 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
St Andrew's Church, Slaidburn, circa 1910
I graduated with a 2.1 degree in physics from Imperial College, South Kensington, London in 1982 and taught for just over three years in Finchley, before returning to Preston, Lancashire. Since then I've been Head of ICT at Clitheroe Royal Grammar School.
I have over thirty years' experience in genealogy and local history, and have built up a very large collection of material relating to the parish of Slaidburn (Yorkshire pre 1974, but now Lancashire). In 1994 and 1998, Reg Postlethwaite and I transcribed and published in hardback two volumes of the parish registers of St Andrew's Church, Slaidburn, covering the years 1600 to 1837/52.
From 1994, I was a committee member of the Friends of Lancashire Archives, and eventually membership secretary, vice chairman and then chairman for a couple of years until 2002.
Since 2000, I have published numerous research material concerning the local history of Slaidburn, including a transcript of the 1841 census, an index to Slaidburn wills, four volumes of will abstracts and three volumes of transcripts of the court rolls of the Manor of Slaidburn. More publications are in the pipeline.
Some years ago, I was fortunate enough to purchase a large archive of original documents relating to the parish of Slaidburn, which I am gradually cataloguing and then depositing in the Lancashire Record Office here in Preston. See LRO online catalogue, reference DDX 2480.
Recent papers and articles which I have co-authored include:
'The Slaidburn Poor Pasture: changing configurations of popular politics in the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century village' by Professor R W Hoyle and C J Spencer, published in Social History Vol. 31 No. 2 May 2006
'The Lordship of Bowland' by C J Spencer & S W Jolly, published in the The Escutcheon, the Journal of the Cambridge University Heraldic and Genealogical Society, 2010
One of the aims of this website is to make some of my material available to on-line researchers, plus making my existing publications available for sale. Professional research services for local history, genealogy and document transcription and Latin translation are also offered.