Some months ago an enquirer brought to my attention an unusual addition at the front of one of our parish registers. It was an 18^th century cure for mad dog bites, along with a receipt for the bite of a mad dog, ‘Brought from the East-Indies by Sir George Cobb Bart.’, dated 9^th July 1759. I found it fascinating and wondered what other weird and ‘not quite’ so wonderful cures and remedies were hiding away in our collection. I found the subject so fascinating that I have waxed lyrical, and I hope you will find it so, too!

‘An Infallliable Cure for the Bite of a Mad-Dog’ in the Beechingstoke Parish Register, 1738-1812

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 As the New Year is now upon us, I thought to take a look at how some of our previous Wiltshire inhabitants spent their New Years’ Day by taking a look at their diary entries. The authors’ backgrounds range from lords to schoolboys, schoolmasters to reverends, and how different their experiences of New Year were…

Advert from the Wiltshire Times, 1st January, 1910, p.7

It was the plague that was the main concern at the beginning of January in 1666 when Sir Edward Bayntun of Bromham noted in his Commonplace Book on January 6^th  :

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