The WFS Committee wish all members a Merry Christmas and a healthy, Happy New Year. We hope you will continue to support the Society in 2013.
The WFS Committee wish all members a Merry Christmas and a healthy, Happy New Year. We hope you will continue to support the Society in 2013.
We are expecting delivery of our special 10th Anniversary Journal back from the printers shortly. This contains some of our best research work over the past 10 years.
Unfortunately the news from the Corporation of London is not encouraging. It seems that records kept over the past 100 years by the Essex Field Club and the Corporation are not able to prove 100% that the Axe on display at The View is the Willingale Billhook
I visited The View today, the new interpretation centre in Chingford, next to Queen Elizabeth’s Hunting Lodge which opened for the first time in July 2012. It contains a lot of information on the forest including its habitat and of course the events leading up to its saving in the late 1800s.
It’s been a while since we last blogged so we have a few updates this time: The Willingale archive now numbers an impressive 1,500 items. We hope to start a new project looking at historic press articles shortly, now that the National Newspaper Library is available online.
We now have Steve’s DNA test back from the lab. His results are a close match to those already received from the Thomas, John, William and Samuel branches of the family.
This coming year sees the 10th anniversary of the Willingale Family Society. I’ve had a basic Willingale family tree on my personal site since at least 1998, but it was a post in my website guestbook by Keith Willingale on 16 December 2001 and a further post by Graham Richards on 12th January 2002 which […]
I was interested to see another article on Thomas Willingale which appeared in a number of East London newspapers recently. (see here, here and here). I think this may have been written in an attempt to raise publicity for Lopping Hall, which is currently being renovated and was in the running for funding from the […]
CommunityForce is a new initiative from Nat West that works with local communities to support people, projects and charities. One of the projects which could benefit from this scheme is Lopping Hall in Loughton. Lopping Hall was opened in 1884 to a design by local architect Edmond Egan, and is one of the most important […]
We are pleased to announce we have our 9th member of the Willingale DNA Project. Steve Willingale from Australia is our latest tester and we hope to have his DNA results back early in the New Year.