Featuring fascinating running texts written by a knowledgeable local author and lavishly illustrated with high quality historical black and white photographs of Saffron Walden,

Working class diaries from the 19th century are uncommon, but this one is of particular importance as it was kept by one of the gardeners at Audley End.

In 1798 two children were born, one in Saffron Walden and the other in Elmdon, who would eventually marry and start a chain of events which would link transportation and the treadmill to bakers and mayors of this Essex market town

At the beginning of the reign of Queen Victoria, Henry Hart, printer and bookseller, began to issue his Saffron Walden Year Books, price one penny. The earliest of these in the Town Library is dated 1853

On a warm summer’s afternoon in 1917, the London to Cambridge train pulled up at Elsenham station. From out of the First Class carriage stepped the train’s only passenger: a tall, thin gentleman with an aristocratic bearing, his black greying hair rustling slightly in the breeze.

In 1833, Saffron Walden was gripped by scandal as a malt-thieving scam of enormous proportions unfolded. The story has already been summarised in print, and what is given here is an abbreviated transcript in chronological order of some of the major archives relating to this unprecedented and very complicated court case.

Deer parks were an established landscape feature in medieval Essex. It has been stated by Oliver Rackham that about 160 medieval parks were known to have existed within the county at different times which represents one to every 9.6 square miles.

Within the parish of Littlebury and close by at Catmere End, flints, prehistoric pottery, Iron Age remains and artefacts of the Roman period have come to light

A substantial mansion in the centre of town had been the dwelling of John Harvey (d. 1593), yeoman farmer, master rope-maker, and father of the English renaissance scholar and poet Gabriel Harvey (c.1550-1650).

Eglantyne Jebb moved to Cambridge in 1901, making a new start after a disastrous stint as a teacher, and to be close to her uncle Richard Claverhouse Jebb, Chair of Greek, and MP, at the university.

Researching my ancestors is something I had always wanted to do, but where to start was the most difficult thing, as I knew nothing about my grandparents, not even their Christian names