OLD ORDNANCE SURVEY MAPS: THE GODFREY EDITION

March Newsletter

This has been a sad month, for it saw the sudden death of our office's caretaker, Brian Heaviside. We are a small team, but like any other business we rely on others for help and support in various ways. For about ten years Brian had been an important presence, as caretaker and 'general handyman' for this office and for others on the Prospect Business Park. Although he had been ill for some time, and was well past the age at which he could have retired, he preferred to carry on working and was always to hand when we had a problem that needed solving. Sadly a serious fall at one of the landlord's other premises saw him rushed to hospital, and although we all thought he was on the way to a recovery, albeit a slow one, the strain on his body was just too much. As much as anything, I will miss our chats when he would stop the lawnmover, I would leave my computer, and we would put the world to rights.

The series, of course, goes on and over the last few weeks I myself have been researching the notes for Hattingen, an absolutely charming town in the Ruhr; Huddersfield, where we will be bringing out the third of our full colour 25" maps; Larne & Islandmagee; and County Monaghan. Tomorrow I shall be off again to West Yorkshire but which map I do will rather depend on the weather (I got soaked in Huddersfield with the rain lashing in across the Pennines).

Researching the historical notes remains the best part of the job and the perambulation of the map does at least keep me fit. But I am not getting any younger and the same applies to my other authors. We are always interested in hearing from potential new authors, especially for the conurbations, such as Greater Manchester, Birmingham & the West Midlands, London etc. (I'm afraid we do not need more authors for smaller market towns.) So if you can write, have an interest in a broad area and not just one place, know of our maps and have read some of the introductions, do please contact Suzanne at this office. Most of our maps are for the period 1870-1940 so a reasonable knowledge of industrial and economic history, transport and social history is desirable.

This Saturday, the 2nd April, I will be at the Pudsey Family & Local History Fair, which is run by our friend Jackie Depelle, a regular advisor to us on matters genealogical. Chris Makepeace will also be there with a stand of our maps, and apparently I am giving a talk at 1.45pm. I must work out what I am going to speak about! I hope some of you will be there; do come up and say Hello! if you are. Details of the event are given on their website.