Category Archives: Local Interest

During the summer of 1830, the Swing Riots (named after a mysterious rioter called Captain Swing) spread like wild fire across southern Britain. They started with attacks on the much hated (labour-displacing) threshing machines and continued with wage and tithe … Continue reading →

Horse & Coach routes from and to Marlow Following the AiM Walk on Sunday the 13th of March, AiM has conducted some research that provides a few more pieces in the jig-saw. In the last AiM newsletter we speculated on … Continue reading →

Holy? – Well, Well, Well! The veneration of water extends back “well” into prehistoric times.  Ritual offerings were placed in it, shrines, temples, stone circles and avenues were built next to it, and ritual shafts and wells have been dug … Continue reading →

The Thames – a Late Stone Age Lost & Found The River Thames is very much part of the lives of everyone living in its fertile valley.  My story lies in the late stone age, (10-2,500 BC) and takes us … Continue reading →

Edgar Wallace, the King of Thrillers In Little Marlow cemetery rest the remains of Edgar Wallace, the prolific author who created the film legend King Kong.  Wallace (1875 – 1932) was born in Greenwich of actor parents but, being the … Continue reading →

St. Wulfstan was the Saxon Bishop of Worcester both before and for nearly thirty years after the Conquest. He was a genuinely good and holy man. So good, in fact, that he very nearly became the Patron Saint of England … Continue reading →

In the graveyard of St James the Less’ church at Stubbings on Maidenhead Thicket rests one of the more colourful characters of post-second world war Britain. Nora, Lady Docker, whose headstone (see picture) also records her as Callingham, the name … Continue reading →

If you had been standing on the edge of a particular trench in Silchester on one day in 1893 and gazing down into the partially excavated shallow well associated with Insula IX (a house oddly angled at 45o to the … Continue reading →

I joined a group from the Maidenhead Archaeological and Historical and Society this summer for the latest of their regular visits to the Roman town of Silchester. This was the fifteenth season of Reading University’s Field School, which brings together … Continue reading →

The word slave comes from medieval Latin, originally it was just a word for the Slavic people.  Although the first textual mention of slavery goes back to the very first written law (the Code of Hammurabi, ~1760 BC), the archaeological … Continue reading →