History Files
 

Please help the History Files

Contributed: £50

Target: £400

2023
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2023

The History Files still needs your help. As a non-profit site, it is only able to support such a vast and ever-growing collection of information with your help, and this year your help is needed more than ever. Please make a donation so that we can continue to provide highly detailed historical research on a fully secure site. Your help really is appreciated.

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The History Files

Help with Galleries


How to use gallery pages

The gallery pages within the History Files contain multiple images or photos, which are quickly loaded for you so that you are easily able to scroll through them with no delays for downloading each new image.

At the top of each gallery page on bigger display screen sizes, you will see a series of numbers, bracketed by 'Back' and 'Next' labels, as shown in the image below. This is the gallery navigation bar. On some of the narrower mobile displays, only 'Back' and 'Next' will be available.

Gallery navigation
This sample of a gallery navigation bar shows the full display for desktops and larger mobile screens, while smaller displays will show only 'Back' and 'Next'

Features / Lists





Each gallery page will typically hold either six or ten photos, and will always load with the first image showing, which is why the first number on the navigation bar is slightly faded, to show that it is active.

To access the remaining images, either click or tap on the number, or on 'Next', which will scroll you through the images at a rate of one image per click. Click or tap on 'Back' to scroll in the opposite direction.

Churches, castles, palaces, and manor houses

The 'Churches...' series of photo galleries, and similar gallery pages across the site, sometimes concentrate on one individual church, building, location, or subject per page but, in many cases - especially with the church pages - they will focus on multiple buildings.

All churches are named in bold text to make that name stand out. See the photo below for an example of an emboldened church name.

Bold name for new churches
Highlighted here is the emboldened text which highlights the name of a church within a single gallery page - this time with just one name for this photo (sometimes multiple names can be included for churches which have changed hands)


There may also be more than one emboldened church name in the text. Very often, especially with non-conformist, minor churches, the name will change over the years. If a second name is shown in the text, this will be the name by which that church or other place of worship was previously known or is now known.

Emboldened names are always included in the index, so that you can find a church by whichever name you best know it.

Castles and manor houses use a different display format - the photobox - so each location has an entire page of its own.

Index page links to a specific place of worship

Links to individual places of worship in the main index pages will only take you to the gallery page which contains that location, not necessarily to the individual building itself. It is up to you to scroll through the pictures until you reach the entry for the particular building you require.

Taking the 'tour'

The reason that there are often multiple churches or other places of worship entered onto one gallery page is that they are formatted so that you can take a virtual tour around a specific town or district. This means being able to read about each place of worship as it comes up, almost as if you were walking around the area itself.

To take the tour, click on the relevant picture on the index page. The picture is always located above a link for the full list of churches in that county. The picture will start the tour, while the link below it will take you to the main index page for that county or district.

Once you have finished with the first page in a section, use the 'Following Pages' links on the right-hand side of the page (or below the pictures and text on narrower displays) to access the next page. The next page will be labelled 'Part 2', 'Part 3', etc. When you come to the last part, and the next link is for a different county or district, you can either continue the tour by clicking on that link, or go back to the main index by selecting the 'Special Index' link below it.

'Related Links' will take you to pages containing places of worship which have been mentioned in the main text on the present page.

Of course, with the advent of mobile browsing, you can also take the virtual tour with you as a guide to your real world tour.

Audio

In addition don't forget that, where available, there are audio recordings of church bells. Use the HTML player which will be located in the sidebar (or lower down the page on narrower screens).

The audio player was new for 2020, to replace the life-expired Flash player. It loads very quickly and responds effortlessly to your commands. Simply click anywhere within the container to play or pause.

The progress bar will display an orange strip to show content which has already been played, while the volume bar and mute on/off button below are easy to set. The display will show the full running time of the audio file until 'play' is selected, and will then show the time elapsed.

HTML audio player on a church gallery page
The custom-built HTML5 audio player loads quickly and responds effortlessly to your commands


Finally

To help the photo galleries grow, you can let us know what material you would like to send in by contacting us here.

That can be in the form of photos of churches, chapels, priories, abbeys, minster churches, church ruins, or even the current sites of lost churches and chapels. Your good-quality audio recordings of church bells can also find a place in this remarkable collection, so get in touch today!