CONTACTPAGE

For a variety of reasons, but mainly due to my health, and as of the last 2 years,Covid-19, I can no longer spend the same amount of time as in the past on my research and updating this website, though I DO still explore our local history and continue to find new historic items of interest. e.g.from http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/ which now publishes items online. Twenty years ago much of my research was done at HALS in Hertford, which I would find impossible today, but thanks to Broadband most museums, and other archives and individuals can be accessed via the web.

It is still my intention to update existing pages on Chronicle website and to add new information, especially as because of changes in technology and the updates Homestead has made to the tools at my disposal, many of the older pages now look dwarfed in a small corner of the page! BUT, as many of you are probably already aware, since the start of the Pandemic, I have been specifically collecting information re how the pandemic has affected us all in Leverstock Green. Not only have I been collecting it for my collection of albums kept at home, I have also been saving the contents and sending each album as it fills, to HALS, who started a Covid Catalogue. This takes a surprisingly lot of additional time, in ensuring everything is included, and saved not just in Word documents, but also in pdf files, which is HALS programme of choice. I then have to fill in all the appropriate accession forms, save to a DVD and post to HALS.

That takes up virtually all of my time, BUT, I have already made a small start on updating this website, but with the large number of pages on my site, I could work at nothing else and still take a year or more to update everything. Alongside the website, I also maintain an archive of printed information. (Computer technology is constantly changing, but paper items in well-kept albums should last at least 200 years). I trawl our local paper for anything to do with Leverstock Green and its residents, and these get put in the Newspaper archive. All other items: Photographs, posters, copies of letters/emails I am sent concerning the village past and present, the LGVA Newsletters and anything else I consider relevant go into the rapidly growing number of display books (currently 80+), and all this will go to the Hemel Hempstead Local History & Museum Society eventually. At the current time the Covid Pandemic has led to a greater number of items which I am collecting, especially where it relates specifically to life in the village during the Pandemic. To date, I have accumulated over the past 2 years plus, more than twice what I would normally get in 3-4 years.

Other history related "responsibilities" include being the Archivist for Holy Trinity Church, Webmaster, Committee Member and Face Book Administrator of the Hemel Hempstead Local History & Museum Society. (HHLH&MS), so I have plenty to keep me busy.

If you have any information relating to Leverstock Green's history, and/or members of your family who lived here, including photographs, ephemera etc. please contact me so I can arrange a meeting and/or exchange email addresses so I can include your information in my archive of Leverstock Green's history, and if you agree, eventually add it to the website. Links to both my website and the HHLH&MS website can be found at the top of this page.

Thankyou, Barbara Chapman 04/04/2022

VERY IMPORTANT. For many months the contact forms I had installed here continued not to work correctly. That is, having typed in the "security" letters it simply moves on to another set rather than posting the message back to Homestead who would then post it on to me.

THE GOOD NEWS IS THAT ALL BEING WELL I HAVE NOW SOLVED THE PROBLEM

It turned out that emails were being forwarded to me BUT instead of landing in my Inbox, they went elsewhere. We (by that I meant the BT engineer and I) are not quite sure how, but in several cases the destination listed against each of my contacts was wrong, instead of reading INBOX. I have now been through ALL my contacts and ensured the destination reads Inbox for all of them, and I shall now send myself a message from here to double check it now works OK.

OK, IT DID WORK - BUT when it came to the I am not a Robot section, I had to have about 6 goes before it registered.

As the "word" I had to copy had different letters written sometimes in bold, and others were also italicised, I thaught that might be the problem as there was no way of formatting the letters in the box. So I tried writing it in a document, adjusting the formatting and then copying and pasting that version in. All it did was to change it to all caps and nothing else. Determined to at the very least send the message, I tried again, and again, until finally I used fingers from both hands to press on the SEND button. That time it worked without a hitch. Now the problem may have been my laptop, as sometimes it does seem to need a bit of an extra push! HOWEVER, PLEASE TRY A FEW TIMES, PRESSING HARD ON YOUR SPACE BAR AND IT SHOULD EVENTUALLY WORK. IF ALL ELSE FAILS - GO VIA ROY! (see below.) A few days later I received a message from someone I had not know before, and it came directly to my INBOX, so it looks as if all is now OK,

As we don't know how the destinations got changed, I cannot guarantee they will never do it again in the future. So if you still have problems, or they resurface in future, please contact our Secretary ROY WOOD, (roy.wood3@ntlworld.com) and ask him to let me know. At least now putting it right (again) should only take a few minutes once I have the time to go online and redirect the messages yet again. As of today (4 April 2022) it is working perfectly.

Many thanks

Barbara Chapman 10 &14/09/2021