As in the first part of a bundle of map links of forgiveness my posts are lagging far behind. There´s a lot of changes at the moment in the physical world which I´m not going into, as this blog is strictly obsessed with ´things´ of the past in the the Tamworth area.
I´m convinced that exploring the landscape around you is a good thing all round. So to help out in this quest to explore your surroundings here are a few more links and search tools(map based tools in above mentioned post) to use all over the country that have been really useful in this blog. All without leaving the confines of the computer screen. Even better if you accompany with exploring, asking around, research in physical world!
Firstly there´s google books. A lot of older books sometimes dating back to the 18th, 19th centuries are published online. These older books many times are ambitious attempts by gentleman scholars to cover all aspects of the places, later on they become more and more specialised until today when it´s very difficult to get a book covering everything on a place. The information is too fragmented and anyway there´s too much out there. Apart from google books which being the monster it is has the largest collections there´s www.archive.org and Project Gutenberg for example. If you´re looking for info on a place on google books the more obscure the info the better, type it into the search bar on google books and you´ll be surprised.
Hang on….This isn´t a bundle of tools it´s a ramble so back to basics
BUNDLE OF SEARCH TOOLS
————————————————————————————————————————————————–
British history online is a well established establishment resource, it´s got a lot of the ambitious and extensive Victoria County History collections online. Archaeology data service have got loads of digitalized archaeology data online. For example unpublished fieldwork reports(known as grey literature) Or the ADS special collections. Used quite a lot in the blog are the complete volumes from 1 to 50 of the society for medieval archaeology. On the Archi search database you can find 1000´s of sites all round the UK and is continually being added to. Full access is around 24 pounds subscription annually. Apart from these more instititional resources there´s a great and mushrooming number of all number of sites, forums, organisations on all types of remains of the remains and ways of enjoying it. Abandoned site exploration forums(known as urbex) like derelict.co.uk are extremely active, and a lot of people involved accompany their passion with great photography for example sleepy cities. Their´s more specific sites on particular type of past remains for example UKMills, ghost signs,(handpainted wall signs) milestone society, and forgotten relics on remains of Britain´s industrial past. Could also be localised heritage like the very active Midlands heritage forum.
———————————————————————————————————————————————
and not forgetting wikipedia;
Tamworth Time Hikes 