Ramblers: Find. Map. Save: join the search to save thousands of miles of lost historic paths. “An estimated 10,000 miles of historic paths – the equivalent of the distance from London to Sydney – are thought to be missing from the map in England and Wales. These historic paths are a vital part of our heritage, describing how people have travelled over the centuries, yet if they are not claimed by 2026, we risk losing them forever. We want to build a movement of ‘citizen geographers’ to help find all these missing rights of way before it’s too late.”
England
Layers of London: the latest (British Library)
British Library: Layers of London: the latest. “Layers of London, a website home to more than 200 georeferenced maps of London and 1000s of crowdsourced histories, have now launched the latest pillar of their mission, the Layermaker, where anyone can log in to try their hand at georeferencing one (or one thousand) of these aerial images of London. Using the same platform as the British Library’s georeferencer, the user friendly tool makes it simple for anyone to contribute to this project.”
Air & Space Magazine: These Amateur Archaeologists Dig Up the Buzz Bombs That Fell on England in WW2
Air & Space Magazine: These Amateur Archaeologists Dig Up the Buzz Bombs That Fell on England in WW2. “The brothers locate the crashed V-weapons by examining county and national records, including the official ‘bomb census’—an attempt by the wartime authorities to record the damage caused by falling bombs. Because those records are incomplete, they also check combat reports from fighter pilots on V-1 patrols. The brothers work closely with historical officers for the county of Kent and send a copy of the final report from each dig to Britain’s Ministry of Defence. They make a detailed risk assessment at each site before a dig begins.”
The Construction Index: History revealed in John Laing photo archive
I found this but only after Ruth O. tipped me to a different article. The Construction Index: History revealed in John Laing photo archive. “Historic England and the John Laing Charitable Trust have launched a 21-month project that explores the history of constructing modern Britain through the John Laing Photographic Collection. Historic England holds Laing’s entire photographic collection of around 230,000 images. Breaking New Ground is a project that will digitise, conserve, catalogue and make accessible 10,000 images from this collection of social and industrial history.”
The Conversation: How tattoos became fashionable in Victorian England
The Conversation: How tattoos became fashionable in Victorian England. “…we carried out the largest analysis of tattoos ever undertaken, examining 75,688 descriptions of tattoos, on 57,990 convicts in Britain and Australia from 1793 to 1925. We used data-mining techniques to extract information embedded within broader descriptive fields of criminal records, and we linked this information with extensive evidence about the personal characteristics and backgrounds of our subjects. Because the meanings of tattoos are often so difficult to fathom, we used visualisations to identify patterns of use and juxtapositions of particular designs.” This new database of tattoos is one of the new datasets from Digital Panopticon. There’s another new feature that lets you search convicts by occupation.
Express & Star: Second World War photos to be preserved in Express & Star online archive
Express & Star: Second World War photos to be preserved in Express & Star online archive. “Hundreds of historic photographs dating back to the Second World War will be the next to be preserved for future generations as part of the Express & Star photo archive project.” There is already a substantial amount of content in the archive, which is why it gets filed under New instead of Around.
The Guardian: Letters shed light on lovelorn prince who became George IV
The Guardian: Letters shed light on lovelorn prince who became George IV. “Mary Hamilton’s advantages ‘in form and person’ over other women are eulogised in detail by the lovelorn Prince of Wales in a newly digitised letter. The revealing, magniloquent letter is one of more than 1,600 records and documents relating to George IV from the Royal Archives published online for the first time.”
