A local history book based on the former residents of Ringstead has uncovered a host of fascinating facts and dark secrets, including a murderous ancestor of Margaret Thatcher herself.

When David Ball, a keen local historian, started to investigate his own family tree, it led him to the small village of Ringstead. The search for his own family, however, proved to be of less interest than the dirt he dug up on several other historic residents. David decided to bring together the ghosts of stories past in a printed collection entitled ‘Ringstead People,’ which was produced by Cambridge-based printers Victoire Press. David wanted to try to write the stories of ordinary people, not the landed gentry who usually fill up the pages of village histories. These people had little written about them except for Censuses from 1841, and the Parish Registers; he wanted to flesh out some of those fascinating lives for others to discover.

Thanks to the global reach of the internet, David was able to research ancestors of villagers from Manchester to Australia, and gave context to his findings through extensive historical research, often using Northamptonshire Record Office and Northampton Central Library. An early blog about the discoveries attracted contributions from all over the world, and David has continued to build on his research. Some of the tragic, thrilling and downright dangerous characters David uncovered include:

• The three boys caught in a storm who sheltered in a barn and lost their lives.
• The young man who kept a diary of his last years as he died of TB
• The families who found new lives after braving the perilous voyage across the Atlantic
• The young schoolmaster who started his career one snowy morning in January and quickly found his world unravelling so that he was forced to leave his post in May
• The ancestor of Margaret Thatcher who killed a fellow worker with a scythe in the harvest field
• The local butcher whose heavily pregnant mistress disappeared immediately after she was heard shouting at him that he meant to kill her

Determined to do justice to the unknown yet remarkable lives he was uncovering, David decided to compile the stories into a high quality volume to be published for the public to share. He had the stories professionally typeset and worked with Adrian Williams at Victoire Press to get the book brought to life. 50 copies of ‘Ringstead People’ were produced at first, as a perfect bound, high quality A4 paperback book to ensure images of maps and people were as visible as possible. Another 50 were printed shortly afterwards to meet demand. David has now
written and published ‘Ringstead People 2’ and is keen to encourage others to take up the hobby of researching local histories.

Both books are available at £18 each plus postage and packing of £4 from David Ball, 1 Fenton Road, Warboys, Cambridgeshire, PE28 2SD. E-mail This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Ringstead People