Alf Jenkins was born on Titterstone Clee Hills, South Shropshire, England in the 1930s. His home was Dhu Stone Inn, situated near and built for miners, railway workers and stone quarry men.

His father was an undertaker, wheelwright, smallholder and publican. The area was a remote hive of industry with its own brand of farming and unique dialect.

At the age of eleven Alf travelled ‘the great distance of five miles each day to the city of Ludlow and its Grammar School’. Army life, teacher training and work in Birmingham followed before he returned to Ludlow to teach in the 1960s.

Those interim years saw Clee Hill dialect diluted, two stone quarries close and the Dhu Stone incline railway become obsolete. There was a population influx and considerable commuting to work. The Clee Hill life changed beyond all “recognition giving some urgency for his first book” Titterstone Clee Hill, Everyday Life, Industrial History and Dialect”, to be published. To date it has had five reprints..

After a very successful teaching career and a third Headship deafness forced a change of direction. Alf and his wife Ann established Combi-Crafts producing Nativity sets and a wide variety of wooden gifts. This business continues but it created time for further research of Alf’s passion, the industrial and social history of The Welsh Marches, in particular the localities of North Herefordshire and South Shropshire Hills.

Alf’s books, video and DVD have become best sellers resulting in him being sought after by radio and TV including Open Country, Country File, Midlands Today, Inside Out, Breakfast TV, Five Live with Simon Mayo and local radio stations. He was also one of the thousand voices recorded throughout Britain for the Nations Voices Project and one of the fifty selected to see the culmination and collation of it at London’s TV Studios.

Organisations from Women Institutes, Historical Societies and Universities request his lectures on industrial, social history, dialect and conducted tours around the Titterstone Clee Hills.