A great friend of Adrian Gibson, the well-known Clavering historian, Eileen M. Ludgate, died in July 2006 at the age of 81. In the 1970s-80s Eileen brought Adrian to Clavering, where he discovered the true antiquity of The Bury manor house, as a rare medieval aisled hall. Eileen, who came with her sister Joan to Stickling Green in 1958, was

 Adrian Gibson, MBE, who died at the age of 74 in March 2006, was a noted architectural historian and the foremost authority of his time on the study of timber-framed buildings, sharing his expertise freely with many local historians and societies in NW Essex and beyond. After retirement from teaching, he was invited in 1988 to re-organise the descriptions of

John Hunter, the noted landscape historian, died suddenly on 2 July 2005, at the age of 73, while tending the garden at his home in Town Street, Thaxted. A memorial service in Thaxted Church was attended by huge numbers of those who worked with him in the many facets of his varied life. His son Richard spoke of how John

Olive Cook, writer, historian, artist and passionate campaigner died on 2 May 2002 at Radwinter Road Hospital. She was one of the positive forces in our small community and her death has impoverished this little town. Olive has been a quintessential English woman who loved her native land in an informed and all embracing way and was prepared to fight

Note the cover painting in this issue by renowned local artist Brian Sanders, as it was commissioned to illustrate two of the articles concerning railways in our locality. Articles in this issue include: Railways around Saffron Walden-a Friends school ‘train spotter’ from the 1950’s Peter Jamieson The Closure of Audley End to Bartlow Branch Line Malcolm White A True Portrait

SWHS Publications no 3 (2012), ed. Jacqueline Cooper, 72 pages. ISBN 978-1-873669-08-2, price £7.50 One of Saffron Walden’s most distinguished sons, Sir Thomas Smith was the first Regius Professor of Civil Law, and Vice-Chancellor, at Cambridge, Provost of Eton, Principal Secretary of State to Edward VI and Elizabeth I, ambassador to France and the Low Countries, Privy Councillor, and –

SWHA Publications no 2 (2011), ed. Jacqueline Cooper, 100 pages. ISBN 978-1-873669-04-4, price £8.50 The author, when Saffron Walden Town Clerk, often advised on the naming of new streets, as had another former Town Clerk, Cliff Stacey. The Town Council liked to use old field names as this helped to perpetuate the town’s history. A primary source for the book

SWHS Publications no 1 (2009 reprinted 2014), ed Jacqueline Cooper, 86 pages. ISBN 978-1-873669-02-0, price £7.50 Agriculture and its associated industries have been at the centre of life and work in north-west Essex for many centuries. This book examines different examples of farming in the past and the industries processing its main local products (malt and wool). It also contains

‘What a Place to Die’: the WW2 plane crash at Little Walden – Julian Evan-Hart