A phrase that is often used as is ‘you can never go back’. Well recently I have been putting this to the test whilst working on a new book. It’s a in ‘Then and Now’ photographic series and so I’ve been out taking photographs of Trowbridge from the same viewpoint as those taken 60 to 120 years ago. I was born in the town but haven’t lived there for 20 years and I’m seeing the town as it is now, as I remember it in the 1950s and ‘60s, and as it was in the early 20^th century.

 
None of the buildings in this picture from the 1880s of Stallard Street and the Town Bridge in Trowbridge are standing today. Although Bridge House on the right is still standing the bays in the picture are not as they were destroyed by a bomb in the Second World War.

We all realise that the pace of change has been far greater over the last few decades than ever before but it’s been very clear to me that the town I knew in the 1960s was quite close to how it was in 1900 and very distant from how it looks and feels today. The way of life, relationships, and human knowledge has changed so much that we regard the communities in which we live very differently to the way people only a generation or two ago did.

Some of the recent physical changes apply to many small to medium sized towns. The identical shopping malls, the out of town stores, the pedestrianised areas, the extensive car parks, and the heavy traffic. Old buildings will have been demolished in the 1960s and ‘70s, following on from pre-war slum clearance and the replacements probably look far more out of date than the original would.

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 Just recently I looked at a tiny house in the south of Wiltshire. Ansty has a population of about 125 but the head count is greatly expanded every May Day when Ansty holds its very popular celebration around the medieval duck pond, and near the Hospice or Commandery – a venerable 16^th century building on land once belonging to the Knights Hospitallers.

A rather more humble building is tucked away on the main street, almost hidden by trees and vegetation that has overgrown it. Nature very readily begins to reclaim its materials if we fail to keep it at bay! This tiny cottage dating to c1700 originally consisted of two small rooms – a living room/kitchen entered directly from the front door, and an unheated store. In 1768 it was leased to a carpenter named James Plowman, aged 55. Initials ‘IP’ found scratched on the soft Tisbury Greensand at the rear could have been those of James Plowman, as an ‘I’ could stand for a ‘J’ then.

 
The cottage

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In November 2011, BBC TV will be broadcasting a series of four programmes based at Avebury Manor, a National Trust property in North Wiltshire set within the renowned, prehistoric stone circle of Avebury. The purpose of the collaboration between the National Trust and the BBC has been to restore parts of the interior of the Manor; features will include a Victorian kitchen, together with a kitchen garden of the same period. 

Avebury Manor
Ref: P45015

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The Archives Conservation team recently held a number of workshops for museum curators and volunteers on the care of paper and archive collections.

This was very much untried territory for the team, Paul Smith and Mervyn Grist, but was in response to requests for assistance from museums around the county. Three days (one in September and two in October) were arranged and numbers limited to six delegates per session. The programme for the sessions was devised by Paul Smith, Senior Archives Conservator. Staff and volunteers from Wiltshire Heritage Museum, Devizes, Dewey, Cricklade, Athelstan, Mere and Salisbury Art Collections attended.

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As an archivist I am well used to helping people trace their family back into the past. The further back the better satisfied people usually are! I shall never forget the customer who told me they had been able to trace their ancestry back to the Stone Age. They believed that their surname sounded like the kind of noise a prehistoric person would make when banging two rocks together (No, I’m not making this up – I only wish I were!) The mind boggles at how they would go about tracing a family tree for a time when no records exist, but never mind…

However, what I get asked to do on occasion, less frequently, is to help someone come forward in time rather than going backwards. This type of research is what you might call a ‘missing person enquiry’. This type of enquiry is quite challenging and potentially sensitive. If you are trying to find information about a missing person you might like to look at: http://www.look4them.org.uk/ This website is a collaboration between various official organisations who are experienced in helping find missing persons. However as this is a very broad topic, I’ve decided to focus on one type of enquiry in particular, namely research into the childhood of children who were formerly in a children’s home or fostered. This is because recently I’ve been helping a couple of people find out more about their childhood, and it has made me appreciate how important our archives can be. They really can be life-changing! People can find missing pieces of a jigsaw puzzle put into place – things which happened when they were very young, and not fully aware of what was happening, start to become clear in adulthood after consulting the records. This can help bring peace of mind after years of confusion. Obviously not all the answers people find will be comforting – there are many instances of painful facts, such as evidence of childhood habits such as bed-wetting, which people need to be prepared for. But overall some may feel the benefits of knowing more about their past can outweigh the difficulties.

Extract from the minutes of a meeting of the Trowbridge Children's Home Committe, 1945

If you were formerly in the care of a local authority there may be material about you in the county record office for the place where you were living at the time of being in care, but the first thing to do is to contact the modern children’s services for that Council. There may be an individual children’s case file still with the relevant department. Again, Data Protection may apply, or other legislation. See: http://www.wiltshire.gov.uk/council/dataprotectionandfoi/dataprotection/dataprotectionfaqs.htm

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