The Lincolnshire Curly Coat Pig - its downfall and its potential origins

ASPIRATION is the most misused and abused term when referring to working class people. Here is the problem of our time in that we have a university educated class that see the world through their values, standards and experiences in a very narrow view. This dominates in politics and business to the detriment of all in an age where stepping stones of social mobility are being removed.

Rural class structures are very misunderstood. A popular history I was taught was that these people migrated to cities to work. This is a little misleading as in fact that they migrated into industry to work, not all industry was city based, especially coal mining as any visit to the former coal mining villages of the Midlands, Yorkshire, Durham and Northumberland will reveal.

“It’s terribly difficult to explain in England to people how much class distinction there is. Its only when you go away and look back that you see it.” Michael Caine

Here I consider some of the poetry and rhymes arising out of observing and hunting wildfowl

The cottager was a key part of the rural economy in the Fens is here described in Wrangle in 1848. One of the many pieces not to make my book Marsh Fen and Town South LIncolnshire and Beyond.

Marsh Fen and Town South Lincolnshire and Beyond is now also available in paperback from Amazon.

A look at cabbage growing in the Fens

uesday 27th April 1876 saw the Spring Fair in Spalding. The area was recovering from several years of rinderpest that devastated local livestock followed by drought.

Throughout the Middle Ages fishing rights were an important economic asset throughout the Fens and were d by a complex structure of...

After much work I have now published the full version of my book "Marsh Fen and Town South Lincolnshire and Beyond". It is a hard back book just under A4 size consisting of 450 pages, over 250,000 words and over 200 pictures and illustrations.

In 1835 South Durham MP Joseph Pease succeeded in getting a Bill passed in Parliament ending bull baiting, dog fighting and cock fighting. But the annual Bull run in Stamford was to continue. Here I consider this, how this was resisted and then consider the consequences of a recent occurrence of a young bull running through the middle of Birmingham.

An insight into the working life and accomodation in the 19th Century Lincolnshire Fens

The following extract by the Revd. Daniels published in 1812 gives a detailed account of goose rearing in the Fens and in France...

As I researched and wrote this I couldn’t help but think this story is worthy of a theatrical drama, or a film, or even, as is the trend...

What of my identity? It is interwoven between marsh, fen and town but the world changes. My roots and ancestry is firmly in the Fens....

May 28th 1914 saw the Welland Trustees take its annual trip "down below" into the waters of The Wash

Every so often I will publish material that did not make the script of “Marsh Fen and Town”. The following published in 1801 [i] is an...

Spalding policemen assumed a man was drunk after he loaded his pipe with pieces of pork pie and started to smoke it!

The value of both rare breeds and those maintaining them is vastly underappreciated to the detriment of our food security.