Born 3/3/1933. Died 14/5/2019 (video of funeral service is here) Born at Langs beach 3-3-33, which number he loved. The family had a farm there right on the beach which ran sheep and cattle, with a house cow. He was the youngest of six children, Margaret (who died in infancy), Hector, Anne, Mary, Ian and Donald. So they roamed all over the farm, barefooted, even on the rocks at the beach. Aged 5 he […]
The following article was published in the Leicester Mercury (although it no longer appears to be available on their website). It is drawn from the letters from William Spencer to John Frewen. They are letters that tell a not-so everyday story of country folk; riven with salacious gossip, wandering husbands, drunken vicars and murder. Some of the 200-year-old correspondence from William Spencer, a steward from Sapcote, to his master, village squire and Irish MP […]
Ezekiel Blomfield was a Congregational minister, author and compiler of religious works and works on natural history. His Wkipedia entry can be found here. His entry in the Dictionary of National Biography (1885-1900, Volume 05) is: BLOMFIELD, EZEKIEL (1778–1818), compiler, was born on 28 Oct. 1778 at North Walsham, Norfolk. His parents were very poor, and in 1783 he removed with them to Norwich. Before he was ten years of age he began making collections for […]
Address by the Provost [William Donaldson] on the occasion of Kilsyth’s Jubilee.
Daily Record and Mail. Saturday November 23 1929
My father was, is, my hero; largely because of who he was, but also because his life read like an adventure story. Zlatko Predavec was born on the 4th of May 1923. He was the sole product of each of his parents’ second marriages and as such was the much-loved baby of the family looked after by his older half-siblings. He grew up with his politician father often absent but always at the centre of […]
Vlado was Josip Predavec’s oldest son from his first marriage – my father was the youngest son from his second marriage so there was a significant age difference between them. In my father’s memoires he mentions Vlado together with his other half-brother, Milan, as forming part of his earliest memory: Now come the first memories; of Winter, deep snow. Milan and Vlado built a “big” snow hill between the pine trees and lower kitchen so […]