We get a great many visitors passing through our doors, honing in on those invaluable parish registers, wills, non-conformist records etc. Some venture further, taking a look at what else the History Centre has to offer, but for many, little do they realise that they are missing out on some essential information – the contextual evidence that brings life to those ancestors they are searching so long and hard to find.

The Wiltshire Local Studies Collection is a unique resource available at the History Centre which can do just that. I have searched the shelves to give you just a taste of what is on offer if you have a little extra time to look whilst you are here. If not, many of our books are available to loan via your local library, all you need to do is put in a request.

Memoirs

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In his book ‘Snapshots of Welsh History without the boring bits’ and on his BBC Wales Blog, Phil Carradice writes about Cardiff entrepreneur, Solomon Andrews. He was a self made man who was, Phil writes, ‘Born in Trowbridge, Wiltshire in 1835, Solomon Andrews came to Cardiff equipped with just a wooden tray to sling around his neck and a stack of trinkets and sweets to sell in the street’. By 1856 he was able to lease a shop and began a bakery and confectionery business.

Longfield Trowbridge, early 20th century

Having been born in Trowbridge myself I was naturally interested in the early life of this fellow Trowbridgean. I found him on the 1841 census living in Mortimer Street, in a house built for workers in the local cloth factory in the 1820s. His mother, Charlotte, was a woollen weaver and he had 5 brothers and sisters aged between 1 and 13 years. A look in the Parish registers for the Church of St. James showed that four of the children – James ( 6yrs 7m), Caroline (4yrs 3m), Jacob (2 yrs 3m) and Solomon (3 months) were all baptised on 5 June 1835. This could well indicate that they were non-conformists which the majority of people were at that time (I later found they were Methodists), and had decided to have all their children baptised after the birth of Solomon. The parents were listed as John and Charlotte Andrews; John was a hemp and flax dresser. This was a slightly unusual occupation in Trowbridge at this time as much of the industry was the production of woollen cloth.

Had father John died recently or was he somewhere else? Solomon was in Cardiff in 1851 so had the whole family moved there by 1851? The 1851 census throws up more questions. The family, with father John, but without the 16 yr old Solomon are living in King Street, Carmarthen, and John has changed his trade and become a confectioner with his two eldest sons helping in the business. I could find no trace of Solomon on the 1851 census for England or Wales, but as he set up as a baker and confectioner 5 years later it is interesting that his father and brothers had taken that occupation. On the 1851 census John Andrews is said to have been born in Malmesbury (Malmesbury Abbey parish register states that a John Andrews, son of Thomas & Elizabeth, was baptised 24 May 1807, which would be the right age for our John), while his wife Charlotte was born in Stroud. Where was John in 1841?

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Later last year I had the good fortune to look at a tiny tumbledown cottage of c1815 at Cloatley End, Hankerton. You might wonder why I considered this a treat, as the front wall had fallen down after several years of being abandoned, and the roof had collapsed over it, necessitating a very cautious crawl into the interior with a hard hat on to see anything of the inside. The answer is simple: The occupants of this house were so poor that very little was ever done to improve it, with the consequence that it was rich in original detail, despite its dilapidation. The present owner hopes to restore it, and put back as much of the original fabric as possible – no mean feat since the bricks of the front wall, which are hand-made odd-shaped wasters from the then local kiln up the road, now lie scattered about the site. These bricks were used to line the inside of thin rubblestone skin, much like builders do today, except the brick has been exchanged for concrete block.
 

View of the cottage

Entrance was directly into a small, unheated room containing the planked stair to the upper floor, now no more.  The inner room still had its plain hearth, the surround now gone, and old plaster lined the walls. The original floor, partition wall and roof timbers were still there, rough-hewn out of the round.

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Readers of my earlier blogs will know I am often guided by those twin pillars of research: serendipity and curiosity. It was these two trusty old friends that led me Henry Charles “inky” Stephens (1841 – 1918). While tidying my desk as part of my New Year resolution I was left with just a few paper clips and two rulers on the work surface, which reminded me of a patent I had spotted in our indexes for “the parallel ruler” (yes, sadly someone had invented this before me).  The patent seems to enable …er…two parallel lines to be drawn, more seriously it was used by navigators to draw parallel lines on charts and originally invented by Fabrizio Mordente in 1584 and others sought to improve it. But there was more, with the documents were further patents for inkstands and an adjustable pencil, plus specifications for various ink manufacture and the chemistry behind them. Of course, what I had started to look at was part of an archive relating to the Cholderton estate, once owned by the family and an individual whose single small invention arguably helped change the course of writing.

Patent for an adjustible pencil point, designed by Henry Stephens, 1852
Ref: 1340/76

It was actually “Inky’s” father, Dr Henry Stephens of Redbourne, Hertfordshire, who in 1832  invented the  famous 'Blue-Black Writing Fluid', or Stephens writing ink as it became known,  a "carbonaceous black writing fluid, which will accomplish the so long-desired and apparently hopeless task of rendering the manuscript as durable and as indelible as the printed record". It is the forerunner of the waterproof inks we use today and literally at a stroke became the Archivist’s friend, ensuring better survival of some of our precious written heritage (though for obvious reasons we don’t recommend its use by our researchers, please stick with pencils!). The government made it the mandatory ink for legal documents and ships' log books, and saved businesses and organisations time and money, where much time previously had been spent mixing inks and cleaning nibs. His son, Henry Charles, took the process forward, ultimately building a factory and research laboratory in Finchley, creating new processes and manufacturing ink and wood stains on a large scale. “Inky” was also an MP for Hornsey (1887-1900), a chemist and a philanthropist, with an interest in subjects such as public health and agriculture. He purchased the Cholderton estate in the late nineteenth century and its archive shows the range of interests he had, which included setting up the first and only private water company in England, the Cholderton and District Water Company in 1904. On his death his house in Finchley was left for the use of the public and is now a museum.

“But about other Wiltshire inventors?” I hear you say. A perfect companion for “inky” Stephens would surely have been Sir Isaac Pitman (1813-1897), born in Trowbridge and inventor of stenographic sound-hand or, as we know it, Pitman shorthand. But our greatest Victorian inventor surely was William Henry Fox Talbot (1800 – 1877) who’s inventions and innovations in photography, including the first negative process, are world famous. He was also interested in other sciences and his work included patents for “gilding and silvering” metals and “obtaining motive power, and improvements in atmospheric engines.”

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