Item List (150)

William Bradford, the second (and arguably most famous) governor of the Plymouth Colony, was born in Austerfield and baptised in this small Norman-origins church in 1589. By the final decade of the nineteenth century, when interest in the Pilgrim…

Thursday 16th September 1920 was the date accepted as marking exactly three hundred years since the sailing of the Mayflower from Plymouth. Thus that date was chosen as the first day of the Mayflower Tercentenary celebrations in London. Earlier in…

Deep in the countryside of Buckinghamshire, in the small Quaker village of Jordans, the ‘Mayflower Barn’ has been claimed since the early 20th century to be made out of timbers from the original ship. James Rendel Harris, a notable if eccentric…

In 1970, as reported by the Harrow Observer, a series of special edition stamps and postmarks were produced for the Mayflower 350th anniversary commemoration. Specific localities, such as Scrooby, were highlighted for their connection to the…

In 1889, a huge Monument to the Forefathers was erected in Plymouth, Massachusetts, and interest in the Mayflower was hotting up on both sides of the Atlantic. Two years later in 1891 a delegation of American descendants and representatives made…

The Memorial Church of the Pilgrim Fathers was one home of the Congregationalists in London, and stood in Buckenham Square, New Kent Road in Southwark, from the 1860s to 1941. After the mid-19th century growth of interest in the Mayflower, the…

The riverside borough of Southwark in south London had a traditional link with the Pilgrim Fathers, who were said to have worshipped at one of the area’s first Protestant Separatist congregations before emigrating to Holland (thus the “Church of the…

Historical pageants, a form of largescale amateur historical re-enactment, had seen their heyday in the 1920s - some, such as Southampton's John Alden's Choice, had focused especially on the Mayflower. After the Second World War, with the rise of the…

Southampton’s most elaborate monument to the Mayflower voyage was erected in 1913. Standing on the Western Esplanade, chosen to be as near as possible to the point of departure, it consists of a Portland stone square column that rises fifty feet from…

Laurence Washington, who died in Maldon, Essex in 1652, was the great-great grandfather of George Washington. In 1924, Malden, Massachusetts was celebrating its 275th anniversary. Isaac Lothian Seymour, vicar of Maldon back in the ‘Old World’, was…