Gill Blanchard – författare

While Gill Blanchard's previous book, Tracing your House History, serves as an indispensable resource for house history enthusiasts of all dwellings, this new and comprehensive guide seamlessly blends those traditional research methods with the vast expanse of online resources. Whether your home is a grand manor, a cosy cottage, or a Victorian terrace, this book equips you with the tools and knowledge to navigate the ever-growing digital archives and databases with ease. From deciphering historical documents to unraveling the lives of past inhabitants, every chapter is filled with invaluable insights and practical advice.Join the author on an enlightening journey as she demystifies the complexities of online research, making the process not only accessible but also enjoyable. Whether you're a seasoned researcher or a novice explorer, this blend of traditional and digital research will guide you to illuminate the history of your beloved home and its previous inhabitants.

At the beginning of his diary, on 1st January 1660, Samuel Pepys noted that ‘Lawson lies still in the River’. A mere two weeks before, amid rioting in the streets of London and with Parliament under the control of the army, Vice‑Admiral John Lawson had taken a fleet of twenty-two warships into the Thames and, in defence of Parliament, blockaded the city.Despite being a staunch republican, Lawson would later aid the Restoration of Charles II, and died from wounds received in battle during the Second Anglo-Dutch War in 1665.This biography charts the tumultuous life and times of an ordinary seaman born in Scarborough who would come to play a major role in the English Civil War, the Restoration, the Anglo-Dutch Wars and the start of the transformation of England into a global political and economic power in the seventeenth century.

Gill Blanchard's practical and informative handbook will help you to trace your ancestors in the traditional counties of East Anglia Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire and Essex and it will give you an insight into their lives. As well as guiding the researcher to historical records held in all the relevant archives, she explores the wealth of other resources that add the 'flesh to the bones' of our ancestors' lives. She describes how fascinating information can be discovered about the places they lived in and the important historical events they lived through, and she traces the life stories of notable people from all backgrounds who shaped the regions development over the centuries. Her account highlights the diversity of this part of England but also focuses on its common features and strong sense of identity. It introduces a wide array of research resources that will be revealing for readers who want to find out about their ancestors who lived here.

Anyone who wants to find out about the history of their house - of their home - needs to read this compact, practical handbook. Whether you live in a manor house or on a planned estate, in a labourer's cottage, a tied house, a Victorian terrace, a twentieth-century council house or a converted warehouse - this is the book for you. In a series of concise, information-filled chapters, Gill Blanchard shows you how to trace the history of your house or flat, how to gain an insight into the lives of the people who lived in it before you, and how to fit it into the wider history of your neighbourhood. A wealth of historical evidence is available in libraries, archives and record offices, in books and online, and this is the ideal introduction to it. Gill Blanchard explores these resources in depth, explains their significance and directs the researcher to the most relevant, and revealing, aspects of them. She makes the research process understandable, accessible and fun, and in the process she demystifies the sometimes obscure language and layout of the documents that researchers will come up against.