Cheslyn Hay & District Local History Society

Speakers Night this Thursday and we welcome the jockey/author Chris Pitt to talk about Horse Racing including the local tracks.  He comes well recommended as a speaker and we should have a good night.  Thursday 28th October at 7.30pm at the Salem.  £1 including refreshments.
We welcomed nine visitors on Tuesday and we helped them with a variety of researches and it made for an interesting and enjoyable day.  Open this Tuesdays as usual from 10am – 4pm and at the rear of the Salem. We now ensure that a scanner is available during these times for copying any photographs that visitors bring with them thus causing no inconvenience to anyone.
Appeals  this week come from  the Harvey family of Station Street as well as the Hickman and Millington families.
Interesting responses from last week’s requests solved many of the queries that involved several families including the Mitchell, Hurley, Kingston  and the Hacketts ones.
Photographs from the Kingston and the Archer families were handed in for copying this week and an interesting document dating back to the 1800s relating to Mrs Handley’s Library on the High Street has also been copied.     Plus Kathleen Brough recalls her early days in Low Street throughout the 1930s and 1940s in Low Street.
Finally the sad news of  Harry Dace, the oldest resident born and bred in the village and who continued to live in Cheslyn Hay, who passed away on Thursday morning. He would have been 98 in December.   A true gent and one who will not be replaced.

More information on any of the above can be obtained via the email address below.
trevor.cheslynhayhistory@talktalk.net

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Our new book ‘Cheslyn Hay Lives’ at £4 has been particularly well received and sales have already exceeded 600 copies in the first fortnight.  And from comments received the new format of chapters covering different aspects of the village’s history and stories from the past has convinced us that this will be basis for next year’s book.
Our Base, which is open every Tuesday from 10am – 4pm is becoming more and more popular with visitors from all over the country with all different types of enquiries and researches, which we seem to be able to deal with from our extensive archives.
One fascinating family history research is on the Hawkins family and we have had recently three separate branches of this family all connected to Cheslyn Hay of which one goes back to 1786 and we are currently linking them all together.   Other family researches this week include the names Mason, Mitchell and Goodall.
Responses to recent enquiries continue to turn up surprising results.  Particularly with the Stanton/Bate family line to include photographs as well and also with the request from Hereford on the Hackett family.  All have been drawn to successful conclusions.
New photographs just handed in include the old local character Harry ‘Iron’ Bates with his horse and cart selling his vegetables in Station Street plus one of the 1979 Cheslyn Hay Carnival Queen Julie Davis with her attendants Kerry Bowater and Trudy Mumford as well as a wedding photograph of Jack Bailey and Renee Hitchenor,  and one of Frank Perks with a lorry transporting Hawkins tiles, a trip to Dudley Zoo in 1957 including Marcia Perks, Barry Brough and some Bakers and some unknown.  Also two excellent shots of the old Swingbridge and of Bowns Farm building as it was before the Mary Rose and two Pinfold Lane School photos of the Coronation Parade in 1953 showing Anita Russell, Joan Rigby, Wendy Perks, Philip Evans, Christine Lawson and a girl just named Helen from the hutments in Middle Hill.
And additional material for our archives include ten generations of the Marchant family dating back to 1684 with local families such as Boulton, Stokes, Lawson, Perry, Steadman and Benton.  Plus copies of four newspaper cuttings of items involving Samuel and Sarah Whitehouse including an account of Sarah recalling the excitement of the day when the Rugeley poisoner, Dr Palmer, was hanged at Stafford.  She was working at The Bird in Hand near to the Great Wyrley Institute and the pubs kept open all night and throughout the morning to cater with ‘the large number of people from this district who then walked to Stafford to witness the execution.’

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