I’ve always had an interest in history, from visiting ancient Roman aqueducts to watching the operation of machinery from the Industrial Revolution. However, mostly I enjoy looking into local history, my family has lived around Plymouth for centuries, with my father’s side of the family emerging from the South Hams and my mother’s in Walkhampton Parish. It is interesting to wander these places and think about what daily life was actually like for the people who came before me.
Plymouth has a layered and complex history which is unavoidable, including:
- Britain’s oldest known human remains
- Bronze Age settlements and pottery
- Medieval farming communities and the historic harbour
- Renaissance seafarers and maritime trade
- The departure of the Mayflower in 1620
- The English Civil War Siege of Plymouth
- A major naval stronghold during the Napoleonic Wars
- Victorian expansion and the arrival of the railway
- World War II and the Plymouth Blitz
- Post-war modernist reconstruction
- Cold War features
I currently volunteer on a local heritage project – People’s Archive Plymouth, which aims to collect, curate and make freely available a digitised archive of Plymouth history. My role includes assisting in the development of software and running the infrastructure which makes the project possible and researching archive items for inclusion in the archive.
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