Built by the Romans, looted by the Danes and conquered by King William I (who devastated the town to build a castle and a cathedral), the city of Lincoln has had a long and most dreadful history. Containing medieval child murder, vile sieges of (and escapes from) the castle, the savage repression of the Lincolnshire rising by King Henry VIII (who had the ringleaders hanged, drawn and quartered) and plagues, lepers, prisons, riots, typhoid, tanks and terrible hangings by the ton, you'll never see the city in the same way again.

Family history is one of the most popular hobbies of recent years, with many looking into their roots and finding out about their past. In this book you will learn how to find dates and events in your ancestors' lives, and it will help put flesh on the skeletons too, giving clear instructions of how to start researching your family history in Birmingham. You will then begin to learn the full story of how Birmingham grew and how our 'Brummie' ancestors lived, played and worked. This book is not just a 'how to' book, but also tells the story of how Birmingham expanded during the nineteenth century, as our ancestors moved here to find work in the new industries. Some lived in the cramped conditions of back-to-back housing, whilst others prospered and joined the ranks of the more well-to-do. Not just the wealthy, but the poor, too, all played their part in the development of this now-sprawling city.

Storyteller and author Adam Bushnell brings together stories from the rugged coastlines, limestone cliffs, remote moorland, pastoral dales and settled coalfields of County Durham. In this treasure trove of tales you will meet the evil fairies of Weardale, the shape-changing witch from Easington, the Bishop Auckland boar, the Dun Cow from Durham City and many other characters - all as fantastical and powerful as the landscape they inhabit. Retold in an engaging style, and richly illustrated with unique line drawings, these humorous, clever and enchanting folk tales are sure to be enjoyed and shared time and again.

Crowds of visitors flock to Whitby to explore the ancient abbey, walk the narrow streets, pass Captain Cook's home and see the replica of his ship Endeavour, but the history of Whitby is much richer, as revealed in this tour of its significant, interesting and unusual buildings. After the Dissolution of the Monasteries the Cholmley family took over much of the abbey's lands, building a grand home and developing the port and local industries. Whitby became one of the busiest ports in the land and magnificent Georgian buildings testify to the wealth brought into the town, not least through whale hunting. Other grand buildings of this time were constructed on wealth from the elsewhere, including slave plantations in the Caribbean. The town has also preserved the more modest homes of sailors and fishermen, including charitable housing, and the continuing connection with the sea is also represented by lighthouses, the foghorn station and lifeboat stations. More recently Whitby has become a holiday destination, with Victorian and more recent hotels, cinemas and a lido built for the use of visitors and local inhabitants. Whitby in 50 Buildings explores the history of this fascinating Yorkshire coastal resort through a selection of its most interesting buildings and structures, showing the changes that have taken place over the years. The book will appeal to all those who live in Whitby or who know it well.

Original tales by remarkable writers Hometown Tales is a series of books pairing exciting new voices with some of the most talented and important writers at work today. Some of the tales are fiction and some are narrative non-fiction - they are all powerful, fascinating and moving, and aim to celebrate regional diversity and explore the meaning of home. In these pages on Glasgow, you'll find two unique memoirs. 'The Old Asylum in the Woods' is an intimate, intensely moving account of growing up in the shadow of Woodilee Hospital by author of The Gracekeepers and The Gloaming, Kirsty Logan. 'Glasgow Sang' is a deeply personal journey on foot through the city, from Kelvin Way Bridge to George Square to the statue of La Pasionaria, by Paul McQuade.

Ghost signs - those faded advertisements for long defunct businesses on the walls of old buildings - are among the most potent reminders of a bygone age - and nowhere are they found in greater abundance or variety than on the streets of Bath.Long a source of fascination for visitors and residents alike, signs for forgotten trades such as brushmakers, corn factors and perfumers still jostle for attention alongside modern shopfronts. Canalside coal wharves, a pump room where Jane Austen's brother took the waters, the sinister-sounding Asylum for Teaching Young Females Household Work, and a Regency tea warehouse - all still proclaim their ghostly presence a century or more after they closed their doors for ever.This book tells the story behind these tantalising echoes from the past. Trawling through old newspapers, deeds and documents to discover when and why the signs were painted, the authors have revealed a hidden history of the city.Over 160 ghost signs are featured, arranged by area into a series of short walks, with historic maps to guide you through the city streets. Ghost signs in the suburbs and surrounding villages, as well as in Bradford on Avon and Corsham, are also included, and the book ends with an intriguing look at Bath's lost ghost signs.

The Worcester and Birmingham Canal, some thirty miles long, was created from 1791, when it was authorised by Act of Parliament, to 1815 when it was completed 24 years later. Although intended as a broad canal for barges and having five broad tunnels, it was eventually completed with narrow locks due to financial difficulties. From Gas Street Basin at the Birmingham end it passes through the suburbs of Edgbaston, Selly Oak and Kings Norton, then through the long West Hill Tunnel and via Hopwood and Alvechurch through countryside to Tardebigge, all this section being on the Birmingham Level. Then it descends in stages via fifty-six narrow locks and two barge locks to the River Severn at Diglis via Stoke Prior, Hanbury Wharf, Dunhampstead, Oddingley, Tibberton, Blackpole and the eastern suburbs of Worcester City. The earlier chapters of this book trace in detail the successive stages reached in making the canal and the reservoirs needed to safeguard the water supplies of millowners, the financial and other problems faced, and the saga of the Tardebigge Boat Lifi. Later chapters cover the history of the canal following its completion, its use for both commercial and pleasure purposes, its administration and management, its upkeep and maintenance, its involvement with railways, and the various industries and amenities which were established beside it, Three of the final chapters feature past and present places and items of interest located along the canal from Birmingham to Worcester. Of special interest throughout is the impact the canal had upon the lives of countless people, those involved in its construction, those who lived and worked on the boats, those who were employed by the Canal Company as engineers, lock-keepers and maintenance men, people who worked in canalside factories, shops, public house, boatyards, and on wharves, and those concerned for the welfare of canal boat families and their animals.

Storyteller Sheila Kinninmonth brings together stories from the coastal fishing villages, rushing rivers, magical green farmland and rolling hills of Fife. In this treasure trove of tales you will meet Scottish Kings and Queens, saints and sinners, witches and wizards, ghosts and giants, broonies, fools and tricksters - all as fantastical and powerful as the landscape they inhabit. Retold in an engaging style, and richly illustrated with unique line drawings, these humorous, clever and enchanting folk tales are sure to be enjoyed and shared time and again.

The first umbrella in America and a Washington monument that predates the one in the nation's capital were raised in Baltimore. A renowned beauty of the city, Betsy Patterson, married Jerome Bonaparte, but was forbidden by her brother-in-law, Napoleon, from ever setting foot in France. A century later, Wallis Warfield, another Baltimorean, made her own assault on European royalty. Baltimore is the city of Babe Ruth and H.L. Mencken and the final resting-place of Edgar Allan Poe. "The gastronomic metropolis of the Union," according to Oliver Wendell Holmes, it is also the home of Bromo-Seltzer.

First published in 1951, "The Amiable Baltimoreans" presents 250 years of anecdotal history about the city--its buildings, its institutions, its customs, and most of all, its people. Informative, amusing, and sometimes discomforting, it offers an incomparable look into the city's past and revealing insight into the way it seemed to one informed observer thirty years ago.

On January 22, 1912, Henry Flagler rode on the first passenger train from South Florida to Key West. On April 2, 1513, Juan Ponce de Leon claimed Florida for Spain. On December 6, 1947, Everglades National Park held its opening ceremony.Featuring one entry per day of the year, this book is a fun and enlightening collection of moments from Florida history. Good and bad, famous and little-known, historical and contemporary, these events reveal the depth and complexity of the state's past. They cover everything from revolts by Apalachee Indians to crashes at the Daytona 500, the establishment of Fort Mose, and the recurrence of hurricanes. They involve cultural leaders like Stetson Kennedy and Zora Neale Hurston, iconic institutions like Disney and NASA, and important eras like Prohibition and the civil rights movement.Each entry includes a short description and is paired with a suggested reading for learning more about the event or topic of the day. This Day in Florida History is the perfect starting point for discovering the diversity of stories and themes that make up the Sunshine State.

The Eastern Professional Basketball League (1946-78) was fast and physical, often played in tiny, smoke-filled gyms across the northeast and featuring the best players who just couldn't make the NBA--many because of unofficial quotas on Black players, some because of scandals, and others because they weren't quite good enough in the years when the NBA had less than 100 players. In Boxed out of the NBA: Remembering the Eastern Professional Basketball League, Syl Sobel and Jay Rosenstein tell the fascinating story of a league that was a pro basketball institution for over 30 years, showcasing top players from around the country. During the early years of professional basketball, the Eastern League was the next-best professional league in the world after the NBA. It was home to big-name players such as Sherman White, Jack Molinas, and Bill Spivey, who were implicated in college gambling scandals in the 1950s and were barred from the NBA, and top Black players such as Hal "King" Lear, Julius McCoy, and Wally Choice, who could not make the NBA into the early 1960s due to unwritten team quotas on African-American players. Featuring interviews with some 40 former Eastern League coaches, referees, fans, and players--including Syracuse University coach Jim Boeheim, former Temple University coach John Chaney, former Detroit Pistons player and coach Ray Scott, former NBA coach and ESPN analyst Hubie Brown, and former NBA player and coach Bob Weiss--this book provides an intimate, first-hand account of small-town professional basketball at its best.

A fabulous collection of ghost hauntings in Suffolk, from the infamous Black Dog of Bungay to the headless Anne Boleyn stalking visitors at Blickling Hall. The serene, low-lying countryside of Suffolk, with its scattered farms, water-meadows and extensive coastline, seems an unlikely area to be associated with ghosts and demons. Yet, a motley array are said to haunt the region. The most famous is the Black Dog, a spectral hound, which in the year 1577 terrorised and killed parishioners in the churches of Bungay and Blythburgh, and continues to exert a strong presence today. Other strange phenomena include phantom coaches, rattling through the countryside at night, drawn by spectral horses and driven by a headless coachman, and the freshwater mermaids who lure young children to their deaths in pools and rivers. Tobias Gill the black drummer haunts the crossroads near Blythburgh where he was hanged for the murder of a servant girl, and Mrs. Short, the 'Queen of Hell', can still raise the hairs on your neck if you wander in the region of Boulge Hall near Woodbridge. Famous characters such as Anne Boleyn, Earl Hugh Bigod, and St. Edmund add an additional lustre to folk tales of the area, and strange happenings occur in many of the churchyards, Suffolk having more churches per acre than almost any other county. This fascinating account of local 'sightings' deals with all the traditional historical legends as well as modern day sightings, and investigates their relevance and significance for the modern age.

With nearly 600 years of history, involving plots, intrigue and paranormal activity, it is surprising that no one has ever before written the definitive history of the Rye House in Hertfordshire. The Rye House - An Investigative History aims to do just that. Through meticulous research, Phil Holland has written this fascinating account, taking the reader from the House's fifteenth-century origins, through to Tudor times when Catherine Parr spent part of her childhood there; to the Rye House Plot of 1683 - a plan to assassinate King Charles II and the Duke of York; to the widely reported paranormal activity and apparitions; and finally to the present day. The Gatehouse is all that now remains of the fifteenth-century brick-built fortified manor. It is a Grade I listed building and a Scheduled Ancient Monument and as such is protected by law. The Moated Enclosure is considered to be one of the finest examples of the period in Hertfordshire. It is hoped that this book will enthuse people about the Gatehouse and the history of the Rye House, and that they in turn will come to treasure the building and recognise its importance as a piece of our country's history.

When Jim Lewis met the directors of the RSA Trust, the charity responsible for the concept and the running of Enfield Island Village, in January 2015, it was to discuss the commissioning of a book that would tell the story of the former government controlled Royal Small Arms Factory (RSAF) after privatisation and closure in 1987. However, during discussions it soon became clear, with the impending two-hundredth anniversary of the birth of the Enfield Lock armoury, that a unique opportunity existed to link the story of the RSAF site with the founding of the RSA Trust. And as one Trust director put it, this is the classic story of "from swords into ploughshares". Surprising as it may seem, the story of the birth of the Enfield Lock armoury in 1816 and the methods of manufacture that then existed within the British small arms industry has never been completely told. At the time of writing this book the author wanted, in the two-hundredth anniversary year of the founding of the RSAF, to commemorate the contribution made to our armed forces by the former workforce which, by their skills and dedication, helped keep Britain safe during times of world instability. Also I wanted to acknowledge the contribution made to our community by the four founding fathers of the RSA Trust that has benefited so many worthwhile good causes. In a world full of increasingly depressing news it is uplifting to have the opportunity to write about a group of four local businessmen who had the vision, courage and tenacity to take on the mammoth task of rescuing a Grade II listed building that no sane entrepreneur would have contemplated taking on and turn it into a vibrant sustainable business for the benefit of the local community. The model created pays a service charge into a limited liability company, RSA IV, which in turn transfers the surplus to the not-for-profit RSA Trust which is then able to fund many community good causes.

This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.

In her captivating memoir Through the Leopard's Gaze, Njambi McGrath details the harrowing circumstances of her life as a young girl in Kenya, who one fateful night was beaten to a pulp and left for dead. Thirteen-year-old Njambi, fearing her assailant would return to finish her, courageously escaped, walking through the night in the Kenyan countryside, risking wild animals, robbers and murderers, before being picked up by two shabbily dressed but safe men. She buries the memories of that fateful day and night, and years later ends up in London with a British husband and children. Then one day a simple unassuming wedding invitation arrives in her mailbox causing her to have to confront the remnants of a past she had thought was behind her. This is a book about survival, and courage when all else fails. It's a searingly honest examination of human cruelty and strength in equal measure.