Archive conservation staff are to be reunited with an ‘old friend’ with their latest project.

The letters of John Russell in the Eyre-Matcham archive document his career as a naval administrator at Woolwich, then Deptford, as Consul General in Lisbon and Consul in Morocco.

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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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Hello, my name is Terry Bracher and I am the Archives and Local Studies Manager here at the History Centre. Since joining the team in 2007 one of most interesting aspects of my work is being introduced to the wonderful array of archives that are held in our building by the Wiltshire and Swindon Archives Service. But when I was asked to choose my favourite document, from a selection of eight miles of historic records, it appeared an impossible task. I am always drawn to documents that show how ordinary people help shape national and international events, or the way our diverse communities have evolved. The documents I keep returning to are those that on the surface tell a simple story, but actually give us a far deeper insight into events of a particular period of our history. One such document, and my current favourite, is the terms of surrender at the end of the first siege of Wardour Castle on the 8^th May 1643, during the English Civil War.

Terms of surrender, Wardour Castle 8th May 1643

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