Wednesday, January 25, 2023

23 - 02 Steven Wallsgrove (1950 - 2021)

 

Steven was a self-publishing historical author living in Warwick, Warwickshire, England. Sadly he suddenly died in Warwick Hospital on the 19th October 2021 after chronic liver and kidney failure following a short undiagnosed illness. We had only worked together on publishing his books for 12 months. Over time we could have achieved so much more by publishing Steven’s written work he had researched and written over a lifetime.
 

Photograph



 
 
 
Biography

Born. Location and Date: Steven was born on 9th December 1950 in Warwick Hospital.

Parents occupations etc etc : His mother was Nancy Wallsgrove (nee Stowe) of 20 Avenue Road, Leamington Spa, daughter of George Stowe, owner of Stowe and Co the well-known builders and cabinet makers based just behind The Parade in Leamington Spa. His father was Edward (Ted) Wallsgrove of 56 Coventry Road, Warwick, whose own father had drowned in tragic circumstances when Ted was a small child. Nancy was an architect with her own practice in Warwick, and had worked for MI6 at Bletchley Park and Wilton House during and after the war. Ted was a sailor during and after the war, who circumnavigated the world clearing mines and closing down secret military bases in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, before working in accounts at the Ford foundry in Leamington. They met, due to a common passion for ballroom dancing, when they were both demobbed in 1947, and they married in 1950.

Siblings: Steven has one brother, Jon, who is a retired architect, formerly Head Architect at the Dept. for Transport, where he designed bridges and roads, and at the  Ministry of Justice and Home Office where he designed law courts and prisons, as well as looking after nearly 700 historic buildings on the Government Estate. He is also an author, writing books on bridge design, bridge conservation and the architecture of Law Courts (“The Architecture of Law Courts” ISBN 978-1-78222-702-1 published by Paragon Publishing, December 2019).

Education: Steven was a pupil at Oken School in Warwick, then studied for a degree in Town Planning at Nottingham University.

Early Career: Steven’s first job, whilst studying on a sandwich course, was at the Birmingham City Council Planning Department.

Later Career: After three years at Birmingham he returned to Warwick, to avoid the commuting, and joined the Warwick District Council Planning Department. He stayed there as a Planning Officer for the rest of his career, retiring after 40 years. He specialised in footpaths (he was the Council’s Footpath Officer) and in conservation of mediaeval buildings, where he was the go-to expert.

Involvement with Historical and Archaeological Societies: Steven was a member and often on the committee of all the local historical societies in Warwick, Kenilworth, Leamington and the surrounding villages. He was less involved in Leamington since as far as he was concerned historic buildings were before 1800, so Royal Leamington Spa, as a Regency model town of the 1830s was too modern to be of much interest to him.

Papers published: He was a regular contributor to the publications of the Vernacular Architecture Group. He also contributed many walks around the Midlands area for national books on country walks.

Other hobbies and interests: His other passion in life was rambling. He was on the national committee of the Ramblers Association for many years and was the Footpaths Secretary of the Ramblers Association for the Midlands for nearly 40 years. He led walks for most of his life, and would walk in the New Forest or along the Coast Path for his annual 2 week holiday. He combined his historic interests and his rambling by researching the history of every footpath in the Midlands, so as to make the legal claim for a right of way in perpetuity. In his last 20 years he managed to officially reinstate 385 missing footpaths in Warwickshire. Having achieved this legal precedent, he donated all his research to the Record Office in his will.







Steven’s relationship with DMB Publishing


Steven Wallsgrove and David Bannister (owner of DMB Publishing) first become friends in 2020 following David tracking Steven down as the author of “The Timber Framed Buildings of Kenilworth” (1994). In truth the friendship was only based upon four face to face meetings on his doorstep in Warwick, England. But it was a firmly established friendship dependant on many, often entertaining, email interactions. In these emails Steven challenged everything I wrote and he was never afraid, sometimes quite bluntly, to advised me where I was going wrong. In truth he was mostly right in his views and he became an exceptional mentor to my early steps in historical research particularly in respect of the Domesday Book I was writing. Although it has to be acknowledged that in terms of advancing his use of technology and making his historical content more commercially viable, meeting these objectives was impossible in Steven’s case. In many ways his very “old school” attitude was an eccentricity within Steven’s personality. It was what made working with him so much fun. I always looked to provoke him slightly and then looked forward to his predictable email response. He did like the use of exclamation marks in his textual responses. I have incorporated copies of some of his email responses within this post so you can appreciate his style of emailing. They still entertain me.
I only wish I had spent more time in his company but our brief friendship did straddle the period of Covid lock downs which constrained our meeting opportunities. We had always planned to visit the Warwickshire County Records Office (WCRO), Warwick together but sadly it never happened.
So how did we meet in the first place ?The story goes back to me buying a copy of “The Timber Framed Buildings of Kenilworth” from a second hand bookshop in Harborne, South Birmingham one Saturday afternoon in 2010. I had always had an interest in books, booklets and periodicals published in small editions by someone at home often referred to as self-publishing. I had published several small booklets this way.
Just side stepping a book that had a profound influence on me was “Publishing & Printing at Home” written by Roy Lewis and John Easson (1984) (ISBN 0715385100). Published by David & Charles, Newton Abbot. With the arrival of home computing the contents are now completely out of date but it represents an excellent historical perspective on the technologies that were available to the home publisher in 1984. The technologies I used when I started DMB Publishing in 1983.


Looking at Steven’s booklet triggered me into wanting immediate ownership. I think it cost 50p. Firstly my wife came from Kenilworth and I had first hand knowledge of the town. Secondly the book surprised me since I had never appreciated that so many timber framed buildings existed in Kenilworth. Thirdly Steven’s hand drawn illustrations of the shaped timbers for each of the buildings made it a unique historical record. Steven had worked with colleagues from the Kenilworth History and Archaeology Society to produce this booklet. Finally the one thing that made it stand out for me was Steven’s inclusion of a geographical map of a specific old part of Kenilworth showing all the locations of the houses. I am obsessed with maps and Steven’s hand drawn version with an index was perfect. By coincidence this centred on an area of Kenilworth, where in fact my wife had lived, recorded in the Domesday Book itself which I had been researching whilst writing my own book on the Domesday Book. You will soon realise the Domesday Book is a theme that runs throughout my relationship with Steven.
The booklet was purchased taken home, read and then placed on the bookshelf in my study along with the other book artefacts I have collected over many years. These were to form the basis of retirement publishing projects. Retired in June 2016 Steven’s booklet came onto my project schedule in 2020 after I had written some technical, project and management books. None of which were particularly successful which is an ongoing theme that runs throughout my publishing activities. But money made is never important to a true self publisher but the size of the readership is and oddly enough they are fundamentally linked.
In 2020 after 10 years of ownership the booklet by Steven Wallsgrove was spotted on my bookshelf and I decided to look at undertaking my project that was to be based upon his book. It was to create a new book using the drawings and the map in Steven’s book and his relevant text calling it the “Black and White Buildings of Kenilworth”. Importantly it would include an up to date photograph of how the building looked in 2020. But before starting this book I had been intrigued by the back outer cover of the booklet that included two further booklets written by Steven. These were “The Timber Framed Building of Hunningham” (1987) and “Kenilworth 1086-1756” (1991). Because I was writing my own book on the Domesday Book I searched the internet for the “Kenilworth 1086 – 1756” booklet and found a second hand copy which I purchased. I could not locate a copy of “The Timber Framed Buildings of Hunningham” on the internet.
When the “Kenilworth 1086 – 1756” arrived I was surprised that it was a book rather than a booklet which ran over 100 pages with it being a unique historically researched masterpiece. It coincided exactly with my research work on the Domesday Book with his first chapter being on the Domesday Book having the opening line “The first documentary reference to Kenilworth, as with other settlements, is the entry in the Domesday Book of 1086”. As always with Steven’s written work this statement was referenced to the primary source he had used. Steven was an outstanding diligent referencer with all his narrative having citations to the source documents he had used to support the narrative. For someone like me, from a technical background, familiar with Research Paper referencing to see this approach so thoroughly applied to an self-published historical work was a eureka moment. The other book “Timber Framed Buildings of Hunningham” was not available anywhere on the internet.
At this point I decided to look to publish the “Kenilworth 1086 – 1756” book first within a division of DMB Publishing called the Historical Books Division using a tagline of “Saving books for the future.” Because Steven had rightly copyrighted his books it was vital that I contacted Steven and obtained his authorisation to publish his books. So started a long search to find him. At this stage I was not sure whether he was still alive nor how he would feel about my publishing proposition. Weeks went by with me searching many Warwick or Kenilworth based data sources. Finally I found someone by the name of Steven Wallsgrove and a telephone number.
It was about 7.00 pm on the 11th November 2020 that I rang Steven and with some difficulty explained who I was and what I was looking to do with his books. It was obvious these particular books were in his distant past and he had moved onto to different subjects. He had no problem with me re-publishing them since he considered them dead commercially and authorised me to proceed. I obtained his email address during the call and sent him an email that evening whereupon the following day he sent me this response:-


“My reason for publishing this book, and my others (as well as the articles in Warwickshire History) is to put them in the public domain. In the present case, the remaining copies of my Kenilworth 1086-1756 are being sold by the County Record Office, at half price, while they are also selling the Timber-framed Buildings volume at a similar reduction. They have not been available in the shops for a long time as they were not interested after about a year! The CRO might just as well get what they can, to support their work! I have no objection, therefore, to it being made available on-line – subject to the usual acknowledgements. (In that context, you will need to change your introduction!) It would also be useful to mention their availability at the CRO (when they fully re-open!), while stocks last.
For your information, the last article I had published, in Warwickshire History, was on the origins of Warwick which did, of course, include an analysis of the Domesday Book entry and I have just been writing up my research into the medieval history of the Myton/Bridge End part of the town.”
Steven Wallsgrove
12/11/20
 
Importantly because a printer had made the original book I asked if he could advise me of the printer to see if they had stored a source file for the book. Evidently the printer no longer existed and Steven had made the fatal mistake of every home self - publisher by not asking for and storing an original source file from the printer. So I was left to start from scratch using the printed book. I never realised what a difficult task it would become to re-publish.
The first task was to guillotine off the bound edge to create single sheets suitable for digital scanning. Something no book enthusiast enjoys doing. Using my home essentially Microsoft and HP Scanner based software platform I tried to OCR (optical character read) the scanned images back to basic text. These would then be saved within a Word document from which I could generate the files required by Amazon to create a Kindle eBook and a Paperback. The text font in Steven’s book was so unusual none of my OCR capabilities would recognise it let alone convert it. This lead me to approach my local printer, Roy Felton at ASAP Printing, Redditch, who is a book publishing enthusiast. It was a complicated task for him and it had to become a paid for piece of work. Although to his credit seeing the nature of the project I was not charged commercial rates. He was a true Apple based publishing house with the latest equipment and he had a high skill set. His Apple kit digitally scanned and then OCR converted the text. The created file was full of OCR errors but now using Microsoft Word these were fixable but the process was time consuming. After a number of weeks Amazon prototypes were produced, corrected and reprocessed until the finished book was ready for publication. Steven was sent a free copy of the final product to review and sign off for publication. Talking to him what I had achieved seemed to him a non-event since my book was no different from his original published book. In fact to me this was a huge positive and the objective of any true digitiser. With this published and available to purchase on Amazon I went back to work on my own Domesday Book.
Before publishing my Domesday Book I asked Steven to review it and he responded:-


“I have had a quick flick through your book and found it very interesting as it gives a lot of background information and explanation to Domesday Book, which makes it more understandable to new readers.
The only comments I would make, from my own researches, is that the ‘hide’ appears to have been used as a geld assessment term from when the Dane Geld was being collected (say, 10th century) when it could well have been a true representation of the land in use at that time, which is why it can be very different from the number of ploughs in 1066. The term ‘land for x ploughs’ appears to mean the whole of the area available for ploughing on the estate/parish, while the actual number of ploughs represents the land actually in use at that time. This is based (in this area) on a plough representing about 100-120 acres. [I think that saying a plough represents 120 acres makes it sound too accurate.] For information, I picked up a copy of the Penguin edition on a charity stall in my local Sainsbury’s last year!”
Steven
26/11/20
With the Domesday Book completed and published I returned to working on Steven’s books. Firstly I produced a totally scanned version of “The Timber Framed Buildings of Kenilworth” which I made available on a free of charge basis by publishing it within Google Docs. In this format it could not be submitted or published by Amazon so I returned to the printer to put this on his work schedule to scan and OCR it into an Amazon publishable format.
In email contact with Steven he appeared to have the only copy of “The Timber Framed Buildings of Hunningham” which he agreed to loan me so I could publish it. Being such a small booklet I scanned it, cut out the images and re-typed all the text. It was then loaded on to Amazon and offered up for sale. Returning an Amazon printed copy to Steven on his doorstep we discussed any future projects on which we could work together. This then expanded into a string of emails.
Steven disclosed he had written many essays on a variety of local historical subjects. Many had been submitted to either History or Archaeological Associations or Societies for them to publish. A few had been published but the take up was very poor. A number of times I discussed by email with Steven that his writing style was very old school and lacked photographic representation. Essentially it did not create a commercial product for sale in this digital age. Steven was entertainingly blunt about sticking to his style and it was about meeting his needs and not those of others like his readers. Not what a publisher normally wants to hear from their author.
In contact with Steven by email I looked to establish his genre in terms of writing history books and essays. 

He responded:-


“Since my interest is, basically, how the town developed (and how adjoining places developed ), my articles , both long and short, are around that subject, with an emphasis on the medieval. I have written two (fairly short) articles on the town defences – the first was as part of a campaign to get one section of the Town Wall ‘listed’ – and I am now thinking about the remaining defences in order to complete the subject. I hope this will help to resolve what those defences consisted of at various times since there is conflicting information archaeologically. I have no idea what the next subject will be as I think I have run out of subjects!”
Steven
23/03/21
Steven had an exceptional depth of knowledge which I would describe as being out of the ordinary. So when I was confused about the term “a fig for a datestone” he had included in his narrative he responded:-


“A fig for a datestone” comes from the 5th chapter title in a book by David Ireland titled ‘This Old House’ published by Shire (no publication date, but after 1967)! – meaning, don’t believe a datestone (or plaque) as being the date of the building.”
 Steven 


It was agreed by email that Steven would sort through all his computer and computer disks to draw together a variety of these written essays. I asked him to look to build the selection around a common theme so it could form a book but I was ready to produce a compendium of his work if such a theme could not be determined. I asked him to store them on a USB stick and send them it me. He had not got a USB stick so I posted him one of mine. Steven was not interested in technology viewing it as a hindrance to what he really wanted to achieve. It was if Steven’s mind was locked in an historical past where all his thoughts and energy went into researching into the depths of this past normally at the Warwickshire County Records Office (WCRO) which was within 5 minutes walking distance from his home. He must have been a permanent fixture at this records office. I would imagine he was very popular (forgive the pun) as he continually asked for the extraction of original records for him to research. There was a plan, delayed by Covid, for us to visit the WCRO together and for him to show me how he undertook his research. With his sudden death sadly this never happened something I will always regret.
Whenever I tried to get Steven to do something technical I would get an entertaining response like this one here:-


“I will try to reply to your recent variety of emails! 1) I don’t have a kindle device, a tablet or a smart phone – just a very basic mobile that I don’t use! 2) When you say about a book on old maps (Roman, etc) – they don’t exist! From research I have done over the years I can say that there was a book on The Printed Maps of Warwickshire published back in the late 1960’s (I have forgotten the authors name) and a few on cartographers: e.g. A dictionary of Mapmakers (2 editions) (Tooley,1975); A Dictionary of Land Surveyors in Britain (Steer, 1967) ;British Maps and Map-Makers (Lynam, 1944); and Some Notable Surveyors and Map Makers (Fordham, 1929). 3) I presume the PRO book you are referring to is Maps and Plans in the Public Record Office, 1. British Isles c.1410-1860 (1967). 4) to produce a complete list of everything I have written, and which has been published, would take some time! I will think about it. 5) My level of computer literacy is low! – a little while ago you commented on my hand drawn maps and implied it would have been easier using a computer format. Although there is something like that on my laptop, I have no idea how to use it! – although I think you can draw straight lines with it. How you would produce a plan using an OS map as a base I have no idea!”
Steven
28/02/2021
To give an example of Steven’s email responses read the one below relating to the start of our working on a book we called “Warwick Historical Essays”:-


“Update: I have been checking the reference numbers for the photos and scanned plans already done (a couple still to find) and have also reworked a sketch map of the location of early deeds for the suburb below the castle. In addition, I have been tweaking some of my articles and am trying to work out how best to do some plans which I only have in sketch form but which are needed to illustrate some of the studies. I am also looking at a couple of plans to replace ones published with one of my articles to better illustrate the relationships between features. To do the new maps, however, I need to get some drawing ink since using a fine fibre tip does not always come out as clear as I would like. I may end up having to type up the text for the maps and then cut them up and stick them on the map before scanning them. I can only hope that works!”
Steven
08/04/21
So having sent him the USB Stick I waited for its return through the post. I was very excited to see what the content would be like and whether it could be edited into some sort of logical book format. I waited and waited whilst as infrequently as possible sending Steven an email prompt so as not to upset him since he was always on a new historical mission which was his priority. Steven had a mindset focussed on his current article being worked upon and this occupied his full attention. It is a common author trait to become immersed in a current piece of work and this particularly applies to historical writing where research is like undertaking detective work looking for evidence to support your own hypothesis. Once an article is finished its publication and distribution is an irrelevance since you have finished defining your own hypothesis. The only thing Steven liked and was prepared to expend energy on was if you were to challenge his hypothesis. In terms of the Domesday Book we had many differing opinions which we explored together both verbally and via email. Inevitably Steven was well able to evidence extensively against any of my opinions and I usually acceded to his superior knowledge.
The USB stick arrived and I could not wait to view the contents. They were unstructured essays but fortunately they were all focussed upon the history of Warwick. So we had a theme but no structure in the 24 essays. I decided the only way I could achieve some reader coherence was by projecting the essays over a map of Warwick. Warwick having a North, South, East and West gate immediately made this approach structured. Then the consideration as to whether the article related to a subject inside or outside of the town wall added a further structure. You could then move the reader through a set pathway (clockwise) where by the reader always had a context as to where they were in respect of a map of Warwick. This always supports any tourist visiting Warwick in that it segments the town such that one visit or multiple visits can be undertaken in the most efficient way.
Unfortunately the 24 essays on the USB stick were written with different versions of Microsoft Word and used different methods as a basis for referencing. So a huge time consuming effort went into essentially retyping whole sections of these essays particularly extracting out the references themselves. Unfortunately Steven had widely and comprehensively used a Microsoft Word capability called Endnotes. Because Amazon do not support Endnotes as an input into their book creation processes they all had to be stripped out of the text.
An early decision I made was to always retain all Steven’s referencing since to me it was one of the most significant aspects of Steven’s historical writing. But I must admit when typing up reference after reference I was always tempted to change my policy. With one article ChapelStreetPrioryRoadApr13 having 93 references this is a master class in thorough historical investigation. The hours Steven must have spent reading and researching all these references. One odd decision was to include Steven’s file names for these essays in the book itself essentially to show an audit trail back to Steven’s work on his computer disk. The inclusion of the date in the file name allowed you as a reader to see when he had completed each essay. Unfortunately for me as the publisher every reference had to be retyped so it removed Endnotes to create just plain text. This alone is a considerable piece of work.
The one thing I decided to do to the book was to include relevant photographs of the areas being discussed with some of these including Google Geotags allowing the reader to access Google Maps and their Street View capability to view in two dimensions the area being discussed. Steven did not approve of this type of commercial modernisation of historical material. As the publisher I believed it was necessary to meet the needs of a modern readership particularly those reading using an eBook Reader where these capabilities are integrated into the reading experience. The book was completed in a draft form and emailed to Steven for his approval. He did not return with many negative comments and signed it off with virtually no input. This was most unlike Steven where the banter between us was the basis of our relationship. I decided to pay him a visit with the excuse of returning the original copy of the “The Timber Framed Buildings of Hunningham.” to him.
So I visited Steven at home on his doorstep in Warwick on the 2th September 2021. For some reason he never invited me in although it was the time of Covid. He looked very unwell. He was a shadow of his former self. He had lost the usual sparkle of an historical enthusiast. I begged him to get a doctor’s appointment immediately. When I got home I emailed him several times insisting he got a doctor’s appointment. With hindsight I should have driven over and dragged him to a doctors. But it was Covid time and everything medically was proving more difficult. So my life moved on looking to get what we had called “Warwick Historical Essays” published on Amazon.
On the 2nd November 2021 I had an email from Steven’s brother, Jon Walsgrove, informing me Steven had died on Tuesday 19th October 2021. The email included an invite to his funeral on the the 19th November 2021. Unfortunately I was not well around the time of the funeral and although desperate to attend it would have put my health at risk to do so. Another one of my regrets not being able to attend his funeral and the opportunity to meet family and friends of Steven’s.
My world stopped in terms of historical publishing after Steven’s death. I had lost another dear friend, George Szubinski, in April 2020 with Covid which had stopped many of my other computer based creative activities and projects.
So from 2/11/21 to the 31/12/22 nothing in a publishing sense moved. My own creativity had hit rock bottom. Whilst still an avid reader of everything the writing aspect of my life stopped. A 12 month break in all writing and publishing.
Finally at the start of 2023 I decided I wanted to tie up the loose ends in respect of my work with Steven.To complete and publish the “Warwick Historic Essays” book on Amazon thereby competing what I had set out to achieve for Steven. This closing down phase included getting this blog completed as a memorial to Steven along with getting his photograph and biography on to Amazon. Importantly to ensure there is a legacy to show for Steven’s hard work.
In conclusion there is never any money to be made out of this type of self- publishing on such obscure and localised subjects. In fact you invest time and money with no return. But the satisfaction lies in the fact that you have done it. This is how Steven thought and in many ways we were both characters with similar creative traits. The need to produce something unique which may only be appreciated by the few but the appreciation will be deep and beyond what words can convey. It generates feelings and emotions that only those wanting to write can fully appreciate. Hopefully, partially by my contribution, the work undertaken by Steven in his life will be appreciated and acknowledged in the future. The objective is to look to get the historic institutions to take ownership of Steven’s work for posterity.
To finish and to give Steven the last words. I kept asking Steven for a biography so I could include it on Amazon. 

He responded in an email: -


“I can do a quick biography if that is necessary, but I don’t have a photo – or, rather, the only ones I have are from the 1970’s or 1980’s and, of course, are not digital.
In terms of a biography, I first became interested in local history through my mother, when I was very young, and did a project on The Growth of Warwick as part of the history course and exam at school. I took up the interest again in 1982 when I joined a university extra mural course on researching the history of Warwick and became a member of the Kenilworth History and Archaeology Society. I then researched the early history of Kenilworth and published ‘Kenilworth 1086- 1756’ followed by ‘The Timber-framed Buildings of Kenilworth’, having led members of the society in recording the timber-framed buildings of the town. At the same time I became a member of the Leamington Archaeology Group and, through them, did a salvage recording of the lost village of Myton and wrote up a report on it and recorded, and published, The Timber-framed Buildings of Hunningham. I have also had numerous articles published by the Kenilworth History and Archaeology Society in their annual publication ‘Kenilworth History’ and have written a number of articles for Warwickshire History, the most recent being on the Origins of Warwick.”
Steven
02/03/21
 

Accessing Steven Wallsgrove’s Booklets and Books published by DMB Publishing.





The Timber Framed Buildings of Kenilworth (1994)
This is available free by clicking on the link below.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Z_yEUap5muElUs0ZS4AfrcGnIFHgY60i/view?usp=sharing








 
Kenilworth 1086 - 1756 (1991)
Purchase from Amazon in Kindle eBook or Paperback Formats by clicking the link below.







 
The Timber Framed Buildings of Hunningham (1987)
Purchase from Amazon in Kindle eBook or Paperback Formats by clicking the link below.
 
Warwick Historical Essays
Not available. Work in progress. To be published in 2023 and made available on Amazon.
 
To give you some context to the relationship formed between Steven Wallsgrove and David Bannister the book that linked us together.







 
The Domesday Book by David Bannister
Purchase from Amazon in Kindle eBook or Paperback Formats by clicking the link below.

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