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Andy Walpole

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Everything posted by Andy Walpole

  1. Local history, specialist history, anything that has its roots in Britain. I'm writing an article hightighting British history blogs... and to tell you the truth... I can hardly find any...
  2. Been working on this for a while: http://www.hidden-histories.org.uk
  3. I like this one too: Take from the alters of the past the fire, not the ashes - Jean Jaurès
  4. I set up a Twitter account for my History Nexus project, which can be found here: http://twitter.com/historynexus I've been finding quotes about history and placing them on the site. Just found my favourite so far: History is a people's memory, and without memory man is demoted to the lower animals - Malcolm X I've placed it in the footnote of History Nexus
  5. A BNP win at a council by-election in Harold Hill. I've posted a comment about it on my site: http://www.haroldhill.org/latest_news/latest-news.htm
  6. I've created a MySpace site for History Nexus, but I was wondering if anybody knew about good history sites for teenagers that I could also recommend? http://www.myspace.com/history_nexus
  7. A family friend from Romford was a primary school pupil during this period - she states that everything that went wrong at the school was blamed on the Harold Hill kids.
  8. It's this last statement that makes me doubt the entire evidence. Firstly, yes Harold Hill was created as a self-contained estate. But this never happened. All the time people were telling me that nights out, if they could afford it, were in Romford, Harold Wood, Brentwood or London. Clearly, not 'everything' was provided by "The Council". Trees and vandalism: Vandalism was a feature of Harold Hill in this period but as for 'give the Council its due, they did try to plant trees, but the children kept knocking them down so the Council gave up'. I'm sure that a lot of young trees were vandalised, but as for that statement above, then why is it now that every street in Harold Hill has rows of mature trees that were planted and grew in this period? The tree planting programme at the time couldn't have been that much of a failure. 'I hated the lack of greenery'. This completely contradicts every piece of evidence that has ever been presented to me. The biggest attraction for young (and old) Harold Hill residents during this time was the abundance of greenery, trees and parks. 'They would slit their eyes, thin their lips and say words like “aaaahs” for “house” and “que” for “thank you”. ' I don't know how to respond to this. So what? People spoke in a certain way. 'Ours was the only house in the street that hadn’t been burgled and mum put that down to the fact that ours was such a big family and therefore there was always someone at home.' My mum, who at the time was living on Chippenham Road, was the victim of a burglary during the period that this person writes about. They broke in and stole £10 – a lot of money then. But this was shockingly unusual. I carried out an extensive interview with former PC Bert White and he stated that burglary did happen, but mostly for taking the cash out of gas meters. The author states that every house on their street other than their own was burgled. This doesn't ring true. Every house? I've never heard of this endemic crime wave before.
  9. Alright, so it does get a bit personal, but one persons recollection is just as valid as anybody elses. A lot of contributions that are volunteered now are very upbeat, a typical one being: Finding the negative ones is harder. I guess it's just the psychology of remembering. If you hated the place and couldn't wait to escape, you'll hardly going to want to spend time, decades later, recollecting it. At the end of day, it was a self-contained suburban estate. Those with a bit of a spark in their character would have felt alienated by this. Certainly, if you didn't have a family or kids then there was little point, if you had a choice in the matter at least, in hanging around.
  10. You're back online - you've paid your bills I see Thanks for above - why anonymous though?
  11. Whereabouts do you live now John? I was going to say that if you're ever in town (London, not Harold Hill) I'll meet up with you for a drink and a chat.
  12. Harold Hill: The Musical Coming to the Queens Theatre in 2008. I've just been chatting with the Queens Theatre and they are going to write and put on a special play to celebrate Harold Hill's 60th birthday. They've asked me to get involved and help with the writing. Any named Hollywood actors John you'd like us to approach to play you?
  13. Terry Ward tells me that "O" is Dave Harvey. He indeed died of a heart attack in his twenties. In his twenties! God. I'm going to pilfer your demo photos and place them onto the website.
  14. Well, there's not many places on the net to find a biography of Tom Wintringham.
  15. Hi John, It's interesting that you bring up the autodidact tradition within the working class because I'm currently reading The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes by Jonathan Rose. It's also interesting that you mention Krondstat because I'm also currently reading Victor Serge's Memoirs of a Revolutionary. Both are recommended for a greater understanding of the respective subjects. Del Smith has already dropped your name in an interview that is on the site in reference to a certain infamous article - but I wonder if he's confused about that episode and really means your brother? I know that he was good friends with him. The project started in 2003. It originally took about 18 months to piece together. It meant, not just interviewing people, but painstakingly going through, week by week from 1945 onwards, the Romford Times / Romford Recorder. I still seem to be adding stuff. Just this weekend I finally managed to add some older articles/essays written by others: http://www.haroldhill.org/other-historians/historians.html I grew up on the 'Hill but moved away, going to John Moores University to study history. (I attended an Access to Further Education Course at Havering college) Moving back, I was invited into the setting up of a local branch of the Independent Working Class Association, and although I found myself for periods living in Hackney, Islington and Couch End, we had a very energetic three year existence, polling credible results in the 2002 local elections. I stood in the Gooshays ward and ended up with 856 votes. I was offered a council flat in Harold Hill and I've been living here ever since. I knew that there was a story to tell when it came to Harold Hill, and I also knew that story simply couldn't be told in isolation from the historic events that happened both before and around its creation in the 40s/50s. The site has been up for scrutiny for a few years now, and although I've reread it a number of times, I've only had to change a couple of minor factual points. Another aspect of my intentions when originally writing it was to make sure that it was as near tas possible to 100% historically correct in tone and detail before it went live on the world wide web - I didn't want to embarrass myself by making major edits later on. You mention the prefabs and finally I think I have found somebody who has photos of them! There haven't been any around before and none could be found for the 40th and 50th exhibitions.
  16. Hello as my bio on here reads: I graduated in 2000 from John Moores University in 2000 with a degree in history/literature. I went on to create the website Harold Hill: A People's History at http://www.haroldhill.org/ Harold Hill is a former London County Council estate in the north-east/Essex bordlands. I've recently launched History Nexus at http://www.historynexus.net/ The idea behind History Nexus is to combine the infrastructure of a web 2.0 site with the promotion and discussion of history on the net. I just launched History Nexus last week and I was emailing a number of history websites for publicity, one of which was Spartacus Educational. I've often used SE and found it quite a curious website, having both well-written and accurate information, but also quite arcane material as well. Little did I know that the editor and creator of SE was John Simkin, which brought me back to my first history website, Harold Hill: A People's History. John is a former resident of the estate and as, he told me, his mother stills lives there. John's name was dropped to me a long time ago, and I would have approached him for an interview if knew where to find him - damn, should have tried Google! His name does actually appear on the site but I'm not sure that after all these decades he would appreciate me posting up that particular story on here!
  17. I graduated in 2000 from John Moores University in 2000 with a degree in history/literature. I went on to create the website Harold Hill: A People's History at http://www.haroldhill.org/ Harold Hill is a former London County Council estate in the north-east/Essex bordlands. I've recently launched History Nexus at http://www.historynexus.net/ The idea behind History Nexus is to combine the infrastructure of a web 2.0 site with the promotion and discussion of history on the net.
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