More Hackney pub history updates & accessible travel in London

Where do I start? Well, I have been working through the 1901 census for Hackney south east. It was rather useful, as some of the street numbering alters between the 1901 and 1911 census; and I spotted a number of errors. Initially I thought I had found earlier records for some of the pubs, until latterly checking the pubology site, Ewan was already aware of these additional details. He updates my site in a major way.

Anyway, I have altered some of these pages, and deleted the discrepancy pages. Whatever.

I spent a day in London today. I received my London60 pass, giving me free travel into London for the a number of years. The postman delivered it at 11 am. , and I was in the centre of London by midday, and I also had a cup of tea before I left!

One relevance to my London travel is in building a decent site about accessible travel in London. There are a lot of stations, and noticeably, a number of underground lines which are totally inaccessible to anyone who cannot cope with steps. It is getting better all of the time, but it is still absolutely awful.

A good example of ‘BAD’ is the Northern line, where I would guess that nearly all stations are inaccessible, except Tottenham Court road, which is brilliant.

I need some help with this, particularly from those who suffer with accessible problems, or anyone who wants to help out. I need good examples, and bad, and pictures, etc.

I am slowly building a reasonable site (unless you think it is crap), about accessible rail travel in London. I need updates.

Andy, who the site is dedicated to, is my daughters godfather – the godfather.

Thanks

Kevan

Hackney 1861 census additions & updates

I have a rather select band of people who update this site. I do all of the actual updating of content, so it is maybe, not an United effort of a band of people. This rather excellent small group send me their details via quite an outdated fashion of communication, email.

Anyway, Vincent sent me a rather excellent addition to the Crooked Billet, Upper Clapton road, which I have just added. I was looking at the early census records missing for 1841, and 1851, both in the early reign of Queen Victoria.

Who cares, you say, well I do; as do these pubs when quoting their early history. After a quick search, I added the 1841 census, from 178 years ago! Then I discovered I had already transcribed the 1861 census a while ago, and with all of the additional records added, I could now say that this address was relevant.

Checking through my 1861 transcriptions for 1861, I have now added a host of other Hackney pubs details for this period.

Boring, you may say! Well, it keeps me happy.

As an aside, about 40 years ago I was courting a rather lovely Barts nurse, who also worked at the Homerton. My other interest in this area. Now happily married for 35 years, and with three great youngsters, all University educated – a doctor, a mathematician, and a digital educator.

That’s it really.

London beer houses in 1899 & 1910 updates

I have spent a little (lot) of time adding beer retailers and beer houses to the pub history site, as have many of the people who have helped me update this site as a truly wonderful site about pub history.

I know it looks boring, but I think it is a wonderful masterpiece about these unknown places in history.

In retrospect, I made a big issue of adding every named public house in 1899, and I think I have almost achieved this, with one or two still missing.

Today, I thought I would check to see how may of the beer houses that were un-named at the time, in the beer retailer directories, were actually listed on the site. I also started this for 1910, and am working through the many lists I have built, and adding links as they exist.

This is largely driven at present by Ewan of the pubology site, blame him! He keeps my desire going to update this pub history site; as it continues to build.

That’s it really. Lots more 1899 and 1910 London beer houses now linked into the search engine, which is an amazing local search of all of my sites, although often it is broken as I rebuild the site.

Enjoy.

Pub history updates for London E3

Ewan of the pubology site regularly sends me major updates for the London history site. These recently included all for London E3, which includes parts of Bethnal green, Bow, Bromley and Mile End.

That’s it really.

Some of these details are just fill-in detail, others include a name for a beer house discovered from a random census (often in 1911). Some details are beer houses which become a major pub, or just an off licence which has finally been named.

Some of the detail takes a pub history back another ten years, or maybe more. Some detail shows changes in addresses through time, or a rebuilding of a pub at a slightly different address.

Some of the detail includes matching a list of beer retailers at a specific address with a named pub, or again, jut an address until we find the name.

That’s it really. Most of it is not worth an individual blog entry,but like the site, it continues to evolve, and grow.

Most of my pubs are linked back from Ewan’s site; i.e. the pubolgy site, so I leave you with a link to London E3.

That’s it really.

Enjoy.

Holst, the Planets & Brian Cox

This is absolutely nothing to do with pubs, just the entire Universe.

It is nearly midnight on a Thursday evening, on a remote BBC4 is a rather excellent program which incorporates the London Philharmonic Orchestra playing Gustav Holst’s, which is brilliance itself.

Add to this the descriptive forces of Brian Cox describing the importance, or not, of the planetary system.

This series appears to be available through iplayer catchup. Not a lot of good for those who are still watching black & white TV on BBC2, if you get my meaning (You know, us ‘old people’).

I will catch up on this, it looks and sounds, really good. And far more interesting than pub history!

London pub history – how much better can it get?

I deride my pub history sites as being incredibly boring,as they just list a few licensees, etc. I am so wrong.

I have been updating the pub history and other areas with pub history for a number of years. The detail is not generally modern, and is of little interest to the youth who are looking for a pub, more an old peoples home for pubs!

This is not actually the only reason I do this. I am making an attempt to make a record of the people who lived in a building over the past 150 years, and the street name changes, ans other changes during that time. It is not just about pubs, but I use them as an example.

I think it works, but I have many doubts as to why I spend my waking, and sometimes sleeping, hours doing this. I dream about it a lot.

My pub history site is second to none, was it worth the effort? Here is an example of Mile End, London.

Kevan

Grimsby pub history

Yes, you are correct, Grimsby is a long way from London, on the north east coast of Lincolnshire, the Humber estuary, and a sea port with quite a history in fishing.

Here are some of my updates for the pubs history in Grimsby, certainly pre-1935 back to about 1826, with some links to Barking.

A brand new fish market was built in 1996, but I am more interested in the building of a new dock in the 1850’s; well apparently from the 1840’s onwards.

My interest is the links with the fishing fleet at Barking, in Essex, now a London borough. By the 1861 census, the entirety of the fishing fleet moved from Barking to Grimsby, a because of this new dock and the quicker links into London by the newly arriving transport system, the railway!

Barking has been on the slide ever since, and is now, in 2019, probably one of the poorer areas of London, but all this appears to be changing as new Barking Reach ‘housing developments’ start to take place, and I read somewhere that Billingsgate and another market are to relocate to this area of Barking. I guess we are looking at another annihilation of a riverside area for commercial profit.

Create a sitemap for your site – my pub history sitemap

It is not until you hit a point in your life where everything is wrong, that you make it right.

Google always offers a good example.

Google is great for telling you what is wrong, but does not give much away, hoping you may spend some money with their people!

You need to search very hard for the correct answers in google, as they don’t really exist. Lots of shit does exist in google, but not always correct.

I spent years trying to create a simple sitemap for my site using python, or something similar. The examples were clear, but I failed every time.

Then I realised that a one or two line script would work, it is as simple as that. If you make a mistake,you rerun the script!

Simple.

Here it is:

You need to have access to a linux server, as this does not work for Windows server crap! Change directory to the top level.

e.g. cd /var/www/vhosts/pubshistory.com/httpdocs

then run this command as root

find `pwd` > mout

cat mout | grep shtml > mouth.txt

or
cat mout | grep html > mouth.txt (if you use html as your file extension)

Then download mouth.txt using ftp, edit is and upload it again.

Then upload this new sitemap to google webmaster tools if you have an account, as you should.

If you get errors in uploading at this point, delete the version of mouth.txt on the server, as it belongs to root, and there may be problems over-writing this original file.

Absolutely f### brilliant, and works every time.

London pub history & stuff

Well, I have been building a pub history site for the past 18 years, and it has failed. The advertising on the 50 thousand page site is at about £2 a day, or something similar, and I do not see the point of paying out lots of money to run a web server which hosts this.

So, I am seriously thinking about giving this a miss in future, i.e; from now.

It’s a shame, as I am starting to build some other interesting sites about London history, but I am sure they will also get the same level of response.

Anyway, that is what I think I will do tomorrow, I will sleep on this decision.

Bye.

Just for the record, I am still not smoking. After 45 years, I have kicked the nasty habit, just lots of vapes.

Web responsive design and London pub history

Says it all. Web responsive design, and London pub history.

I purchased a cheap phone via tesco to check out my sites on a mobile. It was a very bad idea, as the phone is shite, but I have found a rather good app, i.e. Sizzy

So, for the past twenty four hours, I have been updating my London pub history pages. I am mainly removing repetitive text which does not really add anything to the page.

That is mainly what I am doing, but with up to 50 thousand pages on the site, this always takes me some time. and then I have to repeat it as I want to change something else!

I am really not impressed with just a page of licensee on a pub history page, although I do this for a reason, to prove the pub existed at the time. I will continue to do this until I come up with a better system.