A little while back Wiltshire Buildings Record carried out a group-effort recording at Bushton, Clyffe Pypard. This was a day where members who are interested in picking up recording skills and recognising Wiltshire features in vernacular houses can go along and learn informally, whilst gathering information for the Record.

Cruck apex

The exterior of the main house is of 2 storeys of whitewashed brick and rubble with a netted thatched roof. Nothing was discerned of the medieval origins of this house from outside. Inside the old hall was a bacon smoking chamber, the lower part still accessible. There may have been access at first floor level to hang the meat for curing. The hearth there was of chalkstone and brick. What is curious is that in the centre are a group of taper burn marks, or hot poker marks alongside the initials ‘TP’. In the world of vernacular architecture debate has long ranged about how these marks came about and why. They are found in many farmhouses and cottages, not only in Wiltshire, but nationally. At last, with determined study by Nick Hill and others at English Heritage it is now thought that these singe marks were done deliberately to ward off accidental fires in the same way that we inoculate our children with a weakened disease agent to guard against a more virulent form taking hold later on. This may be difficult for us to comprehend in our largely secular, scientifically-run society, but in the not so very distant past people were superstitious, and as well as believing in witches they thoroughly believed in magic. It is instances like this that make our interpretation of the past so tricky as we instinctively judge with our own modern values until we learn better.

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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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