This page is designed to do two things. Firstly, to inform you, the users of this site, of what we are planning to do in the future, in terms of developing the site, as well as the more general aspects of the work of the Society.

The latest news is that we now have our own blog. We want to hear what you, the users of the site, as well as the members of the Society, think about what we do now and the interesting developments we are planning for the future. This Society can flourish best if its activities answer the needs of its members and users. We can only do this if we know what these are, so do make use of the blog to help us to help you!
The address is: bedfordshirehistory.blogspot.com

Future Plans

We are particularly interested to hear your views on our future plans to develop the website. The revolution in information technology which we have seen in the last few years has facilitated access to an ever increasing amount of information. Not only this, but we have the facility to search this huge library at the press of a button with little cost in terms of time or money. Family historians have already taken full advantage of this, and we in BHRS have begun to do so also with the addition to our website of searching facilities for our own volumes.

But now we intend to move further forward. We are proposing to set up an interactive online index for published material on the history of Bedfordshire. This will not only replace the out of date Bedfordshire Bibliography, but will go much further as it will run alongside other local initiatives, such as the databases being set up by the Bedfordshire and Luton Archives and Record Service, the library service and the Bedfordshire Family History Society.

Secondly, we have begun to digitize the text of material from volumes of ours which are now out of print, so as to make them widely available on the internet. The first of these will be a volume long out of print, number 33, Elizabethan Churchwardens' Accounts, published in 1953, consisting of transcripts from the parishes of Clifton, Northill and Shillington.

Which of our volumes would you like to see 'reprinted' in this way? They are all listed here on the volumes page.

Another new venture for us is that of reprinting some of the excellent articles that were published in The Bedfordshire Magazine between 1947 and its demise ten years ago. They deserve to be available to a new audience. Watch the blog for further news!

And finally, the pleasant fact that the Bousfield Diaries volume (no 86) has sold out has given the Society the opportunity to test the ‘printing on demand’ facility to reprint a small number of copies soft bound at low cost. We have therefore printed a further one hundred copies in this way which sell at the very reasonable price of £9.99.

Future volumes

The volume for 2010 is The 2nd Bedfords in France and Flanders 1914-1918; edited by M G Deacon. It is an edition of the official war diary of the 2nd Battalion, the Bedfordshire Regiment and complements BHRS's 2004 volume The Shiny Seventh: the 7th (Service) Battalion Bedfordshire Regiment at War 1915-1918. Often terse, sometimes descriptive, the diary records troop movements to and from billets and trenches, weather conditions, the 1914 Christmas Day truce, shelling, attacks, battles and casualties. The volume also gives directions for drives around the 2nd Bedfords' battle zones. ".

The 2011 volume will be an account of a 19th century gentry family, the Brooks of Flitwick, their place in local administration and society, and the management of their estates and family affairs. It will flesh out the Brooks diary published in volume 66, and is edited by Richard Morgan.

Finally, I give advance notice of the forthcoming centenary of our Society, which we will be celebrating in 2012. Plans are in hand and details will be posted here and elsewhere as the year draws closer. Watch this space!

With best wishes,

Richard Smart, Hon Sec, BHRS