The newsletter of Wiltshire and Swindon Archives
Number 18: Spring 2008

News
Welcome from Terry Bracher, Archives and Local Studies Manager
Archive database
Recent accessions

News

This is the first newsletter since we moved to the Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre in Chippenham, together with our colleagues in Local Studies, Archaeology, Museums and Conservation, and also with Victoria County History and Wiltshire Buildings Record. As a result our service is now known as Wiltshire and Swindon Archives.

The move of the archives, which started as we closed the office in Trowbridge at the end of April 2007, was completed, on time, by mid July. The removal of the entire archive, comprising 28,000 boxes, 3000 maps and plans and several thousand volumes, required 91 journeys by removal lorry between Trowbridge and Chippenham. The archives have been placed in order on the shelves of the four strong rooms although some inevitable fine-tuning was necessary to ensure they were readily available when the Centre opened on 31 October. The Local Studies Library moved in mid September.

For the staff it was a busy, if strange time. The Open Day held on Saturday 13 October proved a great success with 732 people visiting the History Centre. Many spoke very favourably about the building and were excited by the prospect of returning to their family and local history researches in a now fully integrated Archive and Local Studies service.

Since opening for normal service on 31 October daily visits have averaged between 30 and 40, and comments have been generally very favourable. By the end of January the number of visitors, including those on group tours, had reached 5,550. Several changes have been made to improve the service and bring it in line with practice in other archive services. Self service copying of film and fiche (principally parish registers, census and newspapers) has been introduced. A daily charge of £5 is now payable for the use of cameras (or £50 for one year), and original newspaper files are not produced where a film copy is available.

Welcome from Terry Bracher, Archives and Local Studies Manager

First may I start by thanking all of our customers for the warm welcome I have received since I took up my post in August.  As an Essex man, via Shropshire and Northamptonshire, I am delighted to find myself in, perhaps, my ancestral county (the surname Bracher appears to originate from the area around the Wiltshire - Dorset border!).

It has been wonderful for the service to welcome thousands of old friends and new customers since we opened our doors on October 31st.  Members of Staff appreciate the many positive comments we received about the new History Centre.  I am especially pleased that we have kept the friendly atmosphere that was clearly evident in the old Record Office and Wiltshire Studies Library in Trowbridge, while bringing these two services closer together.  However, we are always keen to learn and improve our service, so do please keep your comments coming and be assured that they really do help us to plan a service for the future.

Our next task is to seek re-accreditation from The National Archives in April 2008.  Some of you will know that the old Record Office was de-registered in the late 1990’s and this was one of the key factors in developing a new centre that now meets British Standards for Archives.  Beyond this, we will be focussing on our outreach activities. We hope to use our new building and unique collections to inspire in future generations a love of our local heritage, through the development of an education service; while we also want to reach individuals and diverse communities throughout Wiltshire and Swindon who have not come into contact with our service before, through innovative partnerships and projects.  This also means developing our collections in a way that reflects the changing landscape, economy and communities of our county; and we continue to welcome gifts and loans of archives from all kinds of organisations, large and small, families and individuals.  Look out also for future developments in digital access through improvements in our website and digital content, building upon our popular Wiltshire Wills Project.

Finally, it is important to us that we continue to support you, our customers, individual researchers, local and family history groups, in your continuing research, which ensures that the knowledge of our rich and diverse heritage, increases and continues to thrive. This is your History Centre and it is our staff and my privilege to ensure you always have an enjoyable and worthwhile visit to the Wiltshire & Swindon History Centre.

Archive database

During the move there was much work to be done in dealing with enquiries by email and telephone, overseeing the orderly arrangement of the archives in their new home, and, for the archivists, the major on-going work of converting the catalogues to a digital database.

This work is enabling some minor revisions and improvements of the catalogues produced in the early days of the Record Office. A good example of this is the list of the parish Poor Law records inherited by North Bradley parish council. Among several items previously not described is an undated and anonymous letter wishing to draw the attention of the overseers to the behaviour of J Cable junior, a recipient of poor relief who ‘went home Late at night after he had been to your Paye table so drunk that he did Rail from one side of the road to the other’.  He had ‘bought to Large joints of beef’ from Mr Steeds, a Trowbridge butcher, and he had also purchased ‘several new silck hats and a fine watch’. Moreover, Cable employed several weavers and thus earned a living from their labours. Towards the end of the letter the writer expresses the hope ‘that som of his Pride must com down’. Once again archives reveal the realities and frailties of the human condition, which remain unchanging through the ages. (533/50)

Recent accessions

During the closure it was very much a case of business as usual behind the scenes with several new accessions of interesting and important material. Relocating to Chippenham has prompted the deposit of several groups of local archives, largely due to the support of Mike Stone, heritage officer of the local museum. The most significant came from a firm of local solicitors, which had transferred 15 boxes of material in 1957. The recent haul was twice as much as this and contains much of great interest relating to the Chippenham area (3608). Of note are three court books for Corsham Rectory manor which fill gaps in a series of which several are in the parish records; to make a sequence from 1674-1925, with a gap of just 24 years at the end of the 18th century (3608 boxes 5-6). A valuation of the manor of Hullavington made in 1824 is most welcome as it considerably enhances the informational value of a map of the manor already held by the Service (3608 box 13).

The arrival of the 1837 marriage register of Hannington, which was deposited on the Open Day, means that Upton Scudamore is the only Wiltshire parish still using a register dating from the beginning of civil registration.

Despite the move north from Trowbridge we have maintained our strong links with the south of the county, from where two major depositors have added to their already extensive holdings. A small collection of deeds relating to the Maudlin charity, Wilton, came from Wilton House in its original wooden box (ref 2057/C1/1). The earliest,  of about 1170, relates to a mill in Wilton granted by the abbess of Wilton to Isemberd, the son of Ives. The rent was waived for the first two years as the building needed repair following a fire. According to Wilts VCH, the Isemberd family became the main mill owners in Wilton. There are later leases of houses and land belonging to the charity to 1832. 

From Longford Castle, home of the earl of Radnor, we have received an important series of estate maps that are a most useful source for several parishes in the extreme south-east of the county. Two maps of the borough of Downton record the burgage properties. They were probably produced as a result of the series of disputed elections between 1775 and 1790, due to a division of influence over the borough between the Duncombe and Shafto and the Radnor (Pleydell-Bouverie) families. They also mark an important point in the career of the surveyor Francis Webb, who described himself in the cartouche of the 1784 map as being of Stow, Gloucestershire, but had moved to the Close, Salisbury, by the following year; possibly to be nearer to his new client. He remained there for the next twenty years, according to trade directories. He produced fine maps of Homington and Odstock in 1787, for which books of reference, stating the names of tenants and properties, are also held in the Radnor archive. (1946/H86, H87 and box 32). The series also includes two maps showing the elaborate schemes to create water meadows along the banks of the river Avon in Downton at New Court farm in 1712 and Witherington farm in 1783 (1946/H/88, 77). Among family papers that came from the muniment room in Longford Castle are letters, 1806-1812, to Lord Radnor from the Sir William Young, governor of Tobago, West Indies. With these are a series of miniature views painted by him in 1813 of the governor’s residence, one of which shows the spot for his grave (he died there in 1815). One card contains statistics of the population and export of sugar and rum from the island. Two editions of The Tobago Gazette, 1809 and 1810 give a flavour of colonial life during the Napoleonic wars; notices of slaves and recently imported ‘British Goods’ for sale, and the names of about 80 individuals whose mail will be returned to England if not collected within 3 months, are published, together with news from the London Papers. (1946/MR/Box 53/5)

Continuing with the Caribbean connection, we received a group of deeds of plantations in Jamaica that belonged to the Watson Taylor family of Erlestoke (Ref 3605).  One deed, dated 1834, lists the names of over 2,200 slaves. It will be a most useful source for family and social history far beyond Wiltshire and Swindon.

One of the most important individual items acquired for some time is a survey of the manor of Maiden Bradley made in 1634, that was purchased at auction with assistance of the V&A purchase fund (Ref 3656). The manor belonged to the Seymour family, Dukes of Somerset, whose archive is held in the History Centre. This item fills a gap in the history of the parish which was the centre of the family’s estates in Wiltshire. It describes the estates of over 200 leaseholders and copyholders, making it a rich source of both genealogical and local history research. The topography of the village is revealed by properties in High Street, Church Street, and East Street. Three properties in Church Street are described as burgage tenements, suggesting vestiges of a borough. Stony Street occurs several times, a name which might be an indication of shrinkage of the village or a separate hamlet. Possibly it is evidence of a much earlier linear feature. Maiden Bradley was predominantly a rural parish, as it remains today, and through this detailed survey the patchwork of small holdings of land in both enclosed and open fields can be reconstructed. These are just some of the interesting questions raised by the survey, on which closer examination may shed light.

Last but not least, we have successfully filled a gap in an important run of patient case books from the Old Manor Asylum at Fisherton Anger (J7/190/1). Our series, which came as part of the hospital’s archive, began in 1849, with volume 2. The earlier volume was removed from the archive, many years ago judging from its clean and excellent condition. It dates from 1845 and includes details of about 200 individuals admitted between 1845 and 1849, with notes on five patients admitted between 1823 and 1839. The majority of these were paupers and criminals; the County Asylum at Roundway did not open until 1850, and the asylum for the criminally insane at Broadmoor until 1863. The volume is also useful in completing case notes that ran on into the second volume, something which emphasises the interlocking nature of the series, each book being more a jigsaw piece than a discrete item.

Contributors: Terry Bracher, Steve Hobbs, and Claire Skinner