User talk:Alrewas

Border Cafe disambiguation
Have rectified an omission on the Border Cafe disambiguation page. Besides the two films listed previously, there was also an eight-episode television series in 2000, produced by Hartswood Films and BBC Wales, and aired nationwide on BBC1. The series received good reviews at the time, but has been much overlooked since, to the extent that most people of my acquaintance struggle to recall the series or don't recall it at all. An article is now needed. I am insufficiently acquainted with the house format for articles on television dramas to turn my hand to this at present. If anybody has sufficient knowledge of the series, or the will to research it, I would be grateful if they could contribute an article. This may help as a starting point: http://www.tv.com/shows/border-cafe/ Alternatively, I could possibly give it a go some time.Alrewas (talk) 19:10, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Dr Robert Laws of Livingstonia AND Aberdeen
Have expanded the Early Years section of the article on Dr Robert Laws, as I feel that he is as much a son of Aberdeen as he is a servant of Livingstonia. In Livingstonia even today, he is associated strongly with Aberdeen in Scotland. I hope that my expansion will not be viewed too unfavourably.

With reference to my expansion, I feel that the life and work of his daughter Dr Amelia Nyasa Laws, who lived (and worked!) till 1978, is worthy of a WP article.Alrewas (talk) 19:11, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Today I have uploaded my photograph of Livingstonia's watercourse to WP Commons (File Name: LivingstoniaWatercourse.jpg), and have also added it to the article about Dr Laws, as his enthusiasm for piped water has been mentioned twice in the article by previous contributors.Alrewas (talk) 04:18, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

Have just added a Family section and given Margaret her rightful place.Alrewas (talk) 21:11, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

Newbiggin-by-the-Sea: Anglican churches, and other churches
I have expanded the text in the Religious Sites section on Newbiggin-by-the-Sea, to include more information on the Anglican churches of St Bartholomew's and St Mary the Virgin Woodhorn, and have incorporated other churches into the section too. I have also uploaded a photograph of each of the two historic Anglican churches to WP Commons and added them to the article. Photographs on Commons are:

i) ParishChurchofStBartholomewNewbigginbytheSea.jpg

ii) StMarytheVirginWoodhorn.jpg

The quality of the two photographs in my collection is not the best: if somebody else has a better image of either of those churches, or lives in Newbiggin and has a camera, feel free!

In the long run, both of those churches will, in addition, need their own articles, as each has a long history.Alrewas (talk) 20:21, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

My significant expansion to the Religious Sites section also encompasses the Salvation Army, the Presbyterian and Methodist traditions and the Apostolic Church, all of which have / have had long associations with Newbiggin. I feel that it's good for Wikipedia articles about UK towns to reflect not just the Anglican/Episcopal/Catholic/Presbyterian/Congregational input, but also the UK's very varied Nonconformist heritage. I hope similarly to expand the Religious Sites sections of other WP articles over the next few years.

I have been unable to locate any historical or current information at all about St Mary's Roman Catholic on Front Street. Can anybody help?

In the case of the Apostolic Church which has now closed in Newbiggin, there is very little information online, and I had to phone their former contact in Newbiggin (and I did so as I was researching Newbiggin for another purpose at the time) to establish a few of the facts. I don't know how such a source might be referenced in a WP article? I certainly have no reason whatsoever to doubt my source, which was the horse's mouth, so to speak.Alrewas (talk) 18:51, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Have also inserted a mention of the Newbiggin Fishing Disaster into the Landmarks section. It could be argued that the tragedy is worthy of its own section. Had it occurred more recently, it certainly would have its own section. Alrewas (talk) 13:22, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

In Landmarks, have also mentioned the brand new Newbiggin Maritime Centre, which is a very significant addition to the town.Alrewas (talk) 14:58, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Have added the Governance section, as a previous contributor had rightly referred to Woodhorn Church as "the oldest building in Wansbeck", but there was no other mention of Wansbeck in the article, so I had to add the Governance section to let the reader know what Wansbeck actually is.Alrewas (talk) 15:42, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

Schools
I often need to research the histories of schools which closed many years ago. Information can be difficult to find.

Even the history of an existing school can be elusive, with little on Wikipedia. Information on Wikipedia is weighted heavily in favour of well known independent schools whose histories can be accessed with ease by contributors or those with an interest in promoting an independent school's reputation.

Every school has played an important part in its locality and is of potential interest to people who need to find out more about that locality. Is there a need to begin a Wiki School History project, the long term goal of which would be to house detailed histories of every British (and indeed worldwide) school, both those still functioning and those that have closed? At many schools and local archive offices, school log books can be viewed, providing fascinating insights. That information could be summarised digitally and uploaded onto a database giving interested persons access to detailed histories of every school. Such a resource would be invaluable.

Many local historians already take an interest in the schools on their territory, and would be happy to assist in the development of such a project. The fact that nationally (and indeed internationally) such a project might take a decade or more to approach completion (and in the long term would be as ongoing as Wikipedia itself) would be no reason not to get it off the ground. A century from now, others would be grateful that we did that work so that they don't have to begin it. Personally, I would be particularly interested in researching the histories of British government schools which closed before 1950.Alrewas (talk) 19:26, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

UK Churches
I have expanded significantly the Religious Sites section of the article on Newbiggin-by-the-sea, which previously amounted to a couple of sentences covering the two Anglican churches only. I have produced something approaching what I feel that a WP section on a town's places of worship should look like. WP articles about English towns often focus exclusively on the Anglican and Catholic buildings represented there, and articles on towns in Wales, Scotland and NI often limit themselves to Episcopal/Catholic/Presbyterian/Congregational buildings. The UK's very varied Nonconformist heritage is represented very poorly in WP articles about towns. I intend to expand many WP Religious Sites sections in the coming years.

I have been unable, in the case of Newbiggin, to locate any historical information on the small Roman Catholic Church on Front Street (St Mary's). She seems to be an outstation of the Parish of St Aidan's in Ashington, and hosts just one Mass a week, but somebody who lives in Newbiggin might be able to expand with one or two dates?

In the case of the Apostolic Church which has now closed in Newbiggin, there is very little information online, and I had to phone their former contact in Newbiggin (and I did so as I was researching Newbiggin for another purpose at the time) to establish a few of the facts. I don't know how such a source might be referenced in a WP article? I certainly have no reason whatsoever to doubt my source, which was the horse's mouth, so to speak.Alrewas (talk) 19:14, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Excellent resource for UK church buildings
With reference to my previous section ("UK Churches"), I must preface this section by emphasising again that WP article sections about the religious buildings of UK towns ought to emphasise the UK's very varied Nonconformist heritage, rather than focusing only on the Anglican/Catholic traditions (or, in the case of Scotland, Wales and NI, articles should go beyond the Episcopal/Catholic/Presbyterian/Congregational traditions). See my recent expansion to the Religious Sites section of the Newbiggin-by-the-Sea article, to encompass the Salvation Army, Presbyterian, United Reformed, Methodist, Apostolic and Catholic heritage of that town - previously, only the town's two Anglican churches had been mentioned. When researching church buildings, the British Listed Buildings website is an excellent resource, providing detailed articles on many church buildings. Here, by way of example, is the British Listed Buildings entry for the Anglican church of St Bartholomew in Newbiggin-by-the-Sea, but many Nonconformist buildings can be found on the website too. When you type "Baptist" into the search engine, you are inundated (they are able to list only the first 100 buildings as there are so many). So there's really no excuse, folks ;) Alrewas (talk) 20:05, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Places of worship
Hello, and thanks for your message on my talk page. I'm glad the list has been useful! If you have not yet come across them, I have written similar lists for each of the 13 districts/boroughs in Sussex (Chichester and Wealden are split into "Current" and "Former" due to size; others are just "List of places of worship in...). They are along the same lines and generally use the same range of sources.  I have also done lists for Tunbridge Wells, Tonbridge and Malling and Sevenoaks districts in Kent, and I have Maidstone, London Borough of Bromley and L.B. of Croydon in preparation.

In terms of resources for non-Anglican places of worship, the most useful I have found is this list, published in response to a Freedom of Information request in 2010, which lists all non-Anglican places of worship in England and Wales (by district/county) that were on the "register" at that time. See my article Places of Worship Registration Act 1855 for some background on this, and the "History of Registration" section on this webpage (the website itself is very useful). Another extremely useful resource in relation to when places of worship were registered/deregistered for marriages or deregistered for worship is The London Gazette. Drop me a line if you would like details of how to set up a search which will bring back all registration/deregistration details based on your chosen keywords and/or dates.

As you say above, listed buildings information can be very useful. Incidentally, the British Listed Buildings website is merely a mirror of the data held at the official listed buildings database, which is the National Heritage List for England. This has a powerful search function and is free of adverts. See. Good work on Newbiggin-by-the-Sea; hope to see you on other town articles! (PS Surprisingly I'm not a member of the Sussex HCT, although I probably should join it!) Cheers,  Hassocks  5489 (Floreat Hova!)  18:22, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

Robert Laws improvements
I have tweaked the format of the citations you added to be consistent with the others in the Robert Laws article. One very minor point is that when citing a book or long article it is useful to give the page number or page number range. I have put but it would be better to put , or whatever the right pages are. This is really just a minor quibble. Your changes are great improvements. An interesting subject. Aymatth2 (talk) 15:00, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Many thanks. I've collected a substantial number of sources for Dr Amelia Nyasa Laws. Her records are all at the University of Edinburgh. Am working on an article. . . slowly!Alrewas (talk) 05:58, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

More on places of worship and the London Gazette
Hello again. As promised, here is some info about how to mine info from the London Gazette in relation to the registration and deregistration/delicensing of places of worship.

To set up a search which you can browse through at your leisure...
 * Go to http://www.london-gazette.co.uk/search
 * In the "Words" section at the bottom, key in worship marriage (with the space) in the "With at least one of the words" box. (This will pick up marriage registrations and deregistrations, and worship deregistrations.)
 * Enter a geographical area, place name, district name etc. in one or both of the other two boxes, depending on exactly what you want to search for. For example, if you wanted to see all records relating to Newbiggin-by-the-Sea, key that in the "With the exact phrase" box.  If it's a one-word place name, it doesn't matter which one you use.  You could search for a combination of place name and district name, street name and place name etc., for example.
 * This would find all records relating to the granting and cancellations of marriage licences, and the cancellation of worship certifications, in the place(s) concerned.
 * Click on the button to see a PDF version of the page from the Gazette. For example, if you searched for Newbiggin-by-the-Sea using the keywords worship marriage, you should find 15 records.

A few caveats/bits of advice: results are sorted by relevance, so as you get further down you are more likely to find irrelevant matches. Ecclesiastical stuff can be on the same page as things like insolvency notices, Highways Act notices etc., which may contain a match to your chosen place name. The date is usually, but not always, a fairly reliable guide to when the building actually opened/closed; but sometimes there can be a "tidying-up exercise" where several places of worship in a particular district will have their registrations/marriage licences cancelled on the same date, even if they were actually closed on various different dates. Places of worship of all types except Church of England/Church in Wales can be featured, including non-Christian places; and the denomination is not recorded in the Gazette. In most cases, it is obvious or at least guessable; but you may be struggling where something has been registered with the name "Mission Hall", "Chapel", "Lecture Hall" etc. etc.! (I have seen all of these examples!)

In terms of adding references to articles, you can cite a London Gazette page by using a special template, Template:London Gazette. For example, to cite this page: http://www.london-gazette.co.uk/issues/20306/pages/182 you would need to type this:  

Hope that's of interest. I may add some more info here relating to London Gazette and/or Worship Register stuff if I can remember anything else relevant. Hassocks 5489 (Floreat Hova!)  14:11, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

George Brannon
On the Legh Richmond page, I have incorporated the fact that Richmond’s Annals of the Poor was illustrated (as a supplement) by George Brannon after Richmond’s death. The 46-page supplement is entitled ''The Landscape Beauties of the Isle of Wight, as Described by  L. Richmond (in His Celebrated “Annals of the Poor”). Illustrated with engravings of some of the principal objects, explanatory notes and such other additional information as are necessary to constitute a brief local guide''.

George Brannon was a very prolific engraver and publisher based on the island, and he really needs his own entry. This list of published works demonstrates just how prolific he was:

http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=au%3ABrannon%2C+George.&qt=hot_author

There is a short bio of Brannon here:

http://www.islandeye.co.uk/people/brannon-george/

I will turn my hand to creating a George Brannon article in a few weeks, if nobody else has managed to do so in the meantime.

Legh Richmond
Have linked Legh Richmond to WikiProject Wight, as Legh Richmond is a prominent figure in the island's history. Just that he was the vicar of Brading Parish Church is sufficient to place him within the scope of WikiProject Wight, even if he hadn't written Annals of the Poor which is about the poor of the island.

Ecclesiastical Exemption
Ancient Monuments Consolidation and Amendment Act 1913

Have added a new section, which introduces the Ecclesiastical Exemption to the Ancient Monuments Consolidation and Amendment Act 1913. Have also described the controversy surrounding the Exemption. The Exemption is key to the Act's history, as the Exemption is hotly debated to this day. The Exemption is worthy of a separate article, and I shall turn my attention to that at the end of the summer if nobody else is able to do so before then.Alrewas (talk) 23:23, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

Plymouth Citybus 1988 strike
Have inserted a paragraph on the 1988 bus strike into the History>Plymouth Citybus subsection of the Plymouth Citybus article. Previous contributor/s had referenced the bus wars of the late '80s. A description of the bus wars is incomplete if it doesn't include an account of the 1988 strike. Alrewas (talk) 06:22, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Re: George Brannon
See George Brannon above. Have collected a substantial number of sources, and shall work on an article over the coming weekend.Alrewas (talk) 06:06, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

Inset Day
At the Inset Day Talk Page, I have gently queried the assertion that Inset Days are still occasionally referred to as Baker Days. This, I guess, is an example of where WP is in need of continuous revision. I would be fascinated to know whether any schools do still refer to them as Baker Days, but I fear that Kenneth Baker was not as successful in attaching his name to a teacher training day as that other government minister Hore-Belisha was in attaching his name to his beacon. When we state that they "are still occasionally referred to as Baker Days," who are we talking about? If we mean members of the public, that's fine (I still refer to them as Baker Days, but often others don't have a clue what I'm talking about). I think that the reader would infer though that we mean that they are still occasionally referred to as Baker Days in an official context. Reader inference is an important consideration, and we need to make sure that the reader knows what we mean, and that we know what we mean. Can anybody find a recent example of a school calling it a Baker Day?

Earlier I did a quick google search. I saw no examples of schools calling them Baker Days within the last decade. The most recent reference by a member of the public which I could find during my hurried search was this from 2008-:   http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1271816 We're now in 2014. Can anybody find anything more recent to justify our assertion that they sometimes still are referred to as Baker Days?

There is a literary reference from 2009, in Sandy Balfour's What I Love About Cricket-: "

"His school had what they now call an Inset Day and what older hands amongst us know as a Baker Day, meaning a day when the teachers get in-service training and the kids roam the streets in feral bands terrorising pensioners and knocking over newsagents."

As If by Blake Morrison (1997) also uses both terms-: "It was a Baker Day, the boys said, an Inset Day, a day off."Alrewas (talk) 17:20, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Reader inference
I feel that an effort needs to be made to ensure that readers know what we mean, and that cannot happen unless we know what we mean. I've recently highlighted one example of the challenges contributors may face. The Inset Day article states that "they were originally, and are still occasionally, referred to as Baker Days." Who still refers to them as Baker Days occasionally? The public, or schools? The distinction is significant, because if some schools still refer to them as Baker Days, then it would be acceptable for the reader to go off and refer to it as a Baker Day in a professional document or a piece of academic writing. If the only people who still call them Baker Days are members of the public with long memories, and the term no longer has any official sanction anywhere, then its usage is merely colloquial or even archaic and the WP reader needs to be aware of that before the reader goes off and uses the term Baker Day in an official context.

As the article does not currently specify what we mean, I think that many readers would infer that we mean that the term is still occasionally used in an official context.

I could find no references to schools using the term within the last decade. If somebody else can find such a reference, you would find me most thankful.

On the same subject of reader inference, I have had heated discussions with several men recently regarding WP's coverage of sexual offences against women. Whilst we give the detail of a perjury conviction or a manslaughter conviction (articles on Jonathan Aitken and Mick Philpott explain what it was Aitken did that constituted perjury and what it was Philpott did that constituted manslaughter), articles on some celebrities recently convicted of indecent assault have referred simply to "indecent assault" without actually describing the assaults. The problem with that is that the reader can infer that a serious assault was perhaps "a hand on the bottom in an age when that was acceptable." That problem is highlighted in this section, where some WP contributors have had to correct the erroneous inferences of other contributors-: What exactly did this guy do? Alrewas (talk) 11:02, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

Sercquiais and Auregnais
Have left a message at Talk:Auregnais, and another message with Martin Evans, to highlight a problem in the Auregnais artice. The article currently states that Auregnais has about twenty remaining speakers. In fact, Auregnais has sadly been extinct for decades. It is Sercquiais that has about twenty speakers (or perhaps as few as ten or fifteen) remaining.Alrewas (talk) 10:55, 28 September 2014 (UTC)