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NEW PUBLICATION
Little Buttons Telling Big Stories
From lunatic asylums and domestic violence to love stories, success, bankruptcy and suicide, these are just a few of the stories unpicked from the small four-holed tailor's buttons The Field Detectives have found in Nottinghamshire. People and families have been brought back to life through the names and places branded on these simple buttons, which made their way onto the fields around the Grantham Canal via the Nottingham night soil collections throughout the mid-19th to early 20th centuries.
Catherine has meticulously researched each of the tailors featured, and their stories are voiced through newspaper reports, parish records and other historical documents.
Not every button found belonged to a Nottingham tailor; many of them came from as far away as Scotland and London.
Little Buttons Telling Big Stories aims to appeal to people interested in Nottingham's history and those with tailors in their ancestry. Also, any metal detecting enthusiasts who may have found one of the buttons and would like to learn more about them.
Who would think that something so small could tell such big stories?
A Further Account of the Hacker Family
Second Edition is now available
Nottinghamshire in the 16th and 17th centuries was home to the wealthy and powerful Hacker family. The English Civil War caused a rift in the family, with Colonel Francis Hacker taking the Parliamentarian side while his father and two brothers remained loyal to the king.
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Francis Hacker was a leading colonel in the New Model Army, and he became one of Oliver Cromwell’s most trusted soldiers. This ultimately led to Francis’s execution on 19th October 1660 when he was hanged as a traitor for his part in the proceedings that led to the beheading of King Charles I in 1649.
This book is a focused research project on Colonel Francis Hacker's genealogy, primarily his direct ancestors and descendants. It helps dispel some of the myths and legends surrounding their family tree.​​​
For sale
5* reviews
Richard Thomas Parker
The last man to be publicly hanged in Nottingham
Written by a family descendant, this is a true account of the events leading up to the hanging of Richard Thomas Parker, on 10th August 1864, Nottingham, for the murder of his mother at Fiskerton, Nottinghamshire. Parker was twenty-nine years old and the last man to be publicly hanged in Nottingham.​​
For sale
5* reviews
The Stathern Moulde Cachers
This booklet was inspired by the names of two 17th-century molecatchers found in the Stathern Churchwardens Accounts. The more we dug into the history of mole catching, the more we wanted to dig deeper, and this is the story that we uncovered. It is a tale of epic persecution on a monumental scale that leaves people undecided on the scales of justice to this very day. Take time to read our story, weigh up the pros and cons, and make your own judgement.
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Gloria
It is 1903; beautiful and passionate Gloria Armstrong waits on the snowy steps of the Durham register office, she is eighteen years old and pregnant. Knowing her domineering father will be outraged, she has eloped to marry her handsome fiancé, aspiring doctor Gerald Phelps. They return to London, and Gloria is thrust into the world of an upper-class doctor's wife. It would appear she has it all, but haunted by a gypsy woman's prophecy that she will never find true happiness, will her hasty marriage stand the test of time?
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A towery novel telling how Gloria’s emotionally charged life shapes her transition from girl to woman. Even two world wars could not extinguish something so beautiful. A must-read and a friend you most definitely will return to again and again.
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"Steady As She Goes"
The poignant wartime recollections of a WWII Navy ‘medic’
Eighteen-year-old Ted joined the Royal Navy in 1943 as a medic; he wanted to preserve life. WWII had been raging for four years but for Ted, it was a journey into the unknown, with the threat of death a constant companion. Yet, he didn't dwell on the dark side of life, enjoying himself as much as he could before the D-Day landings of 1944, and the liberation of Europe began. Told as a touching conversation between father and daughter in his latter years, this short story recounts his memories of that time.
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