Swan Hill Murder?, Alvington, (General)

by Jefff , West London, Middlesex, Friday, February 15, 2019, 15:37 (2107 days ago) @ Gary37

Hi Gary and a warm welcome to the forum,
this link is for the "official" online history of Alvington, but be warned as informative as it is this website can often be poorly edited so may take some serious reading to get all the info together coherently. I've done a quick wordsearch for "swan" etc however cannot find any obvious reference to your address.
https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/glos/vol5/pp5-14

I'm afraid don't have any real personal knowledge of the Alvington area.

Ref any murder etc, normally the best source of info would be the online old newspaper sites, however they only give coverage upto around 1960 at the latest, so probably won't help you. More recent issues of the Dean Forest Mercury are available to view using the microfiche viewer at Cinderford library, if you do visit I'd advise phoning them first to try and find a time and day when you'll have plenty of time, especially if you're unsure which year to be searching thro.
Cinderford Library contact details etc are here
https://www.gloucestershire.gov.uk/archives/starting-your-research/starting-to-research...

The full list of newspapers and where they're kept is here
https://www.gloucestershire.gov.uk/archives/finding-items-in-our-collections/newspapers/

In this respect, I wonder if you'd be wise to first write an open letter for printing in the editorial section of the local papers (not sure abt your area aka "Lydney" nowadays, in the past the Lydney Observer was a sister paper to the DF Mercury, which for some years now has been known as The Forester. Until recently The Forester was Cinderford based, but I believe it may now be at Lydney, which may suit you better ?.
http://www.theforester.co.uk/index.cfm?id=homeClick

Then again, I'd expect a murder to have been covered by the national papers, which are online at your local library I think. Perhaps not reported in great detail but this route may be easiest to get a date, to then help search the microfich records at Cinderford ?.

atb Jeff