*** STOP PRESS *****

Nat Alcock, our past chairman and current executive committee member, has received an award from the British Association for Local History (BALH) for "Research and publication on vernacular architecture, for supporting others in this field and for his work with the British Records Association" - Congratulations Nat.

Our splendid summer social is being held in Knowle this year.

Assemble at 4:00pm at the Village Hall, St John's Close, Knowle, B93 0NH.  We will enjoy a village walk including a visit to Chester House and a tour of the ancient church followed by our annual feast.   Tony Upton, one of our members, will be our guide for the afternoon, an authority on the church and village.

This took place very successfully on Tuesday 16th March 2010 and Dr Jan Broadway of Queen Mary, University of London, provided a fascinating insight into the way in which William Dugdale, Warwickshire’s first historian, reported two separate murders when compiling his Antiquities of Warwickshire, published in 1656. One was the alleged murder, in the mid sixteenth century, of Sir Walter Smith of Shelford by his wife Dorothy, who had taken a lover. The other murder was committed in the 1580s by Ludovic Greville of Milcote against one of his tenants.

Yet, as Dr Broadway explained, Dugdale, usually so reliable in his use of sources, chose to put his own spin on each of these events, not entirely consistent with the scant surviving evidence which she has since unearthed!