FORTHCOMING EVENTS

NLHS Chairman Eric Dunning has announced that the Society will be staging another Art Exhibition, following the successful one held in January 2009. Local Artists will be invited to submit entries based on a Newmarket theme. This is due to be held in The Memorial Hall on Wednesday 29th September 2010. The subject can be anything related to Newmarket, past or present. The exhibition will be open in the afternoon and judging will take place in the evening. A fee of £1.00 per entry will be charged.

For our calendar of meetings see the opening (Index) page

CORRESPONDENCE AND QUERIES appear on separate pages, to view the current page (6) select here
Contributions or comments on local history matters are always welcome - address at foot of this page.

Please note we are not a Family History Society.
Research into family history can be very time consuming and while we would like to help we are unable to follow up geneology queries unless the individuals concerned were high profile personalities of general local history interest. The Family History Societies , County Records Offices or Church records are lines of research for family history queries (see links below).
A source for obtaining copies of birth, marriage and death certificates going back to the latter half of the 19th century is available online at www.bmd-certificates.co.uk please note this is a commercial site and there is a charge for each certificate obtained.

Debbie Byrne has had several years experience of researching this subject and gives this advice:

www.ancestry.co.uk a brilliant site through which you can access all the England and Wales censuses from 1841-1901, the Scottish censuses of 1841 & 1851,and all the civil registrations of birth death and marriages in England and Wales from 1837 to the 1900s. It is a pay per view site but they do offer a 14 day free trial during which you get unlimited access to the records. There are various payment options (I currently pay about £10 per month for unlimited access). Very easy to use. and I've found it invaluable.

www.1837online.com Again this is a pay per view site which gives access to all the civil registrations in England and Wales from 1837 to the 1900s and the 1861 & 1891 England and Wales Censuses. It is not so easy to use as ancestry.co.uk and it is easier to waste money looking at the wrong details. It is, however, the site you must use to order birth marriage and death certificates which are often vital to identify the parents of ancestors and so get back another generation. This site also has a lot of military records including births and marriages of forces serving overseas dating back to the 1800s.

www.familysearch.com Another good site and this time it's free! It gives access to the International Geneaological Index compiled from parish records around the world. The details go back, in some cases, to the 1500s and up to about 1840 and show christening dates with the names of parents and marriage dates with the names of spouses. There is also free access to the 1881 England and Wales census

Other sites such as GENUKI which give details of the area of interest and links to other sites such as family history societies. The sites above, though, are great for getting the basics of who lived when and where. The only problem wiith family history is that not everyone got married or had their children christened and it wasn't compulsory to register births, deaths and marriages until 1870. However, the later generations can usually be found on the censuses.

The RootsChat site
Another site very useful for exchanging research into past family or friends is www.rootschat.com
This includes some correspondence about the old Icewell Hill Newmarket complex at http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=317330.new;topicseen Webmaster

Suffolk County Records Office at Bury St. Edmunds is a good source of information covering the west of the county, including Newmarket. For instance they have microfiche copies of the pages of The Newmarket Journal, vey useful for tracing local events from the past. Go to their site select here

RECENT EVENTS

On July 13th NLHS Committee Member Sandra Easom was interviewed by Michael Portillo who visited Newmarket to film for one of his TV series 'Great British Railway Journeys'. They discussed the coming of the railway to Newmarket and its socioeconomic effects as well as aspects of the town today. The series is produced by Talkback Thames and this episode is due to be screened in January 2011 (pictures below).

Michael Portillo interviews Sandra outside the Jockey Club

They visit the former site of Newmarket station

July 20th 2010. The Society visit to Landwades Park Kentford, the home of the Animal Health Trust (picture below)

Landwades Hall, now the administrative HQ for the Trust.

Newmarket on Google Earth. The wonderful images of the world taken from satellite available on Google Earth have a particular interest to old Newmarket railway enthusiasts.
Zoom in on Newmarket to a degree that shows detail of streets, then track along the Bury Road leading NE from the centre of the town to the point where the railway line to Ely emerges from the tunnel under the Heath. Here you will see an orange spot. Click on the spot, which is then seen to be the old Warren Hill Station and that will bring up a page with links that lead to information and pictures of this and the other two Newmarket stations. One or two of the pictures have been supplied by our friend and collector of old Newmarket postcards, Roger Newman.

THE CRAVEN CLUB & THE CARLTON HOTEL - memories of Newemarket's stylish past!
A query from Alan Tomlin (see Correspondence pages Jan. 22nd 2008) sparked an investigation in the history of the Craven Club and we quote from the book 'Newmarket - a photographic history of your town' published in 2001 and edited by Joan Shaw who is a member of our Society.

"The prestigious Craven Club had rooms in the Carlton Hotel Building. Fred Astaire, who had a horse in training with Jack Leach, was a member of this club in the 1920s and came here when he was performing at The Palace Theatre London."

The Carlton, formerly the Carlton Hotel, was the impressive tall building on the north west side of the High Street, demolished in 1977 to make way for the Rookery Shopping Development. It had a ballroom "used for many and varied dances, from local hops to the hunt balls. The Winter Garden had a fountain in it that came from a natural spring. When the modern Boots was built here it was reported at the time that tons of concrete were used to suppress the spring.
During the war, the American Red Cross used part of it for a club for the American forces stationed in the area."
Dances were held there in the 1940s and many are the tales of the sometimes wild parties, especially during wartime. Many people consider it a great shame that this rather magnificent building with its ornate frontage, domed cupola and first floor balcony overlooking the High Street was demolished and r eplaced by the relatively drab buildings now there. We have a number of photographs showing The Carlton as it used to be.
Getting back to the Craven Club, it moved from the Carlton to Primrose House. This is the large house once owned by Lord Rosebery and now occupied by Cartwrights the electricians and Kitchens & Things. T he rather grand entrance door is still there and at the time of writing a few of the original internal architectural details still exist. We have pictures in our archives.

Pot Lids
As well as often being minature works of art, Pot Lids can give an interesting insight into local history. A new book (August 2008) has just been published giving pictures and details of 215 East Anglian pot lids, several of them advertising Newmarket chemists. For details visit the website select here.

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