It's not quite clear to me what you are seeking.
Is it the local history website of a specific location (or community)
which is so good that it can be held up as an example for others to
follow with regard to its style and format--at least as a starting
point?
Or are you looking for a website which is so informative and well laid
out that no-one researching a specific area (in compiling any local
history website) can possibly do without referring to it?
If the latter is the case, then I have to recommend Peter
Higginbotham's well established and regularly updated site on the workhouse which, while
having many pages on the history of the workhouse in general, also
includes what I should have thought was an indispensable gazetteer of
individual workhouses arranged by location.
Pete Cracknell's site on county
asylums and, dare I say it, my own on the Victorian Turkish bath,
are two further examples of this type of site. In each case a gazetteer
or directory lists known examples and individual pages deal with an
increasing proportion of individual places; almost every page is a
piece of local history which has to be researched using the documents
of the locality above all else.
It could be argued that such sites fall more obviously into the
category of social, rather than local history. But I think local
historians need to become more aware of them. My own site, for example,
lists over 600 Victorian Turkish baths in the British Isles and a
couple of hundred more in the old Empire and the USA. There are
separate articles on about one hundred of them and over 500
illustrations.
I mention all this, not to recommend my own site for inclusion in a
list of just six--even I could not do that with a clear conscience--but
because, although swimming pools are increasingly mentioned, you could
probably count the number of local history books or websites which
include anything about their own Turkish baths on the fingers of two
hands. (I should be delighted to be proved wrong about this!).
My point is that there must be many other similar sites of value to the
local historian which are relatively unknown. If this is not the type
of article you are writing, I look forward with equal pleasure to a
second article filling in the gap.
But I think your idea of increasing the coverage of local history on
the web is excellent, and long overdue.
Best wishes,
Malcolm
--
Malcolm Shifrin
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