By Christine Swan I decided to visit Greenwich as my participation in Open City’s Open House Festival. My second port of call was the Old Royal Naval College, now inhabited by The University …

By Christine Swan Is there anything more elegant than a fan? A beautiful accessory to hide your blushes, and an elegant companion to cool you on a hot day. This summer, there were many hot days. La…

By Christine Swan During my recent holiday in France, I decided to revisit St Paul de Vence, a place that I last went to over a decade ago. It is not too difficult to catch the train to Cagnes Sur …

By Christine Swan In a week that saw both daytime and nighttime temperature records smashed in the UK, we need to take a long, hard look at ourselves. I make no apologies for this post appearing co…

By Christine Swan I love the theatre. I love London. Combining the two for a weekend is sheer bliss. My job is hectic and doesn’t fit into the working week. I have always had a habit of overw…

By Christine Swan I don’t often write about my day job in the blog, but I felt compelled to write down my feelings and reactions to the announcement of a ban on under sixteen year olds joinin…

By Christine Swan Sorting through papers recently, I found a form that I had completed early in my teaching career, when I was under threat of redundancy due to reorganisation. I had always believe…

By Christine Swan Reflecting on the news headline that an increasing number of young people are NEET (Not in Education, Employment, or Training), this week, I thought about work and all that it mea…

Drowning is not the violent, splashing call for help that most people expect.

by Christine Swan I have previously written of my great, great grandmother Mary Flood of Southwark who married William Henry Apthorp, coachsmith and wheelwright, in the grand church of St George&#8…

By Christine Swan Last weekend, the London weather was gorgeous. I decided to walk from Southwark to Kingsland Road, Hackney. Walking across London Bridge I walked along Borough High Street, past t…

By Christine Swan I have been researching my family tree for almost twenty five years. In that time, I have lost a number of close relatives, some still to painful to record in my family tree. Thro…

by Christine Swan My maternal grandfather died before I was born. When my mother became incapacitated by a stroke, I spent many hours talking over cups of tea, about old times, and the characters t…

By Christine Swan Last weekend was the beginning of a spell of good weather, which thankfully, continued into this week. Before I left for London, a bee swarm settled in my neighbour’s garden…

Apply energy intensive industry relief (Supercharger scheme) to the ceramics industry to help cut soaring industrial energy costs & support ceramics businesses, which are at the risk of imminent colla...

By Christine Swan As I posted previously, I recently discovered that I had ancestral routes in the Belgian city of Antwerp. However, I wanted to discover what else the modern city had to offer. Thi…

By Christine Swan I love exploring the places where my ancestors lived and worked, and it has been a great pleasure to discover my links with the mainland. Last week, I set off for Antwerp to resea…

By Christine Swan In another time, Esther Deighton would perhaps have trained as a nurse. Throughout her life, she served others, sometimes at the very end of their lives. How do I know this, you m…

By Christine Swan I had no intention of writing this piece today. In fact, I had another post in planning but events have rather taken over. I want to talk to you about customer service helplines. …

By Christine Swan There is a little house in Curtain Road, Shoreditch, that I walk past every time I visit. Much like Ebenezer Scrooge’s house, it appears as if it ran up Curtain Road as a li…

By Christine Swan Some theatre is enjoyable, but not personal. Some is frivolous fun, but lacking in a deeper message. Having East End ancestry, Cable Street has a legendary status but maybe it has…

By Christine Swan Last year, I visited Lille at Easter. It is one of two French cities that are very easy to reach from the UK. The entire journey only takes about ninety minutes which makes it con…

By Christine Swan My grandfather died in the nineteen seventies. I remember him as being a wiry man with a full head of white hair, arms covered in regimental tattoos and stubbly chin. On Saturday …

By Christine Swan Some of my earliest memories are of visiting my grandparents in Walthamstow. Every Saturday, my parents would drive my sister and I from south of the river to the north. There wer…

By Christine Swan All Saints Church, Castle Camps By mym, CC BY-SA 2.0, I have previously written about my familial links with the small village of Castle Camps in Cambridgeshire. My terrifying gre…

By Christine Swan A week ago on Monday was, allegedly, the most depressing day of the year. Christmas and New Year are now distant memories, and summer days are a long way into the future. It&#8217…

By Christine Swan I love the theatre. Apart from my hobby of Kung Fu, visiting theatres comes a very close second. In 2025, I managed to squeeze in twenty nine theatre visits. I have already review…

By Christine Swan I had booked a theatre weekend not realising that I was due to be teaching all day. This necessitated a rush to Birmingham New Street station to hot foot it down to London Euston …

By Christine Swan The summer of 2025 was glorious. I had booked two outdoor theatre visits, and the weather was wonderful for both of them. The summer seemed to be filled with blue skies and warm t…

By Christine Swan In April 2025, I decided to explore one branch of my Huguenot and Walloon ancestors by travelling to Lille in Northern France. This is a very easy journey from London St Pancras, …

By Christine Swan As has become my custom every year, I end it by reviewing my travels and significant events. January is usually a month of unpredictable weather so I tend not to stray far. It is …

By Christine Swan When I was very small, I lived with my family in Whitecross St, in the heart of the City of London. At some point my dad acquired an elevated position in the Metropolitan Water Bo…

By Christine Swan Next week I will be another year older. This is always a time of reflection but one conversation this week made me consider all of the incredible achievements that I have witnesse…

By Christine Swan Sometimes, it is hard to know where to begin. During my family history research, which has extended over twenty years, a name leaps out from the page, and conjures an image. In th…

By Christine Swan As I have discovered with other families, my Londoner roots did not begin there. On my maternal side, the name Apthorp has a long history. Up until a few years ago, the Apthorp So…

By Christine Swan During the recent half term break, I visited the Netherlands as another of my flight-free, European forays. I had wanted to visit Delft because I had discovered an ancestral link …

By Christine Swan During the half term break, I had planned another trip to the Netherlands for a break, but also to visit Delft, where the Blanchet family lived four hundred years ago. I set off o…

By Christine Swan It is at this time of year that we remember those who served their country during various conflicts, including, the supposed war to end all wars, The First World War. My father ha…

By Christine Swan As a small child, we had one coal fire in our rented house, and no central heating. I remember my bedroom being freezing during the wintertime, and I disliked walking across the l…

By Christine Swan When I was studying biology at the University of London, our electron microscopes were located in a mundane office building in King Street, Hammersmith. We took the Tube, and trud…

By Christine Swan In May 2023. Dennis Severs’ House was transformed for a few weeks for an exhibition of Simon Pettet’s beautiful reproduction Delftware ceramics. It was a sad time in m…

By Christine Swan For thirteen years, The Hackney Mosaic Project has engaged its volunteer artists in numerous projects, some of which are on a considerable scale. Tessa Hunkin’s community of…