Recently I gave a talk to Devizes Camera Club on the care and preservation of old photographs. While preparing this I realised how bad our centrally heated homes are for storage of this material compared with the old days of one two open fires and perhaps one electric fire switched on for going to bed! The required temperature and relative humidity varies according to the type of material but for general collections, as we have at the History Centre, we keep;

Black and white materials at 12°C and 35% relative humidity

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WBR’s latest exploits have led us to Highworth, in the north-east of Wiltshire. This pretty Cotswold town was planted in the 13^th century with a market place, main street and a church behind, laid out in a regular pattern. The property boundaries of the original burgage plots are still to be seen preserved in the modern boundaries.

We were called to look at 23 High Street, coincidentally just next door to the rather spectacular Inigo House, (which had no connection with Inigo Jones by the way, it is merely a very distinguished-looking town house) which Wiltshire Buildings Record looked at two years before.

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When you think of a county record office or archive service, the chances are you think of family history, and sources such as parish records, in particular baptisms, marriages and burials. Alternatively, you may think in terms of bundles of parchment documents covered in spidery handwriting (but no dust, I hope!) I have to admit we do hold large quantities of these sorts of archives, normally bundles of title deeds or manorial records, which often come in either from families or solicitors’ firms. It is less common for people to associate the county archives with the records of individual societies and organisations, and yet these are also important for the history of the county and make up a sizeable, and significant, part of our holdings. Societies and organisations represent communities which are often linked by common interests as well as location.  It is important to preserve records of those links for future generations to understand what mattered to their ancestors, and to appreciate them as three-dimensional people, not just a set of names in a family tree.

One of the organisations which regularly pass on their archives is the Women’s Institute, and in October we were delighted to receive records from the earliest Women’s Institute in the county, namely Downton and Redlynch. These include a complete set of minutes back to 1916, several scrapbooks with photographs and newspaper cuttings concerning local events, and an unusual record of jam-making during the Second World War. The records are in the process of being catalogued and will then be available for research. The W.I. is clearly far more than ‘jam and Jerusalem’ and the records of individual institutes reveal its evolution into the varied and wide-ranging organisation it is today. Please 'read more' to find out about another organisation that has renewed its commitment to preserving its records at the History centre...

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Hi, I'm Michael Marshman, the County Local Studies Librarian. Claire Skinner (Principal Archivist) and I have been working with local school children recently. At King's Lodge School in Chippenham we helped two Year 5 classes prepare for their individual local history project by working with a 2 thousand year time line, maps, newspapers and old photographs. At Pinehurst in Swindon we worked with 60 Year 3 children on old maps and photographs, while children from Gorse Hill School came to the History Centre to learn about life at home during the Second World War. I've also visited North Bradley School to talk about Roman life in Britain and the villa at Bradford on Avon using models made by pupils from St. Laurence's School, Bradford.

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