Atherstone (Warwickshire)

[ColinB]

If you have people who lived in the Yards of Atherstone I can recommend a book by "The Friends of Atherstone Heritage" called "The Yards of Atherstone". For £5.00 this book contains 146 pages with a general introduction containing a few names. This is followed by a list of all the yards and a means of locating where they were, mostly off of Long Street. Then follows one or more pages for each Yard usually with a photo and sometimes a map. Then if all that was not worth £5 there are large scale plans for each yard and facing each plan a modern map of the same area allowing you to precisely locate individual houses. A pull out map of the whole area and 3 appendixes completes the book. ISBN 978-1-907540-58-5 Published 2012 by AnchorPrint Group Ltd. Originally the book was sold together with a CD of oral histories. I was informed that none of these are left now, the library has one for loan, but the recordings can be found on their website. I stayed in the really lovely Abbey Farm B & B, Merevale Lane, which is situated not far from Atherstone. As a bonus the owner lived in one of the last Yards to be pulled down and has many stories to tell.

 

[emjay]

Welcome ColinB a great first post

 

[ColinB]

Thank you - don't think I got the links procedure right though - must do better next time !
As an aside even though the B&B owner had been living in Atherstone all her life she did not know of this publication and the following day went off to get her own copy. She had recognised her own father being described on the page for the Yard where she lived. The only other visitors in the B&B were visiting from Canada with a similar intention to me. I showed them some of the background paper work on Warwickshire I had assembled for my visit and they found a 'missing link' in their family in it (no relationship to me). A good trip all round.