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Local
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Wrexham and surrounding areas (mainly N or NW, but sometimes further afield). Includes directory entries from the 19thC, the start of a photo gallery, and an account of Queen Victoria's visit to Wrexham and North Wales in 1889.
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General
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Material of a general nature: a lucky dip of topics and places not covered in the other sections.
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Sheffield
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Sheffield and surrounding areas: content may also refer to parts of neighbouring counties, e.g. Derbyshire.
Old Sheffield trades, the 1864 flood, cutlers' feast, first railway, highways, church life, etc.
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Asia
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Varied articles, relating mainly to India and China.
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Military
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Any material with military connections.
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Two Moss Valleys?
Terms of Use
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Moss Valley is not far from Wrexham in North Wales, and in the 19th century, in common with much of its surroundings, it was humming with industrial activity – mines, iron works, railways and the like. Today it's a peaceful little valley: evidence of its past is hard to find and its activities difficult to imagine, particularly since much of it was reclaimed and landscaped in the 1970s. But some signs remain: for example, the wooded bank rising in the background of the photo was the route of one of two railways that ran along each side of the valley.
MossValley was a quite an appropriate name for this site as the real one is fairly close; but I later discovered there was another area of the same name elsewhere. Only through coincidence, content relating to both general areas appears on these pages, and the name has sometimes caused a little confusion among visitors expecting to see material relating to one but arriving at a page which doesn't seem to have anything to do with it :) See this page for a short explanation and a couple of maps of the 'two Moss Valleys'.
The main aim for the site originally was to make transcripts available of 19thC and early 20thC material which could be useful for those researching their family history. Often these were connected with places which cropped up in my own research; but genealogy led to a wider interest in history, both general and local, and to a modest but varied collection of contemporary books, journals and articles, so the plan was to share material of all kinds as time went on. An appreciation of my own locality also had me tramping round the countryside taking lots of photos which were going to be made into a gallery of the area — a couple of pages were put together and made it online at the start of the project.
Then life got in the way! After quite a promising start, other commitments meant there wasn't time to transcribe or scan more, so no progress with the 'grand plan' for about three years. Then, in mid-2006, a slight makeover and site overhaul, with existing pages reorganised into more sensible categories. Prospects still look slim for time to transcribe much more material from scratch, but it has been possible to finish off and upload a few pages which were at various stages of completion some time ago; and I also hope to add to the local image gallery with photos already taken.
