We’ll be working at an exceptionally special site for the next six weeks. This woodland is the final resting place of a WWII B-17 pilot whose plane came to earth when the controls failed in 1944.

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) have tasked us with recovering remains of this young man, termed MIA

Tonight’s concert venue: Holy Trinity, Long Melford

Uncanny Fanny — from the Lisburn Standard, Friday 15 May 1914 (110 years ago today). For context, see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larne_gun…

If you’re near Gloucester don’t miss the open day for the A417 archaeological excavation this weekend

I love it when archaeology and genealogy come together. In the March/April issue of British Archaeology, I read how researchers used burial registers, churchyard surveys and newspapers to put names to the remains of two victims of steamship explosions in Hull in the early 1800s.

There are so many poisoning cases in the 19th and early 20th c that I can't help but wonder about the many (unlike H H Crippen and Frederick Seddon) who must have got away with it. Would love to know if anyone has found some very suspicious deaths in records they've looked at.

Francis Stevens recorded his marriage and the births of his children by carving them into the lid of this chest in the 1670s. The Merchant's House

I’m excited that since posting this blog about Catherine Bouchier Phillimore 2 months ago, her great nephew has contacted me. Amazingly, his grandfather (her brother) was born almost 200 years ago. I look forward to finding out more from a family member. Stay tuned!

OCR fail

Lockkeeper’s humour

A 17th c box tomb with sandstone top in the yard of St Edmund's in Southwold. The curvature in the front is the result of the excise men, or indeed any Tom, Dick or Harry, rasping their cutlasses on this convenient stone just outside the porch....noise enough to wake the dead?

I don't think I've come across a place that captures so evocatively the memory of the past within the fabric, as the sea of steps at Wells Cathedral.

theguardian.com/books/2024/apr…

Victorian industrial question: Would 'stocktaker of iron' in 1841 and 'storekeeper in the iron works' in 1881 be literate jobs?

While we have thousands of documents here in the archive, not all of them have been opened! Here's a sealed plan for an aqueduct in Taplow from 1845. Wrapped in leather and with a wax seal, no one has looked at this plan for almost 200 years.