The Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre has recently been officially recognised as providing one of the best archive services in the country. It was awarded a maximum four stars overall in an assessment by The National Archives, which acts as the government watchdog for archives. We are listed as seventh out of a total of 124 services in England and Wales.

See: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/information-management/our-services/self-assessment-results.htm for more details.

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With the eyes of the world’s media currently focussed on the momentous events unfolding in Egypt I thought it would be interesting to see how this country is represented in Wiltshire’s museum collections.

Museums across the county exist to preserve and display the history of Wiltshire and its people as seen through objects, images and documents.

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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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The Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre held its 4th annual Open Day and the theme this year was the Medieval Period. Along with Broad sword demonstrations, helmet making and documents from the Archives set out on display, the Archaeology Service produced an exhibition on the medieval castles of Wiltshire.

The word Castle is derived from the Latin word castellum and before that castrum, meaning fortified place. The earliest examples appeared in the middle ages and were constructed from earth and timber, but these were soon superseded in stone. They acted as statements of might and force, compared to those of the later medieval era when fortifications and defence were replaced by opulence and comfort - a statement of wealth and power of a very different kind.



An 18th century drawing of the Marlborough Mount

Of the various types, Marlborough Mount is a classic example of a Motte and Bailey, becoming a royal residence during the reign of William the Conqueror. Little is known about the origins of the mound, or motte, with one theory suggesting it may yet prove to be similar in date to the nearby Late Neolithic Silbury Hill. Future research may unravel its mysterious past.

Old Wardour Castle, with its impressive surviving ruins, is situated three miles from Tisbury. Unique and unusual in its hexagonal design, it was influenced by the French chateaux of the time, and its purpose was as a lavish home more than a fortification. This was brought into sharp focus with the determined efforts of Lady Arundell to defend her home during the English Civil War.  In 1643, with just 25 men to protect her and her castle, she held out for three days against a Parliamentarian army of over 1000 soldiers, only surrendering once she had obtained guarantees of safe passage for her family and staff. Incidentally, that original surrender document is held here at the History Centre.

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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

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Medieval Open Day

Saturday 25 September

10 am - 4 pm

Please 'read more' to find out which fun and free activities are on offer this year...

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Recently the rather unprepossessing 17^th century will of John Smith (P1/S/644), gained the distinction of becoming the 1000^th will to be conserved as part of the Heritage Lottery funded Wiltshire Wills Project.

The Will of John Smith

This project is digitising, conserving and preserving the 100,000 plus wills and probate papers (an estimated half a million individual documents) held at the Wiltshire & Swindon History Centre. To find out more, please 'read more'.

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Hello, my name is Robert Pearson, and I am an archivist and help desk assistant here at the History Centre. As part of an enquiry I had been asked to find a sergeant in the ‘A’ or Chippenham Troop of the Wiltshire Yeomanry (the cavalry equivalent of the Territorial Army) in c.1882.

We have quite a good collection of muster rolls of the regiment for that period, although there is a gap after 1877. On examining the next roll for 1883-1890 (ref no.1882/17), I found that the first two pages covering ‘A’ Troop were missing, possibly when the hard covers of the book were removed; so I was temporarily frustrated in my search.

Yeomanry, 1863

At that time there was a small permanent staff of non-commissioned officers from the regular army attached to the Yeomanry to instruct in drill, run the administration etc. and I wondered if my man had been among them.

The records of these men are in a separate file (ref no.1882/22) and the first documents I saw on opening this file were the missing pages of the muster roll, with the sergeant listed, and dating from 1882; they had been sent to us by the Yeomanry HQ in those separate bundles, and it was a joy to me to be able to reunite the pages and their register, probably for the first time since they were created. Nature abhorring a vacuum has nothing on an archivist with an incomplete series, so to be able to fill a gap, even only to the extent of one year, is very satisfying. It only remains to try and find the rolls for 1870-1881.

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The story of how archives have survived can be almost as interesting as the documents themselves; but not quite. Last year a furniture restorer in Sussex sent some papers of the Hazland family of Woodborough which he found in a drawer in an antique chest that he was working on. We recently received a document written in 1804 that had been found in a wall in a cottage in Tetbury, Glos, in 1949. This find was of particular interest because it illustrates the social structure the parish of Charlton near Malmesbury around the time that Nelson was killed at Trafalgar.
The Schedule

It is a schedule of Assessed Taxes which included duties on houses, windows, carriages and servants. 93 people, of whom 52 are described as poor, are listed with their occupation or status. The completeness of the picture is confirmed by the 1801 census (for which no personal details were kept), which counted 88 families. The document suffered somewhat by its immuration, and subsequent treatment with adhesive tape, but the paper of the time, made from rags as opposed to wood pulp, is very durable and only one name is lost. 

By a strange coincidence a few weeks after this document was deposited we received a similar for Tisbury, dated 1825, which was found in a wall space in a house in the village, lived in by one of the assessors. It seems that filing away tax returns was taken to rather extreme lengths...

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Documents in WSA suggest that the famous Time Lord may have spent time in Malmesbury in the mid 17^th century.

A Dr Qui [the Latin for who] is mentioned several times between 1657 and 1675, and was an important person in the town. He was described as a surgeon in his marriage licence bond, when aged 40 he took a bride aged 26 from Wroughton. In Easter 1673 he signed a letter filed in the Quarter Sessions records as Alderman (Mayor) of Malmesbury.

He was buried in Malmesbury abbey church yard 1675, and his will was proved in the following year. However as fans of the TV series know only too well the Doctor has been re-incarnated at least ten times so evidence of his death may well have been exaggerated.

Alderton deeds saved for Wiltshire
Although most of the archives placed in our care are deposited on loan or outright gift, we do purchase material of particular importance. In August we were alerted to sale of about 150 medieval deeds relating to the estates of the Gore family of Alderton, a small parish in North West Wiltshire. Unfortunately in order to maximise the vendor’s profit they were broken up into many separate lots. Principal archivist Claire Skinner spent a stressful but exciting morning bidding by telephone at an auction taking place in Norfolk, and managed to purchase about half of the lots (95 deeds) which covered the earliest documents. This was achieved by a combination of our own budget and generous contributions from the Friends of the National Libraries, and Wiltshire Family History Society.

Close-up of the earliest Alderton deed purchased in 2009 – reference 3815/1/1
Grant by William Lycame of Alderton (spelt Aldrynton here) to John Bovetoun and Christine his wife, of the rent of a grain of wheat for a tenement, dated 1332. The deed is in Latin, which was the language of the law until 1733.

Many of the deeds have seals attached which illustrate the craftsmanship and vitality of medieval small scale sculpture. A good example is the punning seal of William Gore which has a bull’s head between his initials. To find out more and see if you can help us with identifying a family and church in some photographs dating back to the 1950s please 'read more'...

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