Skip to main content

1820 Settler Places in the British Isles

Staffordshire, Barton under Needwood, Shoulder of Mutton pub, opposite St.James ChurchI am at last in a position formally to reveal a project on which I have been working single-handedly for the last two years, as my contribution to the 1820 Settler Bicentennial. As my husband and I enjoy touring the country I rather rashly agreed to take as many photographs as I could of British Settler locations prior to 1820 so that they could be added to a new section on the eGGSA website.

I have indeed taken hundreds of photographs, but it was soon borne in upon me that I couldn’t possibly visit every location, and also that in many cases, particularly in cities like London and Bristol, many buildings with settler ties simply no longer exist. In the latter case I have tried to include historical pictures where possible, and where I have not been able to take pictures myself I have added pictures from www.geograph.co.uk, which can be used under a Creative Commons Licence. Where the photographer’s name appears as a clickable link followed by a CC BY-SA 2.0 reference, the original photo can be viewed together with other photographs of the surrounding area.

I have uploaded over 1300 photos to the new site (with thanks to Richard Ball for his help and patience in setting it all up), and these are currently arranged by county for England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales, with separate sections for the cities of Birmingham, Bristol, Dublin, Edinburgh, Liverpool, London, Manchester and Nottingham. London has been further sub-divided into Boroughs so as not to have too many pictures in one file.

The pictures appear as small icons with a brief title. Clicking on them will reveal a larger picture with text explaining the link to one or more settlers and a credit to the photographer. Clicking on the + sign will further enlarge the picture to full screen (use ESCape to exit full screen mode), and the photographs can all be downloaded from the site.

During the bicentennial year I hope to upload a series of Photo Albums to the eGGSA Facebook pages in Party Groupings. In the meantime, if you wish to see if there are photos relating to your particular settler ancestor, go to https://www.eggsa.org/1820-settlers/ and type in the settler’s name in the Search Box in the top right hand corner, then scroll down the list of hits. Links to the relevant photographs should appear at the end of the list. It is also linked from the Photograph Collections button on the banner across the top of the site.

This has been a one woman show, and so it would be amazing if I have managed to complete the project without typos or broken links. Please let me know if you find any, and if you can add any further UK photos to the collection which are not copyright then they will be gratefully received.

  • Hits: 10019