Local History

Derek and Bill Bowes

Grandpa - Bill Bowes

Bill was  born in 1888 in Long Bennington  near Grantham. He died in Southwell in 1990, head of a big family, well respected and loved, but in his last few years his mind increasingly went back to the First World War. In 1982, when he was 94, his son Derek made a recording on a cassette recorder of his recollections.

The Beecheys

The story of a big Lincolnshire family decimated by the First World War, with five of the eight boys killed. We know what happened because one of the daughters (there were 14 in the whole family) kept a suitcase of letters and photos in the attic.

A last letter home

When the author Michael Walsh came to hear of it, he made it the basis of his book "Brothers in War."

Grantham - Dodge City

When the newly-formed Machine Gun Corps chose to situate its headquarters at Belton House in Grantham in 1915, the town found itself inundated with tens of thousands of soldiers. This led to problems with law and order, particularly prostitution, and to the appointment of the world's first policewoman - the redoubtable Edith Smith. We look at the story as told by the Grantham Journal at the time.  

The Thankful Villages

Across the whole country, fewer than forty parishes sent men off to the Great War who all returned. There are only three in Lincolnshire, and High Toynton near Horncastle managed it in both wars. Is there any trace of their lucky escape left?

The News

Ninety years ago today the War to end all Wars  - or so it was claimed - came to an end, and many think the changes it brought about marked the beginning of modern times as we know them.   It was to be a few years before the BBC came into being, and sixty two years before BBC Radio Lincolnshire took to the airwaves, but if we had been broadcasting then, I wonder what the news might have sounded like?