Leicestershire VCH Trust
leicsvcht.bsky.social
Leicestershire VCH Trust
@leicsvcht.bsky.social
Working with volunteers across the county, our aim is to research from primary sources and publish a history of every town and village in Leicestershire
Our latest Newsletter is now available to download. See leicestershirehistory.co.uk?page_id=3681 Find out more about our new project in the Charnwood Forest Geopark area (and thanks to them and to National Lottery for funding this).
December 9, 2025 at 4:19 PM
Reposted by Leicestershire VCH Trust
A great blog from @ihr.bsky.social director, @clairelanghamer.bsky.social advocating 'History by Doing', bridging the gaps between the histories of people and places where we live, and work and those universities teach/research and delve into: they're all one. 🗃️

You want examples? A short 🧵
Advocating for History by Doing History - On History
This blog was written by Claire Langhamer, Director of the IHR Historians are very good at crafting arguments and in recent times very many people have advanced very many arguments about why history m...
blog.history.ac.uk
November 26, 2025 at 12:52 PM
Reposted by Leicestershire VCH Trust
#Talk: 'From Nation to Local: Re-Discovering England’s Places through #AHistoryOfEnglandIn25Poems'. What happens to our understanding of the nation when we start at the very smallest scale? Friday 28 November, 3pm, University of Leicester - all welcome! www.englishlocalhistory.org/wp/2025/09/2...
November 22, 2025 at 10:36 AM
Reposted by Leicestershire VCH Trust
We had a great pilot session for our new school workshops! If your KS3-5 students would enjoy a free workshop exploring Magna Carta & the Making of History (&featuring fab primary sources) contact learning@sal.org.uk. Scheme kindly supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Farrer & Co.
November 7, 2025 at 1:05 PM
Bit of a competition going on yesterday among the fallen oak leaves in Victoria Park - who will collect the most acorns?
November 7, 2025 at 12:30 AM
Reposted by Leicestershire VCH Trust
We have amazing minerals in Charnwood Forest!

🔷 Azurite
🟩 Malachite

They both contain copper, but with vividly different colours!

📍 New Cliffe Hill Quarry
🏛 Oxford University Museum of Natural History
November 5, 2025 at 11:02 AM
Can be those more than a century old too - e.g. school log book started in the 1890s that continues until the book runs out of pages in the 1930s.
Pretty much all school records held in local record offices less than a century old, these days, too.
October 30, 2025 at 3:09 PM
Was just wondering when #Sainsbury's opened in Loughborough, and found the wonderful Sainsbury archive online, with press release from Jan 1985, brochure and lots of photos www.sainsburyarchive.org.uk/catalogue/se...
Search | Catalogue | Sainsbury Archive
Search Sainsbury Archive catalogue
www.sainsburyarchive.org.uk
October 30, 2025 at 2:35 PM
I love the feeling of stillness in the Outwoods, and the birdsong (but perhaps not so much birdsong in the rain).
October 26, 2025 at 11:12 PM
Manorial rolls are vital sources for medieval settlement history, and many survive, but unfortunately many are now in the USA. Documents recording the medieval history of several Leicestershire settlements are in the Huntington library, California.
These are great - but we love manorial documents more than most!

Many of this collection in Chicago are digitised (and should anyone be interested in supporting a history of any of these Norfolk or Suffolk parishes, please get in touch...):
October 23, 2025 at 7:59 PM
Reposted by Leicestershire VCH Trust
This is really interesting - taking the sort of work we do (analysing historic documents and landscape elements, buildings, and place names), and using that to attempt to reconstruct a village, a place, as it was 700 years ago. #Skystorians
Had the pleasure of seeing this incredible digital reconstruction of medieval Barrow-upon-Trent at a heritage event this weekend. It's kinda mesmerising. Love this level of detail. Grab a cuppa and give it a watch!

#derbyshire #archaeology #medieval 🏺

Copyright 2023 Friends of St Wilfrid's.
Medieval Barrow upon Trent c1300 CE
YouTube video by albino igil
youtu.be
October 23, 2025 at 8:03 AM
Reposted by Leicestershire VCH Trust
👩🏫 Are you involved in a school or educational group in and around Charnwood Forest?

📆 Join us on Nov 20th for our next Education Hub Event, with networking and workshops on Geopark resources.

🌐 Learn more and book your place: www.charnwoodforest.org/event/autumn...
October 21, 2025 at 7:30 AM
Wonderful photos, past of the historic record of a changing industrial landscape
October 20, 2025 at 12:06 PM
Very pleased to be supporting this project with a talk about our experiences in Leicestershire and sources for 19th- and early 20th-century local history
We're delighted to announce the first in a series of workshops hosted by our new project in Lincolnshire will take place in Spalding on 15 November - more details in the link. 1/2
October 16, 2025 at 12:23 PM
Reposted by Leicestershire VCH Trust
💥12 months ago Britain's last coal-fired power station, Ratcliffe-on-Soar in Nottinghamshire, shut down after 50 years powering the national grid. We can now confirm that C20's listing application for Ratcliffe's 8 cooling towers has been rejected by DCMS, while their demolition has been approved.
October 8, 2025 at 11:42 AM
This is good news. There's a huge amount of very useful information in there but the Record Commission version takes a while to understand. With the outreach activities too this is a very welcome project
Just to be clear, the Valor Ecclesiasticus is hardly unknown (and there are editions of the thing), whatever excitable press releases might say, but a new edition is very welcome.
October 7, 2025 at 12:05 PM
Reposted by Leicestershire VCH Trust
It's amazing to think that there are different products from Loughborough to be found all over the world! lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2021/04/loug...
Loughborough Variety
Local history of the market & university town of Loughborough in Leicestershire presented by an accredited Leicestershire Tour Guide.
lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com
October 6, 2025 at 6:08 PM
Reposted by Leicestershire VCH Trust
#ICYMI - a neglected (day we say actually forgotten?) history of inland industrial tourism in rural #Leicestershire.

This work, the result of community collaboration with @leicsvcht.bsky.social takes in the little crossroads community of #Nanpantan, its farms, pubs and attractions before WW1. 🗃️
‘The holiday resort of the people’: Exploring the History of the ‘Community at the Crossroads’ - On History
In this blogpost, Dr Pamela Fisher, County Editor of the  Victoria County History (VCH) project in Leicestershire, describes a project on a tiny midland settlement and shows how VCH research engages w...
blog.history.ac.uk
September 30, 2025 at 10:41 AM
Reposted by Leicestershire VCH Trust
Come & hear me speak in Leicester on Fri 28 November, 2025. 'From Nation to Local: Re-Discovering England's Places through #AHistoryOfEnglandIn25Poems'. Thanks to my friends at the Centre for Regional and Local History + the Centre for Urban History for the invitation. All welcome! Link in AltText.
September 28, 2025 at 1:56 PM
Reposted by Leicestershire VCH Trust
A tiny snapshot of a tiny community that had - as it happens - forgotten this element of its past.

Working with @leicsvcht.bsky.social, the people of Nanpantan, have rediscovered its heritage as a place of leisure for the growing town of Loughborough and its labouring people. #LocalHistory 🗃️
September 24, 2025 at 12:03 PM
What were holidays like before statutory holiday entitlements and modern transport enabled workers in the middle of the country to get to the seaside? Our recent work at Nanpantan (towards our forthcoming Loughborough history) threw light on this. Find out more at blog.history.ac.uk/2025/09/the-...
‘The holiday resort of the people’: Exploring the History of the ‘Community at the Crossroads’ - On History
In this blogpost, Dr Pamela Fisher, County Editor of the  Victoria County History (VCH) project in Leicestershire, describes a project on a tiny midland settlement and shows how VCH research engages w...
blog.history.ac.uk
September 24, 2025 at 12:27 PM
Reposted by Leicestershire VCH Trust
There are lots of things happening in Loughborough, the home of my #OnePlaceStudy for Heritage Open Days 2025 #HODs2025 Most are listed on my blogpost, but pop over to the Heritage Open Days website to find events just outside Loughborough. lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2025/08/heri...
Heritage Open Days in Loughborough 2025
Following on from the success of last year's co-ordinated approach to Heritage Open Days, groups have again got together to offer a varied programme.
lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com
August 31, 2025 at 5:34 PM
Loughborough 1678 and an unusual request in a will - That my Body be buried in my Garden (and it may have been, as there's no burial in the parish registers)
August 27, 2025 at 12:25 PM
St Peter's (Anglican) church Loughborough, built 1910-12, was high church, with many images of saints in windows, not all well known, e.g. St Polycarp (of Byzantium, bishop of Smyrna, now Izmir, modern Turkey). I especially like the windows showing (1/2)
August 27, 2025 at 11:41 AM