Readers of my earlier blogs will know I am often guided by those twin pillars of research: serendipity and curiosity. It was these two trusty old friends that led me Henry Charles “inky” Stephens (1841 – 1918). While tidying my desk as part of my New Year resolution I was left with just a few paper clips and two rulers on the work surface, which reminded me of a patent I had spotted in our indexes for “the parallel ruler” (yes, sadly someone had invented this before me).  The patent seems to enable …er…two parallel lines to be drawn, more seriously it was used by navigators to draw parallel lines on charts and originally invented by Fabrizio Mordente in 1584 and others sought to improve it. But there was more, with the documents were further patents for inkstands and an adjustable pencil, plus specifications for various ink manufacture and the chemistry behind them. Of course, what I had started to look at was part of an archive relating to the Cholderton estate, once owned by the family and an individual whose single small invention arguably helped change the course of writing.

Patent for an adjustible pencil point, designed by Henry Stephens, 1852
Ref: 1340/76

It was actually “Inky’s” father, Dr Henry Stephens of Redbourne, Hertfordshire, who in 1832  invented the  famous 'Blue-Black Writing Fluid', or Stephens writing ink as it became known,  a "carbonaceous black writing fluid, which will accomplish the so long-desired and apparently hopeless task of rendering the manuscript as durable and as indelible as the printed record". It is the forerunner of the waterproof inks we use today and literally at a stroke became the Archivist’s friend, ensuring better survival of some of our precious written heritage (though for obvious reasons we don’t recommend its use by our researchers, please stick with pencils!). The government made it the mandatory ink for legal documents and ships' log books, and saved businesses and organisations time and money, where much time previously had been spent mixing inks and cleaning nibs. His son, Henry Charles, took the process forward, ultimately building a factory and research laboratory in Finchley, creating new processes and manufacturing ink and wood stains on a large scale. “Inky” was also an MP for Hornsey (1887-1900), a chemist and a philanthropist, with an interest in subjects such as public health and agriculture. He purchased the Cholderton estate in the late nineteenth century and its archive shows the range of interests he had, which included setting up the first and only private water company in England, the Cholderton and District Water Company in 1904. On his death his house in Finchley was left for the use of the public and is now a museum.

“But about other Wiltshire inventors?” I hear you say. A perfect companion for “inky” Stephens would surely have been Sir Isaac Pitman (1813-1897), born in Trowbridge and inventor of stenographic sound-hand or, as we know it, Pitman shorthand. But our greatest Victorian inventor surely was William Henry Fox Talbot (1800 – 1877) who’s inventions and innovations in photography, including the first negative process, are world famous. He was also interested in other sciences and his work included patents for “gilding and silvering” metals and “obtaining motive power, and improvements in atmospheric engines.”

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In August 2011 Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre applied to the Heritage Lottery Fund for just over £500,000 to help acquire, catalogue and make available the archives of the Lacock Abbey estate, which have been on deposit with Wiltshire and Swindon Archives since 1991. The owner needs to sell the collection and the Archives are their preferred purchaser. This extensive archive, occupying 100 boxes on 35 metres of shelving, documents the Talbot, Davenport and Feilding families and their estates from the 12^th-20^th centuries. It includes estate records, personal papers, naval records, and material relating to the East India Company, amongst others.
Map of Lacock, 1764
Ref: 2664

These records are very important for local history, and the family history of those who were tenants of the estate, as well as for the history of the owners themselves. Lacock itself is a very special village which has remained virtually unchanged for decades, thanks to the generous gift of the village by the Talbot family, to the National Trust. Since family connections and interests rarely remain within one county, the range of this collection extends to other parts of the country, including Shropshire and Worcestershire, and, even, overseas. However, material within a collection is often so inextricably linked it is not always feasible or appropriate to split it up among archive repositories. Any large estate or family archive is like a complex jigsaw puzzle – the pieces of it interlink and it is vitally important to keep this collection in public hands and to ensure it is not split up at auction and its historical value diminished.

This month (December 2011) we have just heard that our application has gone through to the next stage, where it will be developed into a detailed project. This is very good news – it means the HLF believe this is a worthwhile project – however there is still a lot of work to be done. The aim of the project is to make this wonderful collection more accessible to the public by cataloguing it, repairing any fragile material, and finding innovative ways to promote its use. One way of doing this will be through the creation of a website optimised for mobile phone use, which will not just include information about the archives but also images and oral history recordings of reminiscences by local residents. There will be a range of community participation activities to support the creation of content and to promote the collection’s use. There will also be separate on-line material specially designed for schools to use. The project will need full community support and lots of volunteer time if it is to be successful.

If you would like to get involved we would love to hear from you – all are welcome to attend  a public meeting on Thursday 26 January 2012, at 4 pm, at Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre, Cocklebury Road, Chippenham SN15 3QN.

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Hello, my name is Terry Bracher, Archives and Local Studies Manager and along with my colleague Laurel Miller, who is our Heritage Education Officer, one of my favourite jobs is to help co-ordinate one of the History Centre’s big annual events, which is our Open Day. It takes place on Saturday 1st October from 10am – 4pm. Last year we had over a thousand people visit the History Centre at our Open Day participating in a range of family fun activities and this year looks like being as popular.

The Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre

Of course, a lot of planning goes into the event, but did you know that we start almost once the previous Open Day has ended? First we have to review the activities that took place and look at your wonderful and informative feedback to see what was successful and if anything worked less well, so that we can make improvements the following year.

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I am currently researching items for my forthcoming talk at the History Centre on Crime and Punishment in Wiltshire (Thursday 14^th April) and come across a wonderful woodcut engraving of the pillory at Marlborough in an article on obsolete punishments by Llewellyn Jewitt in “The Reliquary” Quarterly Journal, January 1861.

The pillory was used for a range of moral and political crimes, most notably for dishonest trading - the modern equivalent of implementing trading standards.  Its use dates back to Anglo-Saxon times where it was known as “Healsfang” or “catch-neck”. In France it was called the pillorie.  It was well established as a use of punishment after the Conquest.  It was considered to be a degrading punishment with offenders standing in the pillory for several hours to be abused by fellow citizens, sometimes being pelted with all manner of organic material such as rotten eggs, mud and filth. If that was not enough, sometimes the offender was drawn to the pillory on a hurdle, accompanied by minstrels and a paper sign hung around his or her head displaying the offence committed.

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I just happened to be trawling through some indexes to our records when a subject caught my eye - the Great flood in the Wylye Valley 1841. Now I am just about to visit the Wylye World War 1 Project group, one of several trips to the south of our county this week, and have an eye on the weather since the heavy rain over the last few days. Investigating this story in more detail it appears that the flood took place 170 years ago, almost to the day!  (Apparently there was a similar flood in 1789 around the same time of year - I am taking my waterproofs).  What particularly drew me to the reference was a note concerning a piece of doggerel about the event.

I have always been curious about doggerel and other poetic forms as an historical record commemorating events (and people), especially disasters, such as William McGonagall’s poem on the Tay Railway Bridge disaster of 1879. But what I found was even more astonishing; forget the 8 verses by McGonagall, our document contains 51 verses, in part 1, and a further 25 in part 2, a grand total of 76 stanzas detailing an event that, according to contemporary local newspapers, lasted a mere 12 hours, though with such force and hugely disastrous consequences for the local communities. The document (WSA 1336/98) is a transcript of a letter by Ann Doughty of Hanging Langford to her mother some days after the flood with a doggerel rhyme by an unknown author.

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In one of my earlier blogs I had the pleasure of writing about our research into Black History in Wiltshire. I mentioned at the time that we were working with local communities and other partners to create the SEEME Wiltshire Black History Project. I am pleased to say that this hard work has paid off and we have been awarded a grant of £39,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund as part of a total of £56,000 we and our partners have raised to run an Oral History Project relating to Wiltshire BME communities.

 
This exciting project will help us to record, transcribe and archive the personal testimonies of elders within the community before they are lost to us. In addition, we will be providing family activities, including performance through drama and music, and animation video in response to those testimonies; creating educational resources and engaging young people with elders; publishing a calendar and a mobile exhibition. The aim is to create a project that is managed by the local community, with opportunities to volunteer and participate in all activies, in partnership with Wiltshire Council, the Salisbury Playhouse and the Wiltshire Music Centre. We are also grateful to Westlea Housing who provided an initial £3,000 to run a pilot project and get the partnership off the ground.

 Baptism entry for ‘Gilbert, son of John Keen, Niger, Yeoman and of Frances his wife.’

We also hope to continue to research the early Black presence in Wiltshire and I am grateful to colleagues and researchers at the History Centre who continue to provide some wonderful examples. Readers may recall that last time I wrote about Maria Mandula ‘Stranger and Aethiops’ buried in Calne, 1586, as perhaps our earliest written reference to a Black person in Wiltshire. My new favourite entry in our records relates to the parish registers of Minety, brought to my attention by our colleague Steve Hobbs. It is for 1708 and relates to a baptism of ‘Gilbert, son of John Keen, Niger, Yeoman and of Frances his wife.’ This is exciting because the majority of the Black people we find in parish registers in Wiltshire at this time were servants / slaves or former slaves for the aristocracy and gentry. Either way, most were not considered to be free. During this period it is estimated that there was a Black population of around 20,000 in London alone, and evidence from provincial counties such as Wiltshire help us to widen the picture. This was a period where Britain had truly established itself as a major player in the slave trade. But here, in Minety, not only do we have a Black person who is a relatively wealthy farmer, who was free, but clearly had been established in the community long enough to be married and have a child. Any further information on John Keen and the Keen family would be most welcome. We continue to collate references to Black people in Wiltshire, notably between 1600’s - 1800’s, so do keep the references coming as we build a picture of our county that has seen constant movement of people and historically more diverse than you might think. To find out more, please 'read more'...

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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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Hello, I am Terry Bracher, Archives and Local Studies Manager here at the History Centre.  Browsing through part of photographic collection I came across a photo of elephants bathing in the River Avon in Chippenham town centre in 1906. The elephants were part of a travelling circus and the Avon at Chippenham clearly provided a welcome break for the elephants as they walked to the venue for their next performance. Now I have always had an interest in historical curiosities and this led me to ask colleagues if they had come across any other curious animal related tales throughout Wiltshire, with the aim of creating our top ten animal tales, so long as they followed a simple rule - the animals could not be farm animals (unless they did something especially curious) and they had to have been see alive and well at some point in Wiltshire’s history.

The Elephants in Chippenham, 1906

But let’s start with animals that do not count. I would have liked to include the dancing bears of Lacock. They were a familiar site in the nineteenth century, being led into the village along with musicians and other entertainers. Looking through the book “Chippenham and Lacock in Old Photographs” I was astonished to see a picture of a dancing bear in the late 1930’s. Sadly, on closer inspection this was a photo of the 1938 pageant with a Mr Bob Vines in convincing pose playing the part of the bear, together with his “handler” his brother Eric Vines. This could be a whole new category in itself. 'Read more' to find out about some dramatic events involving animals in Wiltshire....

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10 am - 4 pm, Free Admission

Hello, my name is Terry Bracher and I am the Archives and Local Studies Manager at the History Centre. This month some of my time has been spent preparing for our annual Open Day on Saturday 26^th September. This will be our third Open Day; the first two saw over 1300 visitors come to the Centre to enjoy looking behind the scenes and take part in our family activities.

 
This Deed of Properties given to Jane Seymour by Henry VIII will be one of those on show 

So what is happening this year? Well, there will be lots of fun activities with a Tudor theme. Find out about life on Henry VIII’s flagship the Mary Rose. Members of the crew will be on hand to tell you about life onboard and there will be lots of objects and costume to see (and try on!).  Will you hit the target at one of the king’s favourite pastimes, shooting with a longbow? (Small charge for this activity). See real Tudor documents from our archives, including the marriage deed of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour, and a family tree of the Seymour family twenty feet long (Steve, one of our archivists, has the job of unfolding this!). How much do you know about Henry’s Wiltshire connections? Try our quiz and find out. Can you identify Tudor objects with our Museums Advisory Team?

Take a behind the scenes tour of our strong rooms to see how the archives are stored. Visit the labs to watch objects and archives being conserved. Have a go at glass painting or writing with a quill pen, or some of our other craft activities for children. Read on to find out what else is happening....

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