Layers of History

Strangely, perhaps, for someone who has such an interest in history, I rarely look back at my own, or devote much time to thinking about it. But the interlinking of personal and wider history is a different matter. My elder niece has not long since started studying at Sheffield University and is based in the university halls at Endcliffe. On her way to the city centre she walks past the house where her great-great-grandmother was in service, while a couple of miles away is the rather more modest house in Industry Street where her great-grandmother and namesake Grace was born.

Meanwhile, my mum's side of the family came from Somerset. Her grandfather owned Royal Oak Farm at Clanville once upon a time, a building now worth getting on for £850K, quite a far cry from Industry Street, Sheffield. Here it is, as revealed by a popular mapping app. Of course, although these old buildings are part of our history, they're also embedded in other peoples', one of the ways in which lives cross over one another, link, and construct a wider human narrative.