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Forthcoming Events
New or Guest Members are welcome at any of our meetings.  

The next and future meetings will be held in:

Monday March 15^th 2010
A short Annual General Meeting will be followed by a workshop or themed meeting where all members can be involved.  

Monday May 17^th 2010    
Lynda Hotchkiss ---- “Expanding your family history”  -  more sources of information to put flesh onto the bones of your family tree.
Lynda is always a popular speaker and no one leaves her meetings without much more knowledge and the inspiration to go away and add more to the records of your own family.

June Outing – to be arranged

Monday July 19^th 2010
Speaker to be arranged

Monday Sept 20^th 2010
Maureen Sutton ---- “Back-end”   Harvest customs and stories. with pictures and memorabilia.

Monday Nov 15^th 2010    
Michael Gildersleve--- “In search of Mother.”     The speaker’s own story of his own search for his true mother and some of the obstacles he had to overcome. Some may leave with tears in their eyes. Not to be missed!

  Recent meetings

Book Launch pictures


10th Year of the Group - celebrate as Audrey Hodson cuts the cake
which went down well with the members.

Monday 18^th Jan 2010
Our speaker for the first meeting of 2010 was Rodney Cousins and his talk was entitled ‘Down your Way’. Rodney had brought with him a superb selection of artefacts ranging from a child’s Windsor chair, real leather laced period boots to roofing tiles and a cooper’s specially curved draw knife. He split his talk into sectors and dealt with a wide range of crafts associated with, earth, wood, metals and textiles. Before that though he gave an introduction specific to our location and referring to the 1908 directory for the village which included a blacksmith, joiner, no less than three millers, and numerous farmers. From the 1851 census he was also able to tell us that there had been two wheelwrights, a tailor and even a clockmaker within our village.

Moving on to crafts and tools dealing with earth  -  red clay was used for bricks, tiles, potting including chimney pots, and almost all manufacturing craftsmen were paid piecework and so only earned money just for what they produced. A brick maker could hand make 3-4000 bricks in a day, but they then had to dry prior to firing, and most were identifiable to the individual maker by some mark on them. The earth also gave rise to stonemasons working on larger buildings and churches as well as mudmasons who worked on the construction of earth walls and buildings which were most common in the south of the county.

Wood gave Rodney the opportunity to look at crafts that have now almost disappeared such as coopering, wheelwrights, and basket making. Our locality was the largest willow growing area in the country and the willow works at Beckingham have been well researched n by some members of our group. The uses of different woods for each finished article were explained, like an elm hub, oak spokes and an ash rim surrounded by iron for wheels and how complicated and skilful the cooper’s job was making oak barrels for brewers and distilleries. Clogs, chairs, besoms, cricket bats, charcoal, and specific turning were all well explained and little anecdotes made the morning very entertaining. Many more crafts, greensmithing [working with copper rather than iron (blacksmith) or precious metals (goldsmith)], shoemaking, saddlers, smock makers even beehive making and thatching as well as others were all covered explained in some detail. For example smocks could sometimes be identified as made in a location and the embroidery often denoted the trade of a wearer. Ann Smith thanked Rodney who had also answered several questions in discussion after his talk.

Monday 16^th November 2009

Our speaker for this meeting was Paul Howitt, Chairman of the ‘Friends of the Old Hall Association’. The Friends were formed in 1949, just after the war, and without them the Hall may well have fallen into complete disrepair and been demolished. It had escaped the bombing of WWII but the condition it was in left much to be desired. In the 1960’s and early 70’s the drive was to clear out the old and build the new. Toward the end of the 1970’s there was the first public realisation of our heritage, but until the Friends, along with English Heritage, achieved a Grade 1 listed Building status for the Hall it was always in danger. Now with that listing its future is assured.

Paul’s knowledge of the Hall and its history were evident throughout his talk, which covered such a wide range of themes, including the design, rooms and their uses, development and current uses of the buildings.  Parts of the present hall were built between 1460-80, and there has almost certainly been a house on the site for 1000 years. It has been added to and altered. It has received visits from Kings & Queens, been associated with the Pilgrim Fathers and involved with different sides of warring factions. Latterly, and evidence is there from the census it has been home to as many as 12 families, including William Rose, founder of the engineering business after which Cadbury ‘Roses’ were named.

Other areas covered were ghosts, and the grey lady of the tower, the green oak timber frame and why it was green oak, the 200 carts and 5000 soldiers that accompanied Henry VIII, on his visit, in 1541 with his 5^th wife. It is the ‘Old’ Hall, not just because of age but it was once replaced by the ‘New’ Hall in another part of town. How the River Trent was once the division between the ‘north and south’ and the Hall’s strategic positioning for military involvement. This is a précis of some parts of a very entertaining and educational talk.

We also launched our book, “North & South Wheatley  -  Photographic Memories”. This has been well received by those who collected their copies and joined us for a small celebration. We would like to thank all those who subscribed in advance and giving their support to this venture.

Copies are now on sale at the Post Office or by calling Dave on 01427 880934.  -  Price £8.00        The book will make an ideal Christmas especially for friends or relatives who may have moved away!

Monday September 21^st  2009
Our speaker for the morning was Lynda Hopkiss, a respected genealogist from Lincoln. Her talk entitled ‘Real People who don’t exist’ was very well received by members and guests. The difficulties of tracing our ancestors when the trail appears to peter out, is a dilemma facing most of us at some time. Lynda started with the simplest reason being different spellings of surnames caused simply by mishearing, interpretation of regional dialect, individual alteration or just plain illiteracy of some ancestors or the record makers. [Lynda’s example was of her own name from Hopkiss to Huskies or in my own case Valentine to Folluntyne]. There are other explanations such as an illegitimate child having the opportunity to call themselves by either their mother or father’s name [if known]. Use of step-father’s surname is quite common. Foster and adoptive children change their names – sometimes without even knowing. Bigamy, criminal conviction and a number of other reasons were given mostly with examples from her own research. Legitimate and plausible reasons were explained for a person to use up to three quite different surnames. Before there was either compulsory registration or census, records are scarce and tracing many people is difficult. Lynda gave us several more avenues to consider when the trail has seemingly disappeared.

Monday 20^th July 2009
Our meeting in July was devoted to the final selection of the photographs to be used in the book we plan to publish for our 10^th anniversary later in the year.

Monday June 15^th 2009.
The June meeting of the group was the summer outing, well we never left the joint parishes, but what a trip. After a glorious weekend the forecast said ‘rain’, but we were lucky and it held off for the three hours it took for our ‘Village Walkabout’. Led by Ann Smith a group of 14 started at the corner of Muspit Lane, which was the old road to Retford and before moving on had learnt of the village pinfold, the long gone tithe barn as well as murder by pitchfork. Then it was on to St Helen’s Church, or what is left of it, where we looked at the only known picture of the complete church. It fell into disrepair, despite the congregation of field mice, and it’s effectively demolished in 1885. Most took the footpath from there to the east end of Low Pasture Lane and again studied photographs of the six sail windmill and the steam mill that once provided employment for several men in the village. Then it was onto the crossroads to look at the Old Hall and again recount buildings that are no longer there.

Up the hill to see what is believed to be the oldest house, dating from the early 1600’s, which was even before the church tower was built in 1637. We looked at where the carriage shed had been from where the village produce was transported to Retford market. The old Bakery was remembered fondly by customers when it was operational, the hiring triangle, the water ‘tank’ and the ‘other’ public house also had tales to be told about them. The party continued down the lane to the site of the Reading Room, and then to hear about the only remaining Chapel from of the four that once existed. We learnt that the bricks for the current Chapel were made in Walkeringham and transported by canal to Clayworth and from there by farmer’s horses and carts over the hill to Low Street. Some of the history of the Forge, the old shop, the Primitive Chapel, the Sun Inn, as well as the plaster pits and joinery businesses were all covered during a most enlightening journey.

With tired legs the group settled down to a picnic lunch, at the home of Jack & Dee Miles, and more tales of what had happened where and when. The knowledge displayed by Ann , ably added to by other long life long residents of the villages made for a very interesting day out without leaving ‘home’.

Monday 18^th May 2009
The group along with several welcome new guests met in the Boardroom at the Post Office. Our speaker for the morning was Ann Batchelor, and her talk was entitled ‘My name is Frances’.

She started with a letter to Edward Rudolph written around 1917 from a Sister Tomlinson who ran a ‘Mother & Baby’ home in Pontefract. It was an appeal to him to find homes for a 7 year old girl and her brother who was just 6.  The children had been reluctantly left at the home by their father who was a desperate man, as he was in lodgings with them, having lost not only other children to various illnesses but then his wife at the age of just 28 years. He had tried all ways of raising them on his own but with a full time job as a miner in Featherstone [earning just £1-17s-10d per week], the rent, food and ‘child care’ in those hard times was very difficult and the latter was not working as his landlady was a hard, if not cruel substitute for their mother and she had asked them to move on. Father volunteered to pay 12/- per week toward their upkeep and had no option but to walk away and leave them, with Sister Tomlinson at the home, which in itself was unsuitable for children of their age and hence the appeal letter.

Edward Rudolph, who was to become the founder of ‘Waifs & Strays Home’ [today known as the ‘The Children’s Society’], managed to place the girl in York but the boy had to go first to London and then was moved around the country.

The little girl was Ann’s mother and home soon became a large terraced house in Leeds which she shared with a Matron, a Sister and 19 other girls. When a new girl arrived also called Frances, she was called into Matron and told she would have to then be called ‘Joan’, as they could not have two girls with the same name, and when another Joan arrived she was renamed again, this time ‘Fanny’. But Frances always insisted her “My name is Frances!” and hence the title not only of today’s talk but also the book that was written about her.

Ann kept us enthralled for almost 2 hours with her tales and a  series of memories from Frances, as well as the research she had done to reunite her mother with a number of people from her past. It was truly an emotional journey for both the speaker and her audience.

Members Interests
Our members all share an interest in our own and other local villages and are always keen to receive old photographs / stories of individuals, families, and local buildings.
If you have anything you believe may be of interest to us just drop a note to Dave Valentine [see No 114 at the base of the list below for contact details]. Eventually we hope to produce a booklet featuring old photographs etc.
Individual members are in most cases also researching their own family history, some may be local, but many have roots that spread far and wide. Please have a look at the list below. Almost all family historians benefit from the exchange of information as has been proved by various international websites.
If you have any common interests or knowledge of the family names listed our individual members would be pleased to hear from you.
Look for the number by the name and the contact details are by those numbers at the end of the list.