This is a post to highlight some excellent local history sites – a couple are new, and one familiar, but they’re all doing really fabulous work and sadly represent yet another time suck preventing me from getting my arse into gear and blogging here. With so many talented, dedicated amateurs creating fascinating local history content, my reading habits seem to be leaving little room for writing. Still, when there’s other stuff that’s so good, I can’t feel too bad about it…

First up is The Borough Blog, by the wonderfully talented Stuart Williams, otherwise known as The Edditer. Stuart curates the superlative Bloxidge Tallygraph, on behalf of his hometown, but as a leading light in the Walsall local history scene he has decided to create a site chronicling historical material or the wider area. As is always the case with his work, Stuart creates a vibrant, witty and entertaining site that’s choc full of great material, lovingly produced. Don’t miss it.

Church Hill in Walsall is the highest and steepest section of a long ridge dropping gradually away towards the south, fading out before it reaches Broadway.  Caldmore occupies the western flank of the ridge, and Highgate the crest and eastern side. Highgate enjoys long views to the south and east, and is separated from cent … Read More

via The Borough Blog

Regulars here will know how much I love landscape history, and over the two years that The Brownhills Blog has been in existence, we’ve found a few great exponents of the art, including Julian Ward-Davies and Mark from Tamworth Time Hikes. Mark produces innovative and insightful material that’s way off in the left of field, and that’s why I love his work so much. I think he’s also a bit bonkers, which is also rather wonderful. Alongside Tamworth Time Hikes, there is a new project Mark has been working on, called Pastorm. It’s a collaborative work on the history of Tamworth and its environs – well worth a look, and it’s open to all to contribute. Go take a shufty.

Pastorm is an experiment consisting of an online event pushing real world activity finishing in an edited Ebook to bring together people curious about their surroundings, people and history, explore, create, exchange, in effect a deep exploration. In this first event the Tamworth area (Roughly within 5 miles of Tamworth centre) is the chosen Pastorm area. After Tamworth, the Pastorm will hopefully settle on another lucky area in the Midlands. … Read More

via  Pastorm

Huddled over in Lichfield in a warm ganzey is Kate, the keen and prolific dynamo behind Lichfield Lore. This massively popular site has recently been moved off the dreadful Blogger platform and onto WordPress, like this blog. As a result the site is clearer and easier on the eye. The content is as diverse as ever and I guarantee you that if you spend just five minutes reading this great site, you’ll learn something you didn’t know. There’s some really great stuff there that deserves much wider exposure. Kate’s really sweet on twatter, too.

I may be wrong but I’m assuming that there aren’t many libraries which have a 14th century tombstone embedded in their wall. I couldn’t quite believe that Lichfield library did either and so after watching the Queen travel up Bird St to the Cathedral, it was time for the really exciting part of yesterday to commence! Sorry Ma’am. … Read More

via Lichfield Lore