Recently the rather unprepossessing 17^th century will of John Smith (P1/S/644), gained the distinction of becoming the 1000^th will to be conserved as part of the Heritage Lottery funded Wiltshire Wills Project.

The Will of John Smith

This project is digitising, conserving and preserving the 100,000 plus wills and probate papers (an estimated half a million individual documents) held at the Wiltshire & Swindon History Centre. To find out more, please 'read more'.

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It is always hard to single out any particular collection as a favourite, but some are obviously outstanding due to the sheer scope and variety of their contents. One of the great treasures at Wiltshire and Swindon Archives is the archive of the Earls of Radnor, of Longford Castle, near Salisbury in Wiltshire. Part of the archive is an uncatalogued collection referenced 1946, which has recently been added to thanks to a very generous loan of archive material from the current Earl. This is the subject of a bid for funding to enable us to catalogue and make this fascinating archive more accessible to everyone.

This autograph letter of Elizabeth I forms part of the collection

The uncatalogued archives of the Earls of Radnor in collection 1946 supplement the earlier deposit 490 (see: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/a2a). The material in 490 contained mainly estate material, and 1946 also includes some manorial and other estate records which will be of enormous importance for local history and will benefit the continuing production of the Victoria County History of Wiltshire. Importantly, however, 1946 broadens the scope of 490, as it also contains a lot of unique material relating to the building, maintenance and governance of Longford Castle and its household, which will be of great interest to anyone researching either the house or its contents, including its famous art collection. The records also include family and personal material. However, the records do not just shed light on nobility but will also be of interest to family historians wanting to find out about ancestors who were involved with the Radnor family. The records include wage books and accounts for both household servants and agricultural labourers, dating back to the early 19th century. Please 'read more' to find out which other interesting documents can be found in the collection...

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Like many researchers, when I am browsing newspapers and other records I am often distracted by other interesting stories or snippets of information. When searching for articles online, there is less distraction as you are already narrowing your search terms to produce that eureka moment. But what online research does provide for, something that should be in every Local Historian’s toolkit, is what I call the art of serendipity, or more bluntly putting in a couple of keywords and see what happens, with surprising results! (You see, we have all done it).
 
The Titchborne Claimant

In the spirit of research on behalf of our faithful blog readers I thought I would search two online resources to which both Wiltshire Council and Swindon Borough Council subscribe on your behalf. These are the Times Digital Archive and Nineteenth Century Newspapers Online. These are available 24/7 to Wiltshire Libraries and Swindon Libraries members respectively, through the following links: http://www.wiltshire.gov.uk/leisureandculture/librarieshome/libraryonlineresources.htm. To find out which other Wiltshire stories were discovered, please 'read more'... 

http://www.swindon.gov.uk/leisuresport/libraries/24hourlibrary.htm

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With the longest day and the solstice celebrations at Avebury and Stonehenge our thoughts have turned to summer and summers past. In a rural county this was an important time with a succession of harvests that involved whole families for many weeks. In the 19^th century the school summer holiday was known as Harvest Holiday and was often adjusted if the grain harvest was early or late.

18th century representation of a Wiltshire shepherd

Children were often kept away from school to help in the fields, bring refreshments to their working parents or look after younger siblings. Women who apparently had no job according to census records would work long hours in the fields at such seasonal work. To find out more about how the season has made its mark on the Wiltshire landscape, please 'read more'...

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