I thought it may be of interest to take a look on your behalf at the kind of original documents visitors order out when they visit our search rooms, to give you an idea of the wide range of requests we receive for documents each day. I chose a day last week at random, and got peeking!

 
Pattern Book, Ref: 947/1802

Many visitors pre-order material so that it is waiting for them when they arrive (a good idea if they have a lot to look through) as a Japanese student who was interested in the Wiltshire cloth trade did. He was looking at correspondence and diary extracts of the Long family of clothiers, and also at a pattern book, which amazingly still held samples of cloth and wool! Whilst checking our catalogues for additional material, I also noticed a letter, written to Walter Long in 1753 by a friend, warning him of the perils of marriage. It was an intriguing discovery on my part, and one I couldn’t resist ordering out, but it was not one that our student required!

 
Letter to Walter Long, 1753
Ref: 947/1877

There were also two other researchers looking at a diary; this time the diary of William Small, a painter and glazier in 1880s Salisbury. They were in the process of gathering material for a forthcoming publication.

William Small's Diary, 1881
Ref: 2713/2

Members of two history groups were making use of our archives that day, one looking at the Swindon New Town Urban District Council Committee Minutes for the late 19^th century, and the other at Quaker Meeting House records in Salisbury.

 
Swindon New Town Urban District Council Minute Book
Ref: G24/110/6

A researcher from the Victoria County History (Wiltshire) team, who are also based in our building, is currently researching for their next volume. He was looking at church records, such as an inventory of church goods.

Church records were a continuing theme throughout the morning; ordination and resignation papers having been called out too, along with curates’ nominations for 1820. These were created as a curate was newly appointed to a parish and can be one of the many documents of use to genealogists searching for details of their curatorial forebears. The Salisbury Circuit baptism register was one of a few which were also in demand, with visitors hoping to come across the name they were looking for amongst their pages.

Curate's Nomination, 1820
Ref: D1/8/3/28

A talk by one of our Archivists about the records we hold for the parish of Maiden Bradley had prompted a visitor into making a trip to see us. He was interested in a particular road and hoped that a road survey of 1773 and a manorial estate survey by Edward Seymour in 1633 would help him with his quest.

 
Somerset Estate Book, 1633
Ref: 3656/1

A lady had discovered that an ancestor of hers had been a servant at Corsham Court in the 1850s, and had been directed to the Methuen household servants’ wages account books to see if her ancestor’s name was included. Unfortunately it wasn’t, but the document did make very interesting reading nonetheless.

One gentleman was interested in the well that was situated just beyond the bottom of his garden, wondering when it had been created. We found the well on one of our 1:2,500 scale ordnance survey maps in 1924, but not on the 1901 edition, and realised that it had probably been dug at some point between those dates.

We also produced the ‘usual suspects’ such as tithe awards, admissions registers and wills which had not yet been digitised (the Wiltshire Wills project is still ongoing). These items may seem commonplace to us, but they really do provide a great wealth of information for genealogists.

 
Section of the tithe award for Pinkney in Sherston Parva

Of course, all this would not be possible without the sterling and often overlooked work of our production team, who are the unsung heroes of the day! Visitors only have to wait five minutes or so for their documents to be brought to their seat, and little do they realise that this involves trips between seven different strong rooms on two levels. Items can also vary greatly in size and volume, and it takes great care and dexterity for them to be brought from the shelves to your seat; we have the greatest trust in their abilities. We couldn’t do without them, and neither could you!

 
One of our strongrooms

Julie Davis

Local Studies Assistant and member of the Helpdesk Team