Loughborough History and Heritage Network is a website set up in 2014 by myself and Dr Robert Knight of Loughborough University’s Department of Politics, History and International Relations.  Its purpose was to collect and share the history of the Charnwood area of Leicestershire and to raise public awareness of the many heritage groups and societies within it.

The Network was funded for eighteen months on an Enterprise Grant from the University, after which the website was continued on a voluntary basis before falling dormant in early 2019.

I took on responsibility for hosting the site in May 2020 to stop its contents being lost when the University upgraded their servers, and as well as writing articles myself, I invite people to send me stories about aspects of local history that they’re interested in and knowledgeable about.  Unsurprisingly, personal memories of times past are my favourite!  I’ve been really lucky as Loughborough Library’s Local Studies Volunteers send me a tremendous amount of articles and a number of people have chipped in to hosting costs through my buy-me-a-coffee page.

It was writing articles for a small history newsletter as a primary teacher that gave me the confidence to believe I could be a ‘proper writer,’ so I’m never annoyed at the hours I put into the history and heritage website.  In fact, I love it and have to take care not to let it eat up all my writing time.  The historical things I learn feed into my fiction, too, and I’ve become a proper local history geek. (Just ask my friends!)

Still, people seem to enjoy reading the stories on the site and there are worse things I could do!

Why not go and have a look at the site yourself and see what you think?