A POPULAR initiative to explain local and family history sources at a series of short lunchtime talks continues later this month.

The Northallerton and District Local History Society is holding the next one at 12.30pm on April 24, at the County Records Office in Malpas Road.

Christine Hallas will explain how to determine, from 19th-century landownership documents, whether named people were likely to have been yeoman or peasants.

Documents relating to tithes, enclosures, returns of owners of land, valuations, censuses and directories can indicate pecking order on the social scale at the time they were compiled.

Using Wensleydale and Swaledale as a case study, she will demonstrate the value of such sources for both the family and the local historian.

The documents, which stretch over most of the 19th into the early 20th centuries, allow the researcher to follow the fortunes of one family or the trend in a community for over 100 years.

There is a nominal admission charge of £2 per person to cover light refreshments, but it is advisable to book a place in advance by ringing John Sheehan on 01609-771878.