehistoric burial mounds, ancient standing stones, mediaeval houses, Victorian copper mines and the seventeenth century farm which was the inspiration for Highmost Redmanhey. Interwoven within the presentation is consideration for Garner’s own published fieldwork and research within the world of archaeology.

This event is for members only and registration opens on 1st September, when the ‘Register [Individual]’ button will show on the bottom left of the Event details on the FHSC website for you to click and then process your registration, you will receive an email confirmation. Registration will close on  16th September.

The zoom links/meeting protocol will be forwarded the day before the talk.  If you run into any difficulties with this, then please contact us on the dedicated seminar email address – or see the 'Seminar Talks and how to Register' section under 'Online Talks and Meetings' in the FAQ section of the website.

The Seminar series is co-ordinated by Margaret Spate, Jean Laidlaw and Margaret Roberts and ALL correspondence, queries etc should be sent to the dedicated email address -   

PLEASE NOTE WE DO NOT RECORD SEMINAR TALKS

The September FHSC Cheshire Research Buddies topic of the month is Wallasey - Do you have ancestors in the town, or are you researching a local family and want some help, perhaps on the other hand you live in the locality and could offer help with photographing gravestones or buildings. This is the chance for members to help each other, I'm sure there are many members out there with knowledge of the area that they could share. If you have a research question then please feel free to email me on  and I will circulate it among attendees beforehand.

You will need to register to attend, to do so please click on the 'Register [Individual]' button below on the left and process your registration, you will receive an email confirmation and the zoom links/meeting protocol will be forwarded the morning of the helpdesk meeting. If you run into any difficulties with this then please contact Margaret Roberts on .

NOTE that registration closes at 10am on the morning of the meeting.

Explore the Parish Chest: Beyond the Registers

Discover the wide range of records created by the parish and how they can help you research your family including:

• Churchwardens' accounts, Vestry Minutes, Settlement examinations and certificates, Bastardy records, Vagrancy examinations and passes

To express an interest in joining this zoom meeting please email crewe&

Putting the date of the meeting in the subject line of the email.

Joining links will be forwarded to you the day before the meeting

FHSC is pleased to announce that the guest speaker at this year's AGM is Sarah Pettyfer, with a presentation on Chancery Records 

Sarah is the Vice Chair of AGRA (Assoication of Genealogists and Researchers in Archives), a qualified professional genealogist, family historian and house historian specialising in the early modern period (pre-19th century). She is lso a solicitor (none practising).

Find out more about Sarah at her website - https://spfhhistory.co.uk/

A practical approach to Chancery Records 

Chancery records are one of the most under used resources for family history. Part of their difficulty is in actually finding the records, as many remain uncatalogued in the The National Archives catalogue. With the records disbursed so that not all records for a case are held together, the aim of Sarah's talk is to demonstrate where to find and how to use finding aids to locate the various types of Chancery records

Sarah's talk will begin at 2pm with the formal business section of the AGM following shortly after 3pm

You will need to register to attend, to do so please click on the 'Register [Individual]' button below on the left and process your registration, you will rthen eceive an email confirmation. Registration is now open and closes at 12 noon on the morning of the meeting.  Zoom links/meeting protocol will be forwarded after registration has closed 

If you run into any difficulties with this then please contact Margaret Roberts on  

The Genealogist Website – Mark Bayley

Mark takes us through all the exciting things available via the site, including the map facilities 

The Genealogist is available in both Research Centres

To express an interest in joining this zoom meeting please email

putting the date of the meeting in the subject line of the email.

Joining links will be forwarded to you the day before the meeting