placeStart exploring local history
A short guide to following a place from the atlas into the sources.
Find the right place
Begin with the name, then check the county group, current administrative area and map point. A familiar name may belong to more than one settlement. Keep the page address with your notes so that another reader can identify the record you used.
The six county groups are routes into this atlas. They do not identify every historic county or parish. When researching an older document, record the jurisdiction used by that document rather than replacing it with a modern council name.
Follow a claim to its source
The small numbered links after each history paragraph lead to its bibliography. Open the source and look for the specific event, building or date. Notice whether the author describes something as certain, probable or traditional. Keep those distinctions in your own notes.
For a book or report, record the author, title, edition and page. For a webpage, keep its address and the date you consulted it. A later summary can be useful, but a museum account, archival record or specialist study may explain the evidence in greater detail.
Read the map carefully
A settlement marker is a recorded point, not an outline of everything belonging to that settlement. Nearby heritage entries are selected by distance. Read the linked designation record before connecting a building with the place’s historical story.
Illustrations help you recognise a landmark or landscape. They are labelled artistic adaptations, with reference credits, rather than measurements of a building or evidence for its appearance in an earlier century.
Leave room for a better answer
Keep conflicting accounts side by side until the evidence explains the difference. A missing section in this atlas means the subject has not yet been supported here; it does not mean the place has no earlier history. Corrections are most useful when they identify a particular sentence and provide a source that another reader can inspect.