Herefordshire Lore has been publishing a range of books, magazines, booklets and leaflets since 1992
Our published magazines from Age To Age (1993 to 2003) and its successor, In Our Age (2006 to current date), are available to download on this website.
The digital version of In Our Age magazine is usually available 12 months after the paper issue is published. To get the latest paper issue of In Our Age delivered to your door please subscribe.
We have published books – River Voices: Extraordinary Stories from the Wye 2018; Herefordshire Second World War Home Front 2019; Women at War – In The Munitions, 2003; A Slap of the Hand – The History of Hereford Market 2007.
Booklets – Health Herefordshire 2020; Amazing How Times Change, 1992; The Shopkeeper’s Tale, 1996; The Schoolchildren’s Tale, 1997; Milk, Herefordshire; 2012.
We have talked to people from all walks of life from munitioneers, housewives, farmers, railwaymen, domestics and butchers to shop keepers, cattle dealers, publicans and priests. Herefordshire Lore owes its existence to their memories.
Books
- Herefordshire’s Home Front in the Second World War (2019)
- River Voices: Extraordinary Stories from the Wye (2018)
- Herefordshire’s Home Front in the First World War (2016)
- A Slap of the Hand – The History of Hereford Market (2007)
- In The Munitions – Women At War In Hereford (2003)
- Home Made – Home Grown (2005)
Books
Herefordshire’s Home Front in the Second World War (2019) 176 pages
Published in 2019 and written by Bill Laws this book describes what life was like for the people of Herefordshire during World War Two through recollections and photographs.
Herefordshire’s Home Front in the Second World War offers a rich insight into all aspects of life in Herefordshire in wartime, through memories and photographs gathered by the county reminiscence group, Herefordshire Lore, and with important new research into the county’s conscientious objectors by Dr Elinor Kelly.
Paperback | 176 pages | 242 x 171 mm | 2019
b&w illustrations, mainly photographs
ISBN 978-1-910839-33-1
You can purchase Herefordshire’s Home Front in the Second World War for £10 plus £2.50 UK postage and packing per book.
To order a copy of Herefordshire’s Home Front in the ‘Second World War’ please send your name and address together with a cheque for £12.50 per book made out to Herefordshire Lore to :
Herefordshire Lore c/o Castle Pavilion, Castle Green, Hereford HR1 2NH
River Voices: Extraordinary Stories from the Wye (2018)
In the summer of 2017 a team of Herefordshire Lore interviewers travelled up and down the river, speaking to swimmers, walkers, anglers, ferry women and men, canoeists, bailiffs, ghillies, poachers, bridge keepers and more, recording their stories from this lovely river of ours.
Published by Herefordshire Lore in association with Logaston Press.
Paperback | 256 pages | 242 x 171 mm | 2018
b&w illustrations
ISBN 978-1-910839-31-7
You can purchase River Voices for £12.50 plus £2.70 UK postage and packing per book.
To order a copy of River Voices please send your name and address together with a cheque for £15.20 per book made out to Herefordshire Lore to :
Herefordshire Lore c/o Castle Pavilion, Castle Green, Hereford HR1 2NH
Herefordshire’s Home Front in the First World War (2016)
Author Bill Laws has trawled the local press and history sources for a host of stories that reveal how people coped with the conflict at home during WW1.
From the widowed Walford clergyman who tried to keep his seven servants from the front to the wounded Orcop soldier given his family home by public subscription, this is the story of a county at war at home.
Published by Herefordshire Lore in association with Logaston Press.
Paperback | 176 pages | 242 x 171 mm | 2016
85 b&w illustrations, mainly photographs
ISBN 978-1-910839-06-5
A Slap of the Hand – The History of Hereford Market (2007)
‘In those days a slap of the hand and the deal was done’
From the world-famous pedigree bull sales to the infamous sales of wives; from drovers’ tales to the strange story of Eddie Drew the bone setter; and from Dean Leigh’s temperance cafe to a memorable race between a prize pig and a champion runner, A Slap of the Hand is told in the words of the people who worked there.
Herefordshire’s auctioneers, farmers, farmers’ wives, cattle dealers, sheep men, pig and poultry dealers, hauliers, butchers and drovers all lend their voices to this unique record of Herefordshire country life.
As one auctioneer put it: ‘The Market is all about the relationship between Man and his animals. And it’s a wonderful relationship.’
Edited by Bill Laws, additional research Bobbie Blackwell
Published by Herefordshire Lore in association with Logaston Press.
Out of print
In The Munitions – Women At War In Hereford (2003)
Nearly 6,000 people worked making shells, bombs, landmines and torpedoes at Hereford’s munitions factory. It was dirty, dangerous work. At least twenty nine died a violent death at what was one of Britain’s oldest, and largest, explosives filling plants.
Compiled from interviews with former workers, and presented as told, In The Munitions – Women At War In Hereford is a diary of those days. “It was all hush-hush.
There was a railway to take the bombs away but where they went to we didn’t know.” “I got as far as the road and this bomb went off. Something struck my leg and I couldn’t move. I thought: ‘This is my lot.'” “I went in with him and he was in tears. I picked up a corrugated sheet on the roadside and there was a girl’s head under there.” “What a terrible thing – working our lives out to blow other people to pieces.”
Memorials were later erected at Rotherwas in recognition of their services.
This was a Local Heritage Initiative Project, a partnership between the Heritage Lottery Fund, Nationwide Building Society and the Countryside Agency.
Edited by Bill Laws, additional research Bobbie Blackwell
Published by Herefordshire Lore in association with Logaston Press.
Paperback | 128 pages | 171 x 242 mm | 2003
Over 60 b&w illustrations, mainly photographs
ISBN 978-1-873827-98-7
Out of print
Home Made – Home Grown (2005)
Herefordshire Lore collected a compendium of good advice, information and anecdote on food during the Second World War. Around forty people shared their memories of war-time food.
“Having very few ingredients to cook with led women to invent their own, closely guarded recipes.”
“We had to dig up the lawns to plant potatoes: Aran Pilot as Early, Majestic was an old favourite while Kind Edward was a soft potatoes that the slugs liked!”
“My mother said I couldn’t join the Women’s Land Army – so I wrote to them and that was it! I was a land girl!”
“The small holdings down at Canon Bridge were mostly self-sufficient. The only things we bought in were tea and sugar, not much else.”
“We used to drink a glass of cabbage water with our dinner! They used to say: it’s good for you,’ well, it was – it made you run to the toilet! That’s why is was good for you!”
This material is being archived by Herefordshire Lore.
Out of print
Magazines
In Our Age Magazine (2006 – Present)
An 8 page print magazine with snippets of Herefordshire’s local history collected from far and wide. See the In Our Age page to read past publications online. To get the latest publications delivered to your door please subscribe.
Age to Age – Magazine (1993 – 2003)
Age to Age was published bi-monthly from 1992 until 2003 and was the fore runner of our quarterly magazine In Our Age. We have scanned the old issues and have re-published them on this website.
Out of print
Booklets and Leaflets
Health Herefordshire: Little Herefordshire Histories 2 (2020)
Health Herefordshire looks at health care delivery in Herefordshire over the last century. In 1948 the National Health Service was formed, bringing free health care at the point of delivery for the first time to all. Before then visits to the doctor were largely dependent on one’s ability to pay for treatment. Stories of health in Herefordshire are told by patients and clinicians; midwives and dentists; GPs and pharmacists; and even a herbalist and the local bonesetter.
25 pages A5 (148 × 210 mm or 5.8 × 8.3 inches)
Price £5 (includes UK p&p)
To order a copy please send your name and address together with a cheque for £5 per book made out to Herefordshire Lore to :
Herefordshire Lore c/o Castle Pavilion, Castle Green, Hereford HR1 2NH
Milk Herefordshire (2013)
Herefordshire was once the source of some of the nation’s richest milk fields. While nursing mums and munition workers were issued with free milk, local cheese, butter and full-fat milk formed a staple part of everyone’s diet.
The story of the white stuff is told by dairy farmers and cattle men, milkers and marketeers, Land girls and railway men, butter makers and milk bar owners.
25 pages A5 (148 × 210 mm or 5.8 × 8.3 inches)
Price £5 (includes UK p&p)
To order a copy please send your name and address together with a cheque for £5 per book made out to Herefordshire Lore to :
Herefordshire Lore c/o Castle Pavilion, Castle Green, Hereford HR1 2NH
A Wartime Walk – leaflet (2004)
Look down on this former World War One and Two munitions factory from the side of Dinedor Hill.
Out of print
Amazing How Times Change (1997)
Lawrence of Arabia, TV’s Gilbert Harding, Gandhi, Elgar and the Old Straight Track’s author Alfred Watkins, were still within living memory when Herefordshire Lore first interviewed local people.
“I had to take something to the stables in Commercial Road, but this fellow said: ‘Don’t come now missy. They’re hanging someone at the goal.'”
“I remember the black gates, the old toll, that were along Widemarsh Street. In the day they were open but after a certain hour they were shut and you had to pay a toll. They were a nuisance.”
“We filled hundreds of bottles and cans of tea for the navies building the new munitions factory down here in 1915.”
“I lost my little girl to Dr * * * *. She died on the Monday morning and then he came. I cursed him. I said: ‘You should have come. You could have saved her life.’ She couldn’t go in hospital see because they were sending the soldiers back from the war. And I said to him, well don’t you ever send a bill for me, I said, because I’ll never, never pay it. Nor he never sent me a bill.”
Out of print
The Schoolchildren’s Tale – booklet (1997) 32pp
Read about Brenda, lost in a city snow drift; the teacher who danced like a dervish; Holme’s big game hunter and the headmaster who kept a rifle behind his desk.
Out of print
The Shopkeeper’s Tale – booklet (1996) 24pp
The Shopkeepers’ Tale, told in the words and pictures of the people themselves, is Hereford Lore’s second publication of local stories.
Out of print