Because Archer is an occupational surname…like Fletcher, Butcher, Smith and so on, it should have arisen in many different areas of the country, in men who were not actually related to each other but had the same occupation. It’s a little surprising, therefore, that, in the 1881 Census, by far the biggest concentration of families of the name “Archer” resided in the woollen towns of the West Riding, with the second largest group in London and the south east. My Archer family can be traced back to Dewsbury Parish records from 1581 and my branch of the family comes from Chickenley and Earlsheaton (known as Soothill and pronounced “soootil”) and the…

A potted history of the village of Earlsheaton, my Hemingway ancestors' involvement in woollen blanket manufacture there and my own memories of growing up in the village in the mid-20th Century.