Blog entries

100th Wiltshire Will Conserved!

Blog Administrator — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0100

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

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 toRead More...

Local History and the art of serendipity

Blog Administrator — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 10:00:15 +0100

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 bluRead More...

Summer Reflections

Blog Administrator — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 13:06:51 +0100

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 19th century the school summer holiday was known as Harvest Holiday and was often adjusted if the grain harvest was early or late.

The Festival of British Archaeology is a nationwide, annual event that aims to promote archaeology. It has been running for twenty years, and has evolved from a single day to two whole weeks. As in previous years the Wiltshire Archaeology Service are actively involved and this year we will be doing not one but two exciting days out. Both events are free!

A few weeks ago I visited this small village with Dr Alex Craven, who is researching it for the latest volume of the Victoria County History. I was invited along in my capacity of building archaeologist. The village is found just off the A30 Shaftesbury to Salisbury road. Blink and you miss it. It was obviously once a much more bustling community; Alex found that instead of one long village street with a couple of lanes off, there were once paralRead More...

Campaign! Make an Impact

Blog Administrator — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 08:00:10 +0100

“Hoodies can be Goodies”, “Think Twice, Think Positive”, “Take off your cover”, were just some of the campaign slogans created by Swindon students developing their own campaigns having been inspired by the example of the Suffragettes, Anti-slavery campaign or the campaign to improve Public Health.

At work on the project From June to December this year at museums across Wiltshire you will be able to see a photographic display of some of the county’s marvellous museum objects.

Thanks to a grant from Renaissance South West the Wiltshire Council Museums Advisory Service has been able to work with photography students from New College, Swindon to photograph collections at nine museums across the county. PleaRead More...

Wiltshire Footballers Playing for England?.... Well I Never!

Blog Administrator — Fri, 21 May 2010 11:38:13 +0100

The World Cup in South Africa is almost upon us and I’m sure all you avid England supporters are already debating which players should be picked for the squad. As Wiltshire is not well known as a county that ‘sports’ England players; it may surprise you to know that we have produced a few over the years…

Hello, my name is Robert Pearson, and I am an archivist and help desk assistant here at the History Centre. As part of an enquiry I had been asked to find a sergeant in the ‘A’ or Chippenham Troop of the Wiltshire Yeomanry (the cavalry equivalent of the Territorial Army) in c.1882.

We have quite a good collection of muster rolls of the regiment for that period, although there is a gap after 1877. On examining the nextRead More...

Saving the Skull

Blog Administrator — Fri, 07 May 2010 08:29:43 +0100

Wax visible inside the skull before treatment

Background

The 2009-2010 project to conserve 300 items for the new display at the Roman Baths Museum iRead More...

'An Election's A Fair'... stories of bribery, corruprion and intrigue in Wiltshire's electoral past

Blog Administrator — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 08:46:09 +0100

Bribery, corruption, intrigue, rotten boroughs and riots …oh dear, that will be Wiltshire’s parliamentary elections in eighteenth and nineteenth century! Present events always give us an opportunity to take the long-view and here at the History Centre we have a range of resources on the political history of the county and borough, from excellent accounts published in the Victoria County History for Wiltshire to election squibs, poll Read More...

Worth a 1,000 Words? Can You Identify Our Pictures?

Blog Administrator — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 14:48:39 +0100

An American journalist once said that a picture is worth a thousand words; very true but only if you know what the picture is showing you. Here at the History Centre we have tens of thousands of photographs, most we can identify but a few are a mystery. Some are really good photographs but their historic value would be much greater if we could identify the places and people.

As you may know, Wiltshire is one of the richest counties for archaeological monuments. There are over 2,000 monuments in the county which are scheduled, or considered to be of national importance. As part of our work the Archaeology Service of Wiltshire Council works in partnership with English Heritage to implement a monument management programme. Every year we target a small number of scheduleRead More...

Victorian School Life: Some Things Never Change!

Blog Administrator — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 23:00:00 +0100

Following on from our glimpse into Victorian school life, school today seems so different to the experience of Victorian pupils. Computers, interactive white boards and televisions would certainly seem as foreign to those children as slates and dipping pens would to today’s students. However, a recent trawl through the delightful school log book collection for extracts to show teachers also found some things in common. All the teacherRead More...

A hunting lodge for King John?

Blog Administrator — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 14:40:24 +0100

This week I was asked to look at King John’s hunting lodge in Lacock. As might be expected from its position next to St Cyriac’s Church this rather unprepossessing building, now a tea-room, was likely to be a building of some importance. Documentary research so far has been unsuccessful in establishing the early history, so it is not known for certain whether King John enjoyed forays into the forest of Melksham from this spot. Lacock Read More...

Has www.wiltshiretreasures.org become one of your bookmarked treasures yet?

Blog Administrator — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 07:17:11 +0100

Launched in 2009 the Wiltshire Treasures website allows you to search the catalogues of eleven museums in Wiltshire, along with the art and photographic collections owned by Wiltshire Council.

Example of a search on Wiltshire Treasures for all items made of mahogany in Market Lavington Museum!

There are more than 160,000 records to search containing items ranging from prehistoRead More...

Wiltshire's Sports Stars

Blog Administrator — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 11:15:22 +0100

After the success of the local(ish) Amy Williams and the continued determination and perseverance from Pewsey’s 2006 silver medal winner Shelley Rudman in this year’s Winter Olympics, I thought I would bring to light another of Wiltshire’s pioneering sportswomen. Fanny Williams played for Swindon Town ladies football team in the 1920s. Ladies football developed during World War I when the employees of munitions factories formed Read More...

Easter Folktales and Traditions in Wiltshire

Blog Administrator — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 11:35:21 +0100

Easter was the feast of the pagan goddess of spring, Eoste. It was a tradition to give a gift of coloured eggs which represented the new life of the countryside.

Hot cross buns were baked on Good Friday and were ‘carefully hung up in the inglenook, and kept for medicinal purposes’! A small piece of the dried bun was grated and mixed with water – it was drunk as a cure for diRead More...

One of Our Conservators Almost 'Meets the Ancestors'...

Blog Administrator — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

The coffin lining was discovered in 1999 at the St Swithuns' Yard site on Walcot Street, Bath. The original excavation and conservation work was undertaken by the Museum of London and the project was filmed as part of the BBC series ‘Meet the Ancestors’ with Julian Richards.

Two coffins were found at the site. They were buried by the side of an alley way in the late 4th cRead More...