Herefordshire is one of the least spoiled and most beautiful counties in England. Its story is an epic poem, punctuated by Iron Age hill forts and the meanderings of rivers. Our house, Callow Farm in Callow, just south of Hereford, dates mainly from the 16th and 17th centuries, with some more modern, 18th century additions, but there are also traces of wattle and daub, that suggest an earlier structure in the Middle Ages, when the farm here was held by the Knights Hospitaller.
Anthony Adolph, Lea and Pagets Wood, with Capler hill fort and distant Hay Bluff, seen from the Marcle Ridge, Herefordshire, oil on canvas, November 2021
I am making a study of the antiquarian work of Rev. John Duncumb, who researched a great deal of Herefordshire’s history. He published some volumes in his lifetime; others based on his work were published later, and I am now delighted to be able to make Duncumb’s manuscript History of the Hundred of Webtree, long believed to be lost, available for local and family history research for the first time.
I have started researching the history of Callow Farm, and also of the villages of Callow and Dewsall, and intend to provide more information about both on this web page in due course. For the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee I gave a talk on Callow’s history in the parish church here, as part of a parish history walk, organised by Angie Gibbs. The text of the talk has been published on the Callow Parish Hall website’s parish history page, which I helped create in February 2023.
Leading the Callow and Dewsall Platinum Jubilee history walk, 2022
I am also actively researching my own Herefordshire ancestors, derived through my great great grandmother’s family, the Slaughters of Cheney Court in Bishops Frome. Their Herefordshire forebears included the Beringtons of Winsley, the Hathways of Bishops Frome and Marden, the Woods of Evesbatch, the Witherstons of Witherstone in the parish of Little Dewchurch, and the Coopers of Hereford. Further back up my family tree, I also have a line of descent from the Bohuns, who were Earls of Hereford in the Middle Ages. I intend in time to provide information about these families on this web page.
Books from the Chained Library in Hereford Cathedral, bound and chained by my ancestral uncle, John Cooper of Hereford, book binder.
I am happy to accept commissions to research family, house and village history in any part of Herefordshire.
