It was seven years ago today, on 21 December 2013, that I launched this Upminster website and here we are 35 lengthy blog posts, around 100,000 words and around 70,000 website hits later we’re still going strong. When I started, after 20 years of researching Upminster’s past, I don’t think I ever imagined where this journey might take me but here we are, almost at the end of 2020, far more advanced than I would have guessed.

My research has provided many new insights into Upminster’s past which I’ve been delighted to share with you. The article about Upminster suffragette Miss Henria Helen Leech Williams threw new light on an obscure figure which has been quoted as far afield as Oswestry and Glasgow!

Much content on this site can’t be found anywhere in printed form – so remember folks you read it here first! I haven’t given up hope of pulling this all together into a book so maybe that will be my New Year resolution for 2021?

There will probably also be some themed posts, rather than posts about certain places or people. And as new information is uncovered I have been revising some of the posts from years past – the article on Upminster’s Lost Brickworks, for instance, has been completely rewritten to include exciting new information about a brickmaking site from the Elizabethan age.

I’ve also been reformatting some of the older posts to bring them into line with more recent formats, with larger images for instance, and also changing the text where needed. The article on Sir James Esdaile – which was the first in-depth piece about him – has benefitted from this updating and others will follow, in coming months.

Much help and support has come from Andy Grant who has provided graphics and expertise and also Tony Fox who has helped make the finished articles better. I thank them both for sharing their knowledge and for our debates along the way.

So, thanks for following so far, and please stay with me for the rest of this journey of discovery!