What's New - 2010
September 2010
With grateful thanks to Joanna, following an evaluation of personal letters from the time, the article about Louise Josephine Jemima Masset and her son Manfred Louis Masset has been substantially revised, to give a more balanced and less judgemental account of the sad circumstances surrounding both of their deaths.
August 2010
A new page has been added for the church of St Paul Newport Isle of Wight, the burial place of the scientist John 'Earthquake' Milne. With thanks to Reuben in Australia, an article has been added about AH Reffell the engineer behind Eric Robot.
July 2010
Following some interesting research into
domestic servants in the Victorian times, a page has been added about Emma Reffell a servant to the Sambourne family of Stafford Terrace Kensington for some thirty years.
With many thanks to Val, we had a great day following the trail of Amelia Reffell around Surrey and as a result new pages have been added for the churches of St Giles Ashtead, St Martin of Tours Epsom & St Mary Ewell.
Following a very interesting and informative visit to Normandy with the Royal British Legion, the page about Samuel Joseph Summerhayes has been revised and a new page added for the place where he is buried, the Canadian war cemetery at Beny-sur-Mer.
June 2010
Thanks to the kind use of Bob's research, it has been possible to considerably improve and add new information about the aircraft crash which killed Heather Cosens and twenty fours others in 1945. The website has also been very fortunate to have been given a precious photograph of Anthony Hugh Denison Reffell from David.
The article on Louis Chaloner Rattle has been expanded, and now includes a reference to his elder brother Denis who was also killed in the First World War.
May 2010
With the fourth anniversary of the website this month a minor refresh of the website presentation has taken place, this time adding a little more colour and new people to the header and welcome screen. Having learnt the hard way about the importance of having a proper backup regime, investment has been made in a local external hard drive that automatically saves each web page revision as it happens, and also keeps a copy of the original one.
New pages have been added for Arthur William Rattle, who died in the First World War and Bertie Charles Tacchi, who died in the Second.
Once again it has been very satisfying to bring together two people who have contacted the website separately and have a common interest.
I am very pleased to have introduced Bob & Graham to each other!
April 2010
With many thanks to Michael in Suffolk
it has been possible to rescan all the pages of Thomas Rattle's book 'The Rattle Families'. Due to webspace and bandwidth constraints, low-resolution images are available on this website, a CD is available with the full resolution images.
New pages have been added for Ernest David Rattle and Leonard Frederick Rattle who were both killed in the First World War. A personal video from Manyuan about the JT Reffell School in Sierra Leone has been added.
March 2010
There has been some general tidying up of the military pages, including a new introduction to The Great War for Civilisation. The rarely accessed interactive family tree (based on PHP GedView) has been playing up recently and has been taken offline. A reported problem has been investigated which affects only those users who access the website with the 64-bit version of Internet Explorer. This is a global issue resulting from the lack of Flash support provided by Adobe for this particular web browser, 32-bit versions are unaffected. In order to try and reduce any impact, a number of Flash based effects have been replaced where possible.
February 2010
A new page has been added for Albert William Reffles, who was in the Royal Air Force and died during the Second World War. Thanks to Selina, the page on Alice Jane Rattle has been updated. A new page has been added for the church of All Saints Fulham. The Make A Family History Website section has received a make over. A new page has been added for anthropologist and explorer William Scoresby Routledge.
Following on from research at the National Archives into the Greenwich Hospital Schools, more information has been added to the page about James Reffell, who is now confirmed in his own handwriting to have been present at the Battle of Trafalgar.
January 2010
A new mini-website has been created for the Reffells Bexley Brewery Ltd. The mini-website uses quite a different approach being essentially visually-based in the style of the brewery's 1930s advertising. It is centred around a character called 'Uncle Reff' who often spoke in rhymes, or 'Reffellising' as he called it.
New pages have been added for two Canadians who died fighting in Europe during the Second World War; John Wilson Summerhayes who was in the air force and Samuel Joseph Summerhayes who was in the army.