Falling Leaves

Today I came across a new source that I had never heard of before - Espousal books. It seems they were used to record betrothals up until the early seventeenth century. A betrothal was considered to be almost as binding and valid as a marriage.  Few such books have survived and I haven’t managed to [...]

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I have just been asked to find out about someone born in Shortwood in the first half of the nineteenth century. The name Shortwood tells me that the family were nonconformists - Baptists in fact. The original site is no longer in use, the graveyard sadly neglected when I last went and took photographs of [...]

Read the rest of Shortwood near Horsley.