Anna Massey Lea was born in Philadelphia in 1844 to an affluent Quaker couple, Joseph Lea and Susanna Massey.  She was the oldest of their six daughters.  She took lessons in art from an early age and also studied anatomy at the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania.  From 1865, when the family moved to Europe,…

Guy Mainwaring Knocker was a very young Sopwith Camel pilot in the First World War, serving with No 65 Squadron Royal Flying Corps in France.  He was wounded in action in April 1918 but served in the RAF until 1947.

Knowles was born in Rotherham during the third quarter of 1890. The 1911 census records him as living with his parents and his occupation as ‘Clerk, Solicitor’s Office’. He was still based in Yorkshire when he got married in 1916. During the First World War he served in France and after being invalided out of…

John Latham was born in Eltham, Kent. He went to Merchant Taylors’ School, London then trained as a surgeon and set up in practice at Dartford, Kent. An internationally recognised ornithologist, for which he was awarded a doctorate in 1795 for his proposed classification of birds by the University of Erlangen in Germany, amongst other…

Born in Jersey in 1883, educated at home, then worked in a bank. Illness left him unable to manage continuous professional work but he was interested in history and started to research stained glass from 1904. He also learnt to re-lead glass. He volunteered for service in WW1 but was declared unfit and worked instead…

Leach was educated at Winchester College 1863-1869 and at New College, Oxford. He won the Stanhope English Prize in 1872 and was a fellow of All Souls College 1874-1882. He was called to the Bar at the Middle Temple in 1876 and joined the Western Circuit. From 1884, he was Assistant Charity Commissioner (Endowed Schools…

Leland has been called ‘the father of English local history and bibliography’. His Itineraries, compiled c 1538 to 1543 provided a crucial source of comment and raw material for many who followed after and introduced the county as the most obvious unit for studying the local history of England.

Dorothy Liddell was born at Benwell, Northumberland to John Liddell and his wife Emily (née Berry) one of their six children.  In 1904 the family moved to Sydmonton Court near Newbury and four years later to Sherfield Manor near Basingstoke.

Educated at Balliol College, Oxford, he became Senior Science Master at Portsmouth Grammar School. Remembered as ‘a good scholar with wide interests and a remarkable memory’ (Washington and Marsh 1976, 29) in the 1880s and 1890s he wrote books on chemistry and geometrical drawing for Army candidates.  His interests also included Tudor Portsmouth, on which…

He was a Catholic priest whose extremely successful 8-volume History of England, from the First Invasion by the Romans to the Accession of Henry VIII, which was published in 1819 and in later editions, is said to have been the most popular work in print until the publication in 1874 of Richard Green’s Short History…