Brigg Heritage Centre, in the town centre's Angel complex, is looking to mount an interesting exhibition.
Pat Horton, from the centre, is currently appealing for old photographs and information.
Pat asks:whether your family has connections with the rabbit (coney) trade in Brigg "which we believe went on until at least the 1860s."
The breeding of rabbits in the warrens around the area is also of interest to the centre.
Pat adds: "This is to be our next exhibition. If you have anything which you think might be of interest to us, we shall be really pleased to hear from you."
Few Brigg folk will need to be told that Coney Court, accessed through an archway of the Market Place, is reputed to have been the centre of this trade for many centuries.
The fur was used for making hats, although we think Brigg was only involved in supplying the raw materials to specialist companies working elsewhere in the UK.
Luton was a major centre, the town's football team being known as The Hatters. The phrase Mad as a Hatter is connected with the hat-making trade. They used mercury in the process and working with this toxic element over many years seriously affected the brain function of a good many people. A sad fact.
If you have information of use to Pat, please pop into the Heritage Centre.
Coney Court today has a chip shop and Brigg Servicemen's Club but there is a plan to develop shops on the piece of land to the right of the people seen below in a picture we took a couple of years ago.
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2 comments:
A few additions, Nige.....re Mad as a Hatter...during the process of making felt....ie compacted rabbit fur.....urine was found to be a useful natural chemical.....One of the major coastal exports from Hull was vast tanks of human urine.....it was at the time regarded as top quality....and despatched to felt and dyeing centres about England.
At the time, sexually transmitted diseases were rife....and the common treatment was a direct injection into the naughty bits as a 'cure'.
When the, hatters washed the felt in urine, mercury was ever present.....and presumably accidentally consumed during the felting/dyeing processes......and, in time, the toxic metal attacked the brain.....
Similarly, the match girl makers in the 19th C often suffered from jaw rot caused by sulphur destroying the tissue and bones around the face...
......and for some more boring bits....birth control chemicals finding their way into the sewers and out to sea...are changing the gender of some fish...boy fish become girlies....
And remember Finding Nemo? Nemo was based on a real-life clown fish....and if Nemo was a real fish, his mum was his dad!
Clown fish have very few females and when one of these ladies dies, or is eaten by a passing shark, one of the lad changed into a women and lays eggies..
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