Just recently I looked at a tiny house in the south of Wiltshire. Ansty has a population of about 125 but the head count is greatly expanded every May Day when Ansty holds its very popular celebration around the medieval duck pond, and near the Hospice or Commandery – a venerable 16^th century building on land once belonging to the Knights Hospitallers.

A rather more humble building is tucked away on the main street, almost hidden by trees and vegetation that has overgrown it. Nature very readily begins to reclaim its materials if we fail to keep it at bay! This tiny cottage dating to c1700 originally consisted of two small rooms – a living room/kitchen entered directly from the front door, and an unheated store. In 1768 it was leased to a carpenter named James Plowman, aged 55. Initials ‘IP’ found scratched on the soft Tisbury Greensand at the rear could have been those of James Plowman, as an ‘I’ could stand for a ‘J’ then.

 
The cottage

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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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WSA has a very large number of maps, from 16^th-20^th centuries, mainly manuscript surveys of individual parishes and estates. They come in various sizes, but one of the largest, was recently found in the attic of the parish office in Calne. Measuring 12 feet x 9 feet (3.6m x 2.75m), the equivalent of a good sized room in a modern house, it was so long that the only way to get it out of the house was for it to be lowered from a first floor window to the street below.

The map laid out on a row of tables

It is a beautifully drawn and accurately surveyed map of the parish of Calne also including Blackland and Calstone Wellington that was made by land surveyor Thomas Cruse in 1827 and 1828 at a scale of 20inches to the mile. The archive team at WSHC was alerted and brought it to the History Centre. It is a very important discovery because of the wealth of topographical information it provides about Calne more than 180 years ago. A copy of the schedule giving details of owners/occupiers field names, acreages and state of cultivation is held the archives as is the associated map of the borough. Years of neglect have taken its toll and the map cannot be available until it has been cleaned and conserved, although it is complete and there will virtually no loss of detail.

Detail of damage the map has sustained

It presents quite a challenge to the archive conservators as it is bigger that the vertical wall board on which maps are repaired, and will have to be repaired in sections. However, they are experienced in handling some large items, and once cleaned and mounted on a new cloth backing it will be available for researchers to use in the History Centre.

If you have enjoyed this article, the following entries may also be of interest:

The 200 Year Old Time Capsule

Why was Wiltshire 1st?

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Wax visible inside the skull before treatment

Background

The 2009-2010 project to conserve 300 items for the new display at the Roman Baths Museum included a variety of materials from Roman earthenware ceramics to bronze statuettes. Some of the larger objects were made of lead and included lead piping from the baths themselves and a Roman coffin. The coffin was the feature of our last blog and we’d like to follow on from this with details of the conservation of the coffin’s contents.

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Hello, my name is Clare and I'm the Modern Records Officer at the History centre. My job is to collect together all of the records of the four District councils that have been combined with the County council to make the new Wiltshire Council.

Although the majority of the records I am dealing with are from after 1974 (when the District Councils were set up), whilst trawling through the boxes and filing cabinets I also sometimes find earlier items.

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