National Newspaper Archive

[Max Sinclair]

Having read about this new archive in the British Library which carries over 4 million references I entered Nationalnewspaperarchive .co.uk with Droitwich Barge Canal. The result is incredible giving extracts from available documents.Acts of Parliament, start of work, disputes, land purchases barges,accidents and sinkings, trade advertisements inspections and sadly drowning tragedies, lots of children unfortunately.

To examine papers in full a fee is required, for two days work about £6. Spend a little time listing the summaries and then pay the fee for hours of interesting reading. If you don't see your canal friends for a few days they will be engrossed reading. Good Hunting.

[koukouvagia]

Having read about this new archive in the British Library which carries over 4 million references I entered Nationalnewspaperarchive .co.uk with Droitwich Barge Canal. The result is incredible giving extracts from available documents.Acts of Parliament, start of work, disputes, land purchases barges,accidents and sinkings, trade advertisements inspections and sadly drowning tragedies, lots of children unfortunately.

To examine papers in full a fee is required, for two days work about £6. Spend a little time listing the summaries and then pay the fee for hours of interesting reading. If you don't see your canal friends for a few days they will be engrossed reading. Good Hunting.

 

That link didn't work for me. Try http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/

[David Schweizer]

That link didn't work for me. Try http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/

I googled the Archive and found the site easily, but it is hard work to search. If you type in more than one word, you get all the references for each individual word, which meant when I typed in the first and second name of a person and the location I got over 2000 pages!!! I suppose it did not help that the place was Bath as I also got references to the domestic item as well as the location. Also most of the refernces use some sort of shorthand which is gibberish to me.

 

The Bath Georgian Newspaper Project undertook a similar task some years ago, and that is much easier to search, and the have pubnlished the full article, and it is FREE!.

[Mac of Cygnet]

I googled the Archive and found the site easily, but it is hard work to search. If you type in more than one word, you get all the references for each individual word, which meant when I typed in the first and second name of a person and the location I got over 2000 pages!!!

 

If you use the Advance Search facility, it gives you several options to overcome this, mainly based on how Google worked before the latter introduced 'intelligent' searching.

[Chasbo]

Thanks for telling us about this site.

 

It is also very useful for anyone researching their family history.

 

I put in “Catherine Speary” (with the quotes) who was my gr-gr-gr –grandmother and discovered that she owned three boats NEPTUNE, FANNY and NANCY in 1867 presumably on the canal at Newport South Wales where she was also the landlady of the Ship and Castle Pub in Canal Parade!