Author Archives: HicklingAdmin

A History of Hickling and of all its Clergy by Chris Granger

We are really pleased to be able to share Chris’s history of Hickling with everyone on the website: it is an extraordinary body of work which, unfortunately, was left unfinished when he died in 2015. Chris had an interesting and distinctive writing voice and we hope that we have been able to retain the spirit of his intended book. We have been working with his family to retrieve and organise the research and writings so far and a close friend, John Hopkinson, has written a foreword to introduce Chris to his readers. There is, we believe, much more to do; but for now, please enjoy!

Families in Hickling (& a new framework)

Hickling families – how many different surnames would you guess that we have found so far?

200? 500? 1,000?

So far (excluding spelling variations) my count has reached 947; of these, 3 families seem to have lived in the village from at least 1642 (Protestation Returns) until now – The Collishaws, The Faulks/Fawkes family and the Caunt family. Research isn’t complete (by any means) and we can’t be sure if all 3 families have been continuously present but it’s still a nice record!

Almost a thousand family names involves a lot of work on the website; on top of that, we have 160+ houses and a further 100 businesses, clubs etc etc to add. So, we’ve changed the plan; we are creating a framework for the future – pages will be added for all subjects that we know we have information for and then we will go back and gradually add the information on to each one. The idea is that, if you can find a page for what you are looking for but it is empty (!) you will know that we have something on that subject – then you can contact us & we will send it through to you ahead of i appearing on the website.

THE FAMILY PAGES are now ready and a small number have information already attached to them The rest will hopefully appear in the next couple of weeks.

Either way, if you have any information or queries – please contact us.

THANK YOU for your patience!

Website update: big step forward!

Today marks a big step on the way to building new pages on the website. Our biggest resource, to date, is the Wadkin Archive – the first step was to scan and digitise the archive. Step 2. was to upload all of these images to the website (they can all be found by following the links to the Wadkin Archive page). Step 3. has taken almost a year and, as of this afternoon, is complete! All of the scans have now been catalogued ready to be spread across the website in to individual pages (Step 4!).

Step 4 is going to take some time, too, but we will begin by setting up all the pages over the next few weeks, so that you can see what is coming – if the page for the house, business, activity or family that you are looking for has been uploaded but is empty – you will know that it is coming and you can contact us for early access to the material at any time.

These photos may give you some idea of the enormity of the task – each index card (there are nearly 6,000) relates to a separate scan and each index card has anything between one and dozens of entries to be catalogued and sorted across the different website pages. Each scan could end up appearing in dozens of different places, depending on the breadth of relevance for each one – the Horticultural Show newspaper clippings are a good example, as each one names every winner!

There are nearly a thousand different family names to be uploaded, 160 houses and over a 100 businesses, organisations and activities. We apologise that this is taking so long – it is frustrating for us, too! However, we are now beginning on the final stages and we hope that the website will become more useful and interesting as a result.

Thank you for your patience!

Think of us if you find local history treasure when you’re spring cleaning!

It is just possible that some of us are going to be spending a bit more time at home than usual – our gardens are going to look better than they ever have done before and spring cleaning might actually be done this year. If you are clearing out cupboards, drawers and lofts and you come across old photos, deeds and other treasures – please, please think of us!

  • You can either:
  • let us know what you have found but hold on to things until things are back to normal.
  • scan/digitise what you have found, contact us and we will let you know how to send it across to us (we have a DropBox account that we use).

Either way, please get in touch – we would love to hear about anything you find! There is lots and lots of material still to be uploaded on to our website (sorry – it’s a long job!) but please take a moment to enjoy what is there & we will keep you up-dated as new material is added.