 A year in the life of a Herefordshire cider orchard photographs by Gareth Rees-Roberts 144 pages with 138 colour photographs Limited edition of 500 numbered hardbacks £20 (ISBN 978 1 906663 27 8) Paperback £15 (ISBN 978 1 906663 26 1) This is a book that needs few words, being a visual contemplation of a year in the life of a mature sixty-acre cider orchard. The photographs allow you to meander through the trees on paths made by sheep, to stand and feel the warming rays of the morning sun, to wander along the garlanded spring avenues, to shelter from the summer rain under dark green boughs, to observe the activity of spiders revealed by the autumn dew shining in their webs, to imagine the flavour of cider made from the varieties of ripening apples, and to consider the moods of the year and the passing of time. Gareth Rees-Roberts attended St Martins School of Art before going on to study the guitar at the Royal Academy of Music, where he was awarded the Julian Bream Prize for his playing. He has lived in the Welsh Marches for over thirty years, working as a musician and instrumental teacher, and as a freelance photographer. In 1983 he was a founder and first chairman of Mid Border Arts, and was responsible for the running of the first Presteigne Festival. In 1997 he was elected as an associate of the Royal Photographic Society. Since the 1980s he has held more than a dozen solo exhibitions, mainly of his black and white landscape photographs, which he develops and prints using traditional darkroom methods and materials.  Tales of a country doctor 112 pages with 25 black and white photographs and drawings Paperback £7.50 (ISBN 978 1 906663 24 7) In 1959 a new doctor set up practice in the Welsh border town of Knighton. His wartime experience with the Gurkhas had convinced him that his future contribution to the world would be in the field of medicine – and his military driving tuition on the Northwest Frontier stood him in good stead for the life of a country doctor careering in his battered vehicle through the wilds of the Welsh borders in the service of his far-flung patients, a life in which he was loyally supported on the home front by his wife Alison. Dr Brian Davies’ driving style would become legendary, and so would the man himself, in the course of the next fifty years. At his funeral in January 2009, which was attended by over 600 people, the remark was made that ‘everyone here must have a story about the Doc’. That set some of those present thinking, and the result is this book of memories and tributes – as full of zest for life, down-to-earth wisdom and a naughty sense of fun as Dr Davies himself. What shines out more than anything is his dedication to his patients, for whom he would turn out morning, noon and night, in all weathers. ‘What are we here for if not to help one another?’ he used to say; and many of the contributors to this book say that ‘we shall not see his like again’. All profits from this book will go to support the Gurkha Welfare Trust.  by Bruce Coplestone-Crow 268 pages with 7 maps Paperback £12.95 (ISBN 978 1 906663 21 6) This book seeks to explain the place-names of Herefordshire — not just those of the major settlements, but also of districts, hamlets and even old farmsteads. For each entry all the known versions of the name that have been used in documents down the ages are set out, these helping indicate how the name has reached what it is today, and the form in which it started life. Thus two exactly similar names today may have different origins and different meanings. These meanings are given, except in the few cases where a meaning is impossible to ascertain, and there is often additional information about the family which may have lent its name to the place, why a name has changed over time or concerning old charter bounds. At the beginning of the book the author has used his considerable knowledge to set out in some detail the origins for the old district names within Herefordshire, many of which (such as Archenfield, Leen, Lyde, Maund and Straddle) are a component of many current place-names. Bruce Coplestone-Crow has researched estate history in Herefordshire and the south Welsh border for over forty years, and has written and published widely on the subject. He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London and of the Royal Historical Society.  Politics in nineteenth-century Radnorshire by Keith Parker 192 pages with 40 black and white illustrations Paperback £10 (ISBN 978 1 906663 23 0) This book covers the issues and personalities of Radnorshire politics in the nineteenth century. The local issues which exercised voters and non-voters alike, when the electoral franchise was much more restricted, were the rights of cottagers who had encroached on common land; tolls and tollgates; and fishing rights. The imposition of additional costs on Radnorshire’s many small farmers in the form of tolls came on top of other grievances — declining farm incomes, tithes, high poor rates and increased local taxation — and the very visible and local tollgates became an easy focus on which anger could be vented, forcing the authorities into overhauling the turnpike system in south Wales. The issues of commons encroachment and fishing rights saw more of a class divide and in both cases the Radnorshire establishment found it politic to make concessions to local public opinion. But not all local politics was about local issues. Corn Laws and their repeal; the Disestablishment of the Church in Wales; the cause of electoral reform; Home Rule for Ireland; even the conditions of Chinese labour in South African goldmines all played their part as to how people voted. Until 1886 Radnorshire had two parliamentary seats — the Radnor boroughs and the county — and for much of the century there seems to have been an implicit local agreement that the boroughs seat should be held by the Whigs and then the Liberals and the county by the Conservatives, and elections were usually uncontested. But this was not always the case, and when passions were running high elections could be tightly contested. Thus in 1874 the county seat was contested by a Gladstonian Liberal, an unofficial Liberal and a Conservative. Many of the candidates came from the major landowning families of the county, the (Green) Prices of Norton Manor, the Lewises of Harpton Court, the Walshes of Knill Court and then Newcastle Court (who became the Barons Ormathwaite), the Wilkinses of Maesllwch Castle, Coltman Rogers of Stanage Park, and Venables Llewelyn of Llysdinam, but with a sprinkling of outsiders, some successful, some not. Keith Parker brings out the careers and political thoughts of the candidates, both those successful and unsuccessful, delves into the local issues that fired local politics, the ebb and flow of allegiances between families and how radicalism could cause estrangements, gives a feeling for elections down the century, and explains how the gradually increasing number of electors changed the way that electioneering took place. In so doing he also provides a social history of Radnorshire in the nineteenth century. A former deputy head of John Beddoes School, Keith Parker lectured for some years on local history for the Extra-Mural Department of the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, and since retirement has spent much of this time in historical research and writing. Parties, Polls and Riots is the third of his books on the history of Radnorshire to be published by Logaston Press.  Rural images, realities & responses: Herefordshire, 1830s-1930s by Tim Ward 168 pages with 135 black and white illustrations Paperback £12.95 (ISBN 978 1 906663 22 3) Tim Ward’s collection of postcards, built up over many years, includes many images of Herefordshire’s past rural life: harvesting and hop-picking, cidermaking and cattle breeding, blacksmiths, beekeepers and basketmakers. Behind these photographs, carefully posed as most of them had to be for the slow business of early photography, were the working lives of men and women – and many of those lives were a hard struggle, however picturesque the scenes seem to be. Life was far from a ‘roses round the door’ country idyll. This book is made up of a combination of those images, including some of the evocative work of Alfred Watkins, and an attempt to tell the story behind the pictures uncovered by Tim Ward’s painstaking research. For, dispossessed by the Enclosure Acts that took common land from rural people and forced them into miserable working and living conditions, Herefordshire’s agricultural labourers, like those in other parts of Britain, eventually found a voice, with the formation, from 1871, of a succession of farmworkers’ unions. Tim Ward charts the history of the unions, the strong characters who founded them, including Thomas Strange, William Gibson Ward, Joseph Arch and Sidney Box, and what became of their attempts to bring about change for those whose cause they championed. The story unfolds against a backdrop of a fast-changing world, including a number of factors that would change rural life for ever – mechanization, opportunities to leave the land and find a new life in the industrialized cities, or even abroad, and the onset of the First World War. Tim Ward spent many years as a professional grower of salad crops in Essex and later in Gloucestershire. Changes in marketing and economics led to a new life – dealing in old postcards and documents from a shop in Ross on Wye. He and his wife Shirley gathered a large collection of Herefordshire photographs, postcards and ephemera which is sill growing after nine years of retirement. He now has time to research the local history to which his collection refers.  by Pat Hughes & Heather Hurley 192 pages with 170 black & white illustrations Paperback £12.95 (ISBN 978 1 906663 25 4) The Story of Ross is the history of a unique market town from the first hunter gatherers to the dawn of a new millennium. Ross emerged as a distinct settlement overlooking the River Wye after the Saxon invasions, evolving from the Iron Age hill fort on Chase Hill and the nearby Roman settlement of Ariconium. The story starts to deepen after the Norman Conquest, and a fascinating tale unravels. The book has involved much original research, fleshing out the faint picture of Ross which had previously existed. The authors investigate the importance of the bishop’s manor and market grants; consider the layout of the medieval town and its shopkeepers; the markets and meeting places; Underhill and the Bell Forge; past industries and enterprises; the religious tensions in the Civil War; education and charity; the role of the Wye in trade and tourism and the advent of public services. The famed man of Ross, John Kyrle, takes his place alongside Walter Scott, Nathaniel Morgan, Wallace Hall and Thomas Blake as men who helped develop and improve the town, and space is also devoted to lesser known people and their contributions. The story is brought up to date with local government re-organisations, coupled with changes in health and education and the recent enhancement of the town centre and riverside. This is a revised edition of the book first published by Logaston Press in 1999.  by Tim Ward 96 pages with over 150 black & white illustrations Paperback £10 ISBN 978 1 906663 28 5 This visual history of Leominster in the very early years of photography is based on Tim Ward's collection of postcards and other material including photographs and ephemera such as advertisements, invoices, posters and programmes. These have been grouped by streets and their traderes, by particular buildings (for instance the school) and by events such as the market, elections and the First World War It is surprising to see how little has changed in some places and equally surprising to realise how much has been demolished and replaced in other parts of the town. |