Northern Writers Advisory Services

Despite Lockdown 3, NWAS is open for business. NWAS would still prefer that customers ordered edownloads where possible, but is very willing to supply printed copies.

NWAS is an not-for-profit micro-business which sells books by history societies not normally available in high street bookshops, many of which are of interest to family historians. History societies represented on NWAS's webpages include Altrincham History Society, Ashton [-on-Mersey] and Sale History Society and the Open University History Society. Each of these history societies publish journals, including interesting articles on local and family history. One history society, Altrincham History Society, publishes a number of interesting Occasional Papers on local subjects and local people each year. The latest, Occasional Paper 52, is about the 6th Earl of Stamford and Warrington (who lived at Dunham Massey Hall near Altrincham) and his family in the nineteenth century.

NWAS has published a series called 'Between the Bollin and the Mersey', which has transcribed wills and probate inventories, with added notes, from 5 townships in North-east Cheshire, 1600-1760 so far: Ashton-on-Mersey, Bowdon, Dunham Massey, Hale. The wills are produced township by township, at least 3 books per township (4 in the case of Hale). Each book not only contains the transcribed wills and inventories but also detailed background local history and analysis, plus notes on the people mentioned in the documents from other sources.

Now NWAS is publishing a 'Lives' series looking in detail at the lives of people in the towns and villages in the 'Between the Bollin and the Mersey' wills series, using other primary sources such as the Altrincham Court Leet records, the Dunham Massey Court Leet records in the Dunham Massey Papers at John Rylands Library. Published so far - Altrincham Lives Parts 1, 2, 3, 4; Dunham Massey Lives Part 1; Ashton and Sale Lives; Hale Lives; Timperley Lives Parts 1 and 2.