Month: March 2023
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My house…not quite in the middle of the street.
This week’s post is a short photographic essay about the street where I live to give some context for the history that I shall unfold in future months. Earlspark Avenue is on the south side of Glasgow close to a well heeled area known as Newlands. Recent electoral boundary changes means that we are now…
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The frustrations of family history research
Other than records and memories kept by a family, the best way to begin any research is with a family history research website. There are a number available and one or two are even free. However if your research is going to be serious and if your hobby is time restricted, then a paid for…
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A Poor Law Story
In a previous post I described how John McKie died tragically in 1879. When John McKie died he had been a Master Stonemason. Indeed he had been described as a Contractor in some of his children’s’ marriage certificates. The wages of a Stonemason during this part of the Victorian era would have been in the…
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An Average Victorian Family ?
My title poses the question because I was quite interested in the size of my Great Grandmothers family. In the space of twenty years she had given birth to twelve children, two who lived for very short periods of time. Apparently this was not unusual other than the number of births. The National Archives reports…
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An Epic Adventure
On Friday last week I travelled down to Stevenston, Ayrshire with a like-minded social history friend to introduce him to the Ardeer Peninsula. It is a spit of land about one and half miles long and a mile wide in its widest part. It is bordered by the sea on one side, the Irvine Bay,…