Local history society directory

Local history society directory

Find a local history organisation near you or to support your research project.

Become an individual member

Become an individual member

Be part of our network of local history researchers and enthusiasts and benefit from our quarterly publications in addition to discounts on books and events.

Become a society member

Become a society member

Receive our support, boost your profile and take advantage of the dedicated insurance scheme for societies.

Quarterly publications

Quarterly publications

The Local Historian, our academic journal, was first produced in 1952 and is considered one of the foremost local history publications. It is published four times a year in conjunction with Local History News.

Our educational work

Our educational work

BALH aims to encourage interest and enthusiasm for local history amongst learners of all ages and to share and promote best practice, knowledge and skills.

Featured member society

Featured member society

BALH member societies may now add details of their work to our website, which will be highlighted here. Contact us for further details

Why BALH?

Nick Barratt Historian and Author

Where did your ancestors live?

It is impossible to trace the history of one’s family without considering where they lived. Local history societies and one-place study groups have researched and published content that will allow you to place the lives of your ancestors in the context of their local communities, villages, towns and cities as well as some of the key socio-economic factors that lay behind their development. They often use the same sources as family historians, and can help provide an alternative interpretation of a document or suggest new resources to help your research.

Nick Barratt, Historian and Author

Meet the team

Nigel Tringham Publishing Committee

Nigel Tringham

My involvement with BALH dates to 1999 when I was asked to represent the Victoria County History for which I had been working (in Staffordshire) since 1979, with a move to the history department at Keele University in the mid 1990s. I was assigned to the Publications Committee, and became its chair in 2005 and ex officio a member of the Management Committee. I continue to research and write the Staffordshire VCH volumes, besides teaching mainly medieval history but also local history at Keele, as well as running the university’s long-established Latin and Palaeography Summer School.

For too many years now I have edited the transactions of the Staffordshire Archaeological and Historical Society, and more recently also the volumes of the Staffordshire Record Society, as well as being closely involved with the work of the county Archive Service helping with study days and the recently-established annual Staffordshire History Day. It was a pleasure to ensure that some members of the North Staffordshire Guild of Historians were included in the BALH-supported Living the Poor Life Project cataloguing the poor-law correspondence in the National Archives.

Before all this activity began to overwhelm me, my original research was on editing the medieval records of the lesser clergy of York Minster, of which two volumes have appeared and others are planned for in retirement!

Nigel Tringham, Publishing Committee

From our archives

The Amateur Historian Volume 6 Number 5 Autumn 1964

Parish registers and population history I

Wrigley, E.A.

pp 146-150

A study of the demographic potential of parish register data in the period 1538-1837, which saw the general transition in England from an essentially rural and agrarian society to a more industrialised and urbanised one. The article concentrates on the use of birth and death rates to trace population change. It is suggested that, despite the considerable difficulties in ascertaining long-term figures, much information can be obtained by analysing change and trying to correlate trends with other external factors - for example, comparing birth and death rates with weather and climatic variations, the quality of the harvest and price indexes. Wrigley commends the use of family reconstitution techniques, and gives a simple methodology to introduce this type of research in the context of demographic analyses (see also 06 06 198-203).

The Amateur Historian Volume 6 Number 5 Autumn 1964

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