No village is complete without its characters and tales of their achievements, successes and sometimes failures.
Under this heading we will show you images of our villagers of the past and share their stories.
As a community which grew up due to rapid industrial growth our past population comprised coal miners, iron forge workers, railway workers and canal boatmen attracted here, along with their families, from other counties such as Staffordshire, Shropshire, Yorkshire, Leicestershire, Northants and beyond.
To chat with a neighbour back in 1900 would have been interesting with all those various accents and I wonder how much influence this had on the present day dialect?
We will tell you about the famous, such as George Gilman Rushby who once lived at the ‘Limes’ on Selston Road, Jacksdale who later made worldwide headlines as the famous Tanganyikan game warden called in to quell the man eating lions of Njombe and also stories about all of those endearing ordinary folk and the many contributions they have made.
