Lucy Whitfield

Ellen P’s story Ellen Pengelly seems to have had a taste for the exotic. At least when it came to her men. Born to a rural labouring family in Devon, she might have expected to spend her whole life in that county.…

So, meet Ellen. She came from Devon, took up with a Japanese teashop owner (said he was Chinese... but he seems to have said a lot of things that weren't true...), & became a butler's wife just outside Salisbury. But then he found another woman too...

thewomenwhomademe.wordpress.com/2025/07/11/e...

To celebrate having finally finished the draft though, I thought I'd put up one of the chapters on the blog from earlier in the writing process.

Funnily enough, that chapter won't be appearing on The Women Who Made Me blog, as it's just too visceral to put up for general reading, so you'll have to find a copy of the book when it's published to see it.

Ellen P’s story Ellen Pengelly seems to have had a taste for the exotic. At least when it came to her men. Born to a rural labouring family in Devon, she might have expected to spend her whole life in that county.…

The 3rd looked at 2 women who concealed illegally births, what led them to it & what happened afterwards. This involved reading long, lurid & macabre accounts of placing a dead child in a boiling saucepan. Wished I had someone to debrief with afterwards, & grateful of being able to compartmentalise.

This has meant writing 3 final chapters, and putting together another (admittedly strident) introduction. One chapter was on a woman from India forced to go to Warminster on marriage Another was on a district nurse from Amesbury, which took in advances in medicine in the 1920s & the marriage bar.

So, this week - in the peace and quiet while the rest of my household are on an epic post-A-levels trip across Europe - I managed to finish the first draft of my second book. This will be called Extraordinary Ordinary Women of South Wiltshire.

There was the SRA boxes, which had graded cards (by colour) on non-fiction topics, which you read and then answered a series of questions about as a reading comprehension exercise. There was a different box each school year, but had colours like lime, aqua, rose, silver etc.

Five weeks post surgery tomorrow, & tonight is the first night I haven't wilted like a flower and gone to bed before 10pm.

Let's see how I feel in the morning...

Love that you know all their names

Donate to Save The Vagina Museum, organized by Vagina Museum The Vagina Museum is one month away from closing – forever The Vagina Museum will be forced t… Vagina Museum needs your support for Save The Vagina Museum

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Rather inevitably, my other half (also a Cardiff student in the 1990s) and I have nicknamed him "Barnagoo".
And our daughter has picked it up.

It is such a niche joke that no-one else would get it. But it still makes me smile every time I hear the scrap van approaching.

Fast forward to today, and - 30 miles away from the Welsh border - there's a scrap metal man who comes around on a van, our rag and bone man, who drives around the streets with a loudhailer, yelling about any old iron in a very incomprehensible way.
He's from South Wales. With the accent to match.

One of the sellers had yelled "Western Mail and Echo" so many times over the years, it had become
"BARNAGOO!!!!"

As inventive students, we referred to him as Barnagoo Bloke. And it'd raise a wry smile when you went past and hear it. Can't remember the face, only the shout.

"BARNAGOO!"
Back in the days when newspapers had street sellers, they'd stand on their pitch and yell the newspaper names out to the public.
In Cardiff, that was "Western Mail and Echo". It was a common shout when I was a student in the 1990s.
But the words often mutated with regularity.

Part of a page of a medieval manuscript that had a hole cut into it. Underneath it is a restoration of a large decorated B, which would have been in this place, and which was restored by Eliza. The letter emulates the medieval style of script, but the image inside it is in a late 18th century style, showing a verdant tree standing against a green bucolic landscape.

In the 1790s a London woman named Eliza Denyer developed a modest reputation as a restorer of medieval manuscripts. She was forgotten by scholars and, in one case, her restorations were deliberately replaced by a man’s. I recovered her story & tracked all her known work here: tinyurl.com/2ktztx2e

The Real Maud Heath — Wiltshire Victoria County History Maud Heath has been many things to many people. A spinster or a widow, an egg seller, peasant trader, a farmer’s wife or wealthy widow, from Langley Burrell, from Bremhill, or from Tytherton Kellaways...

Happy Int. Women’s Day!
Maud Heath’s story was forgotten for 100s of years by the trustees of the charity she established in 1474. Instead they celebrated what they assumed she had been (e.g. an egg seller) rather than a women who facilitated regional trade!
www.wiltshirehistory.org/news/the-rea...

One week post op.
Incredible bruise from the cannula still. My veins are so shit.
Still not quite ready to rejoin the world, but getting there.

I have a solo gig in Sheffield this Sunday, co-headlining with trad singer Jill Pidd. It’s a new venture and we want to get the word out, can you help by sharing? Thankyou!
wegottickets.com/event/649011

It does seem to be luck of the draw with which pieces come up.

I am really enjoying Volume Three. There's some great people in there.

Day 3 post op.
Lucy: 1; Epigastric hernia: 0

Far less background pain means I am feeling brighter & shuffling around a bit more.
And can also cuddle my daughter, which pleases her greatly.

A visual of the front cover of the book Women Artists & Designers at the National Trust, with text and a few objects of material culture against a light blue background.

New book announcement!

Women Artists & Designers at the National Trust
by Rachel Conroy with an introduction by Sandi Toksvig
shop.nationaltrust.org.uk/women-artist...

Spanning six centuries, this book looks at some of the many women artists and designers represented in its vast collections.

I just finished a chapter on monthly nurses and maternal health. I shall ping it across to you shortly.

Well jell. I am at the dining room table yet again.

The book sits at the cusp of a food epoch, reflecting the culinary tastes of the 1970s and earlier, with the convenience of the 1980s starting to peek through.

Personally, it just tickles me that there's a recipe for instant coffee

At that time, microwaves were a brand new cooking gadget - the air fryer of the time - and so innovative that instructions were necessary. Similarly, home freezing manuals were appearing round about the same time.

A recipe for instant coffee from a 1981 microwave manual

✨ Document of the week ✨

Hard to believe now, but there was once a time where people didn't know how to make instant coffee in a microwave, and needed a recipe and directions.

This little gem is from the Toshiba Book of Microwave Cooking, published in 1981.

But I'm still not sure whether I'm getting the message across with "direct ancestor" and answering queries about Great Uncle Bob. Is there a better term out there that might help people to understand?

Great for dynastic marriages between ruling families, with generational links to royalty. But for most of us, it's about enforcing class constructs that shouldn't even matter. That's a whole other issue entirely.