Local History News Number 97 Autumn 2010

I loathe the excesses of Baroque decoration in churches, especially in central Europe, where the immense and monstrous altars, towering hideosities in black and gold, with extravagantly over-the-top embellishments, ugly silverware and third-rate paintings leave me cold. They also infuriate me, because they so often detract from a Gothic building, cluttering its interior and disguising the soaring lines and sophisticated simplicity. Maybe, deep down and despite my renowned broad-mindedness, an Anglo-Saxon Protestant cultural heritage rebels against the Counter-Reformation and all its works, a time when faith was measured mainly by the acreage of gold leaf.
 
On my travels again, in late September I was in Sandomierz, a small and delightful cathedral city on the left bank of the Warsaw (or Vistula, in English), halfway between Kraków and the Ukrainian border. There, the nave of the cathedral is lined with a series of truly ghastly and gigantic paintings showing, in full and nauseating detail, the slaughter of the forty martyrs of Sandomierz, local Christians killed by the Tartars in 1241. Every possible horror has been depicted graphically by an artist with a terrifying and quite excessive imagination – decapitations, crucifixions, disembowellings, roastings, flayings. One extra painting, now covered with a great red cloth, depicts the ritual sacrifice of a child by Jews. It’s concealed, thank goodness, because of protests by Jewish organisations.
 
But in the chancel it’s a different story. The cathedral enjoyed royal patronage in the fifteenth century, and King Wladyslaw II Jagiello (reigned 1386-1434) personally sponsored the redecoration of the chancel with a magnificent fresco cycle. He was grand duke of Lithuania before becoming king of Poland and, though himself a pagan until baptism on his accession (like Henri IV of France, he decided that a kingdom was well worth a mass) he was familiar with Russian Orthodox churches. The frescoes were therefore in the Byzantine style, with almond-eyed men and women, vivid primary colours, and designs that resemble the familiar style of icons. 
 
The chancel was closed when we visited, as restoration work was approaching completion (much of it undoing the serious damage inflicted in the 1920s, when art ‘experts’ misguidedly restored the paintings with lamentably limited historical and artistic accuracy). But my cousin persuaded the fearsome custodian that I had come all the way from England specifically to see these splendid images, so we were hustled behind the tarpaulins and plastic sheeting and had a private viewing. We ducked beneath scaffolding and stood on planks to get a closer view, and the custodian told us about the frescoes with a passion that brought them alive. He loved them, and his eyes sparkled as he explained their meaning.
 
It was great privilege, and a most fortunate and happy escape from Baroque excess. And in terms of religious art, the day was brought to a grand and glorious finale by a visit to the town’s delightful museum, which has a wonderful Madonna and Child, an elemental – almost crude - stone carving, in local limestone and dating from the late 12th century. It has stylised Romanesque features, powerfully-expressed with bold dramatic lines. Mary’s sharply chiselled nose and long neck are not those of a sentimental simpering Madonna, but reveal a formidably proud and upright woman (and she has a charmingly perky baby, rather than the obese cherub so often seen in paintings from further south a century or so later). It reflects a raw and vigorous faith, so unlike that shown in the grandiloquence of the Baroque altars in the cathedral further along the road. 
 

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A thousand years ago what is today the London Borough of Hackney was mainly virgin forest where wild deer outnumbered human inhabitants.Towards the south the woodland had largely been cleared to provide London with fuel and timber for building.Hoxton and Haggerston (then called Hergotestane) were already hamlets,but Shoreditch did not yet exist,  the name derives from Sewer-ditch referring to a channel dug to drain marshland in the southern part of what is now Islington,and incorporates a French term that dates it to after the Norman Conquest.There may have been one or two huts in the area of present-day Mare Street but the nearest thing to a community in the area north of London's Bishopsgate was Stoke Newington.
    Ten centuries ago London was already the most important port and trading centre in northern Europe. It was a town built mainly of wood and plaster, though some of the numerous churches were of stone and the old Roman city walls,which still represented the limits of the built-up area, were kept in good repair. Most of the goods transported in and out of London were carried by water,in boats not unlike Viking longships,down the River Thames and the River Lea from inland or along the coast from river ports like Colchester or Ipswich,but the old Roman road to Lincoln and York, late known as Ermine Street,now the A10, was still in use for less bulky goods that could be carried by pack horse and for the cattle that were driven on the hoof to supply the butchers in the city. (The Roman origins of this road are evident even today, from the way Stoke Newington Road, Kingsland High Street and Kingsland Road together form an absolutely straight line.)
   In 1086, when the Domesday survey was carried out, there was no church on the Roman road north of London till one reached Tottehham,then a village of about sixty households. Stoke Newington, roughly halfway between Tottenham and Bishopsgate, was barely even a village. At this period it was called Neutone or Newton, that is, the New Enclosure, and had probably been established by a group of half a dozen  settlers in an artificial clearing that they hacked out of the virgin forest in the eighth or ninth century. In 1086 four farmers,probably lineal descendants of the original settlers,formed the nucleus of the community. They worked most of the cultivated land in common,and though we do not know precisely how Anglo-Saxon village life was organized it is probable that their homes and barns formed a cluster of quite large wooden buildings and that they and their families spent a great deal of time together even when not working.
    The most likely location of this group of buildings would be on Hackney Brook, probably just to the west of where it crossed the Roman road at the bottom of what is now Stamford Hill.Hackney Brook today runs under the street in a hidden channel  but there was once a ford here, originally called Sandy Ford, and a sandy bottom to the brook would have guaranteed clean water. The four farmers and their families would have lived comfortably enough though marauding Norsemen may occasionally have forced them to hide out in the woods: this was the era of the Viking invasions and London itself came under the control of Sweyn Forkbeard, King of Denmark, in 1013.
    There were also nearly forty poor families living in scattered huts,who provided labourers for the farmers and also cultivated small plots of land on the margins of the forest. Originally they or their ancestors would have been squatters but by 1086 they were mostly paying rent to the clergy of St Paul's Cathedral. Cutting down trees and grubbing up the roots to provide new ploughland was probably still in progress a thousand years ago:despite the proximity of London the lives of Stoke Newington's inhabitants a thousand years ago were not unlike those of frontiersmen in the first days of the colonization of North America. No physical trace of their existence remains behind them:just a place name in a modified form and the language this is written in,altered out of all recognition by the passage of the centuries.
 
 

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All My Worldly Possessions Project
(with Bury Museum and Archives)
 
In late June 1940, hundreds of evacuees came from the Channel Islands to Bury in Lancashire, owning only what they had in their suitcase, to make a new home for the duration of the Second World War. The evacuees had many different experiences; but one thing many had in common was a memory of a local resident - Mr J W Fletcher. Mr Fletcher was a retired travelling salesman who took a keen interest in helping the evacuees, arranging parties and outings for the children and fundraising. After the war Mr Fletcher travelled to Guernsey to be reunited with the families he had been so close too and a party of thanks was held for him.
 
With funding from the Beacon Trust, Joanne Fitton of Bury Archives Service has been working with researcher Gill Mawson of the University of Manchester. The Beacon Trust enables university researchers to share their knowledge more widely with the public through events, in partnership with public services. As part of the project a short film has been produced, capturing the memories of three individuals impacted by evacuation in different ways. On 28th October this film was launched at Ramsbottom Heritage Gallery (at Ramsbottom Library) at an event open to anyone to come and hear the memories of evacuation. This gave many individuals an opportunity to be reunited after 70 years.
 
Oral historian Gill Mawson has learned a great deal from her involvement in the project: “I learned so much from Joanne Fitton, who has a vast amount of experience in dealing with the public at all levels. She showed me how to look at this project in new ways and was a great mentor. I particularly enjoyed helping to make the film and producing the accompanying booklet. The various contributions of memories and photographs which we received from evacuees and local people provided a great deal of new information about this period in Guernsey’s and Bury’s history, which is wonderful.”
 
For further information on the project, please contact Gill Mawson at archives@bury.gov.uk
 

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One of the most prominent local historians in the area around the Humber estuary is Rex Russell.   This year, BALH made an award to him for his vast contribution to local history as a tutor and writer, and particularly as a continuing inspiration to others.   Sadly Rex was unable to attend the Awards Ceremony in London on Local History Day because of frailty, so instead BALH travelled to him to present his Award personally. It was held at his current home, Nettleton Manor Nursing Home near Caistor, Lincolnshire and was accompanied by a buffet arranged by the Manor.  

 
The event was held on 17th July 2010 and it was a delight to see so many of his friends and colleagues attending.   There were over 40 acceptances to the invitation, many of whom had been taught by Rex and even more influenced by him. The local press also attended. The chair of the event was his friend and colleague Brian Davey, and the Award was made by Tim Lomas who is a Trustee of the BALH, and chairs its Education Committee, as well as being a member of the Local History Committee of the Society for Lincolnshire History and Archaeology.
 
It was a tribute to him that the sign directing people into the car park at Nettleton Manor simply spelt out “Rex” – such is his local and regional fame. Brian Davey indicated the experience of this extraordinary man, now well into his tenth decade pointing out that he had been born in a workhouse in the East End of London but was now living in a Manor.
 
His career is equally fascinating. There was a Zeppelin raid over Hackney in 1916 when Rex was born, his father was the Master of the workhouse, his mother the Matron. In the early 1920s, with his mother and brothers Rex moved to her family home in East Yorkshire while their father remained in London, seeking work. Thus it was that Rex attended the village school his grandfather had attended and where his great-grandfather had been headteacher; it is not surprising that these roots stimulated an early interest in history. The family was reunited, Rex earned a scholarship to Bancrofts, a Drapers Company School, then an Essex County Art scholarship. He worked as a commercial artist and his graphic skills reappeared years later in beautiful historic maps illustrating books on enclosure and landscape change in Lincolnshire. This was followed by marriage to Eleanor, a move back to the East Riding, work in agriculture, war service in the Royal Navy, the beginnings of his teaching career, and then he read History and Education as a mature student at Durham University. 
 
Through the work he carried out over numerous years for the University of Hull Extra-Mural Department and for the WEA Rex enthused hundreds of students, many of whom took their studies and involvement in local history further, going on to publish high-quality local histories, particularly of their villages.   He also proved influential in setting up active local history societies particularly in the northern parts of Lincolnshire. His enthusiasm, generosity and support encouraged people who would otherwise not have ventured into research and publishing.
 
The citation read out reminded us that Rex has been no shirker with his own publications.   They run to over 80 books and articles on a wide range of themes.   The latest edition of the SLHA Bookshop News even has a separate section on “Books by Rex Russell” covering topics as varied as water drinkers, education, labouring movements, headstones, revolution, Methodism, popular culture, friendly societies and the French Revolution in Lincolnshire Society. His special interest has been enclosure. Additionally many North Lincolnshire towns and villages have benefited from his prodigious work rate such as Barrow on Humber, Market Rasen and especially his home town of Barton-Upon-Humber.   He is also an expert on buildings and excavated at least one deserted medieval settlement.
 
What makes Rex particularly worthy of this Award is the selflessness; his motive has been the love of local history.   Always ready to help colleagues, much of his work has been produced co-operatively and he has always aimed at making history accessible to the maximum number of readers.   Long after most people retired, Rex continued his work, still lecturing when he was ninety, inspiring each new generation of historians in Humberside.   As one of his referees for the Award put it, Rex Russell “radiated the conviction that understanding local history was of the greatest importance for communities today”.   His acceptance of the Award was typically modest and low key but everyone in the room that hot summer afternoon knew what his real contribution was.
 

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Although only a fraction of records created before the 19th century have survived by a form of natural selection governed often by chance, the subsequent proliferation of records mean that archivists are familiar with the appraisal and selection, and weeding of records generated in the last hundred years.

It is a sobering, but not surprising, thought that the criteria on which such decisions are made alter over time as new priorities and lines of research emerge or even as social attitudes change. It is probably the case that the destruction of Poor Law Union Workhouse records of admission was not entirely based on problems of storage, but from a well intentioned sense of erasing the stigma of the workhouse from the life histories of its inmates and their descendants. Social and family historians alike regret the loss of so much important material.
However, destructions schedules have to be implemented to take effect and one thankful example of non-compliance on the part of Wiltshire archivists has ensured the survival of a fascinating collection of documents among the archives of the county’s Quarter Sessions. From 1828 the depositions, the evidences of the witness, victims and those accused, of crimes were filed separately from the other documents used at each sessions on the Great Rolls. Once set apart they became vulnerable and were regarded as a subsidiary series to be included in destruction schedules issued by the Master of the Rolls in 1914, 1941, and 1942 (presumably driven in no small way by wartime pressures for paper salvage).
What has been preserved is a unique source of incidental detail about the lives of ordinary people, both victims and perpetrators of crimes, mainly theft of property. Food, such as grain, meat, particularly turkeys and geese in the weeks before Christmas, and potatoes, often named varieties, from the storage pits dug in the ground, articles of clothes, and personal items such, money, watches, umbrellas and working tools all figure frequently in the statements. They often appear to have been spontaneous rather than premeditated, and driven by necessity.
However, the background details which are the mostinfprmative. On 12 December 1851 Albert Savin, a fifteen year old labourer, had a pistol stolen from his belt in the Swan Inn in Chippenham. He and his friends had gone into the town as ’Christmas Boys’, and were presumably performing a mummers’ play or some other seasonal traditional entertainment. Later in the same year Rowland Brotherhood, the contractor for the maintenance of Chippenham railway station and the permanent way, gave evidence against several men accused of taking scrap metal belonging to the GWR company. Each week the station and yards were scraped of debris, and flint gravel was spread. The rubbish was mixed with and horse manure from the stables and taken away to a field on the west side of the town. In the early 1840’s two cases of organised bare-knuckle fights are recorded, both at opposite ends of the county close to its borders, presumably to ease avoiding the county constabulary forces. One at Castle Eaton resulted in the death of one of the pugilists after two hours of exchanging blows; at the other the police narrowly avoided a riot when they tied to break up the contest.
The victims were often from the same social background as the accused; they might be householders, shopkeepers, tradesmen, while hawkers and even a gingerbread seller also figure. These are people who have generally left the slightest imprint in written records. In the early summer of 1856 Michael Moran, a hawker of 45 High Street Preston, Lancashire, was duped by a fellow traveller, who hearing from him that of ‘the badness of the Broad Cloth trade’ which he had been in for twenty years, persuaded him ‘ to get into the Womens’ line‘, and promptly tricked him out of much of his stock in Marlborough.
Some victims seemed particularly vulnerable. Mary Amor of Chitttoe, kept sovereigns wrapped in paper in pint pot under her bed, £5 in a teapot on bedroom window sill.
The depositions provide evidence of the emergence of professional law enforcers, here represented by the Wiltshire Constabulary, which was established in 1839. Officers give evidence in most cases and reveal the development of the skills of observation, detection and deduction. Footprints are closely observed and the unique marks left by worn or damaged footwear, an indication of the poverty of their owners, often provide the clinching evidence of guilt. These techniques would be significant in the development of policing and also would catch the popular imagination through the writing of authors, like Wilkie Collins and Arthur Conan Doyle.
 

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Over the past thirty years my husband and I, have been involved in many things to do with local and family history research. Committee\'s, conferences, college courses we have had plenty to fill our \'spare time\'.
It has been a journey that has taken us to record offices and libraries in many distant places, notebooks and cameras were with us wherever we went. A tape recorder was invaluable for recording oral history.
At one time we rode a tandem, a great source of transport for getting off the beaten track and discovering churchyards and letter boxes (my husbands great interest). After a mishap in the 1990\'s which wrote the tandem off and resulted in some wonderful bruises, that mode of research came to a sudden stop.
Teaching family and local history has also been a rewarding experience, and learning to adapt your lessons for students who have a disability an even more challenging one. Doing local history sessions with the young ones in schools has been very worthwhile - children are very observant and they often put you on the spot with awkward questions.
Additionally we have enjoyed giving talks and slide shows on various topics such as Forest Town, a village developed when a coal mine was sunk in 1904. Clipstone Camp a WW1 army training camp. Harlow Wood Orthopaedic Hospital renowned the world over which closed in 1995 and Post Boxes - these have a fascinating history. Through all of this we have met some wonderful people and often gained new information. We also developed new skills along the way as technology improved, the old projector and slide system that often jammed was replaced by a lap top computer and digital projector. A digital camera has meant instant photos that can be downloaded to the computer and are readably usable.
So what happens when maturity and health decree that you have to slow down and giving talks on a regular basis needs to stop? Well for us another exciting opportunity has opened up to share some of the information we have collated over the years, and now we can share it with a much wider audience.
For the past year along with other local enthusiasts we have been working with Mansfield Museum developing a new web site www.ourmansfieldandarea.org.uk This has been (and still is) both challenging and rewarding, and new skills have had to be learnt. Apart from the initial training and an occasional meeting all the work involved with editing and contributing to the web site can be done at home from our own computer.
The website which was officially launched in November 2009 is a living history of Mansfield and area. The site gives people the opportunity to share their own information, memories, photos, and knowledge about Mansfield and the local communities, both as they are today and how they were in the past. New pages and comments are continually being added. Already there have been contributions from America, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. As well as helping to provide both local and social history information for people, it is hoped it will also be of educational value to students of all levels.
There have also been contributions from two ladies in their 90\'s, one who has given oral history interviews on her early home life and where she used to work. The other from a lady who learnt how to use a computer in her 80\'s has now mastered adding comments and putting her own page on the web site.
So has they say when one door closes another opens and we still have a project to be very enthusiastic about and something to fill our \'spare time.\' Do take a look site www.ourmansfieldandarea.org.uk - if you don\'t have a computer why not visit your local library and have a look on theirs!
 

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On 31st August, we bid farewell to our Director, Professor John Beckett, who has returned to Nottingham University after a five-year secondment, having seen our HLF-funded England’s Past for Everyone project through to a very successful conclusion. Not only did John oversee the publication of 15 EPE paperbacks in 10 different counties, the development of 2 websites and an education project, but he also acted as General Editor for several ‘big red books’ and started VCH activity in Cumbria, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire and Hampshire, building on the EPE model for volunteer research. And, although one might expect him to shake the VCH dust from his feet, he has taken on the role of VCH ambassador in those counties where new work has just started. John’s energy and commitment are truly remarkable! Staff and supporters were able to thank him, some in person at a party held at the IHR on October 12th   and others by messages in a specially crafted ‘little red book’.
 
Now, despite fewer staff in VCH’s London office and fewer full-time editors at work in the counties, there is no diminution in our ambition to keep the VCH show on the road and to make it better known and more widely used by both academic community and general public. The most effective means of reaching existing local historians and a new audience is our completely revamped websites, which will be the subject of our next bulletin in this newsletter. Our national and county sites will continue to give news of all the local history events, particularly those in which the VCH is involved, and to offer draft text hot off the PC. Our VCH Explore site, which has been redeveloped on a more accessible thematic basis, and our presence on British History Online gain us new users worldwide every day; our national website now provides online training in local history. In 2011 we will hold IHR-hosted local history study days and the annual Marc Fitch lecture, to be given on 12 July by Professor Jeremy Black. Our Locality and Region seminar in the Institute of Historical Research continues, and we hope to start a new series of our paperbacks very soon.
 
Our core work continues to take priority, with a steady stream of ‘big red books’ planned for publication from now until 2013; this week we celebrated the launch of VCH Gloucestershire’s volume 12 on Newent and May Hill, and in 2011 will see the publication of volumes from VCH Essex, Somerset and Oxfordshire. To find out more about those volumes and about all the latest VCH developments nationally and locally, please go towww.victoriacountyhistory.ac.uk.
 

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There had always seemed little room for women in my area of research – early nineteenth century North Eastern business history, which essentially meant railways and companies related to the coal trade. The railways because of their cumbersome mode of inception .(acts of parliament, lodging of plans with magistrates and interminable legal wrangles have left more in the way of documentary evidence than most early companies. The one that became central to my study, the Clarence, (the largely ignored rival to the Stockton and Darlington) because of its chequered financial history generated more paper work than most. So it was that one day in what was then still the Public Record Office plodding through the umpteenth company ledger I came across the names of three women attending a shareholders’ meeting.
 
They were listed by the secretary as Ann Swinburn, Mrs Innes and Sarah Moore.
What were they doing there and who were they? Well the answer to the first part of the question was relatively simple. This was an ‘Extraordinary shareholders’ meeting’ called in Stockton on 15 October 1842 because once again the company was in crisis. These women lived locally and wanted to know what was happening to their money. Who they were was more difficult. Mrs Innes was presumably the widow of Col. William Innes of Norton on Tees whose name had appeared on previous shareholders’ lists and whose shares she had inherited. One day I’m going to look out his will and see whether it gives any hint of who she was before she was Mrs Innes. As is frequently the case with married women or widows her identity is hidden behind that of her husband.      
 
 What of the other two, they are called by their first names. Does this mean that they were unmarried? Guessing at their approximate ages I trawled through some Stockton parish registers and found no sign of them. Trade directories proved more useful. Sarah Moore was listed as a partner in a grocery business in Stockton with a man called Henry Sherwood who was also a shareholder and attended this and other meetings. Sarah’s name appears on other shareholders’ lists but she seems to have only ever attended this one meeting.
 
I had more success with Ann Swinburn who appears as an investor in 1829 on one of the first lists and who is referred to on one list as ‘spinster’ (technically an unmarried woman over 25).She does not appear in Parson and White’s 1827-8 Directory but is listed in Pigot’s 1834 and in 1848 as a draper and hosier . The same directory also lists a Mary Swinburn in business as a toy (i.e.fancy goods) seller. Are they related ?.Mary’s name does not appear on any shareholders’ lists and marital status is not usually indicated in directories. Ann sent a proxy vote to the meeting of 20 August 1844 on the leasing of the Clarence to the Stockton and Hartlepool dock and railway company (to forestall a predatory takeover bid by George Hudson, but that’s another story) and appeared in person at the meeting of 31 March 1846 voting the payment of a dividend. On this occasion she was the only woman present.
 
Granted that she was still active in1848 I tried the 1851 census and there she was aged 65 proprietor of a house in Norton and living with her was Elizabeth Swinburn her 45 year old spinster niece (Mary’s daughter?) No wonder I could not find her baptism in Stockton parish registers She was born in Barnard Castle about 30 miles away.
One day when I have finished with my dodgy businessmen and their companies I shall return to Ann Swinburn and her like. I’ve accumulated quite a list of names but only one who twice attended a railway company shareholders’ meeting.
 

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On Saturday 23 October a conference, organised by Andrew Foster and Valerie Hitchman, entitled ‘Early modern churchwardens’ accounts: uses and abuses’, was held at the University of Kent at Canterbury. The number attending was such that a larger room than originally envisaged had had to be booked; this number also indicated the volume of interest generated by the subject matter. Although the ten speakers – who kept well to their allotted times – all gave papers on churchwardens’ accounts, the variety of ‘uses and abuses’ was particularly wide-ranging in terms of subject, time and place: from Sheila Sweetinburgh on tracking down local carpenters and the effect of the changes wrought by the Reformation on their income; through Christopher Webb on the numerous species of birds and other vermin (including a beaver) collected by poor bounty hunters, paid for by the wardens; and Vanessa Harding on the losses, or otherwise, of London churchwardens’ accounts as a result of the plague and the Great Fire; to Evie Monaghan on the lack of accounts in Ireland before 1660. Toby Barnard gave a second paper on Ireland and the paper by Katharine Olson was on accounts from Welsh and Welsh-border parishes.  There were also two theoretical papers by Don White and Gary Gibbs, focussing on the accounts as artefacts in their own right. 
            In an edited collection of essays in 1997 Andrew Foster had written a chapter on ‘Churchwardens accounts of early modern England and Wales: some problems to note, but much to be gained’, which had included a list of extant early modern churchwardens’ accounts. Subsequent research has shown that others have also survived.  At the conference Andrew and his former PhD student, Valerie Hitchman, outlined plans for the construction of a database of surviving churchwardens’ accounts, the practicalities and possibilities of which were discussed by the attendees. It was acknowledged that there were already other lists of surviving accounts, such as that by Hutton in The Rise and Fall of Merry England, but later research has shown that these lists are incomplete; added to which, previously unknown survivals are still coming to light in uncatalogued collections, whether belonging to private individuals or parishes.  
            It became clear that certain definitions needed to be thrashed out: what do we mean by ‘churchwardens’ accounts’?: some contained the accounts of other parish officers; a few had been drawn up by clergy. The term ‘parish accounts’ might be preferable; although then the question arose of other parish accounts, such as overseers’ accounts: they would not be included as they were specifically generated by parish officers other than churchwardens. Then the vexed question of the closing date was considered: the original idea had been for a database of ‘early modern’ accounts (ending c.1700), but this was a somewhat arbitrary date, and, for example, Irish accounts were only just beginning by then. Other terminal dates were suggested, such as 1800 (round figure), 1834 (new Poor Law), or 1922 (Parish Councils brought into being).  So while in general, it was agreed that a database would be an excellent research tool, various practicalities needed to be ironed out.
            The best way forward would be to run a pilot scheme, perhaps for a certain number of parishes, or for one diocese, and then see what could be learned from this scheme. The history department of the University of Kent was proposing to seek funding for the proposed database and the results of a pilot would demonstrate to the funding body the viability of the project. 
            While acknowledging that Record Offices would welcome such a database, it was agreed that in these straitened times Record Office staff could not be expected to input information – although they would undoubtedly point those engaged on the project in the direction of relevant records in their care. One of the problems encountered by earlier researchers was that catalogue entries for churchwardens’ accounts were not always accurate: date runs might be start and end dates only, not indicating where there were gaps within the run; the presence of other officers’ accounts within with the churchwardens’ was not always noted; some accounts had been wrongly catalogued or described.  The database would provide the opportunity for Record Offices to rectify such errors in their catalogues.
            It was envisaged that much of the information on the survival of these ‘parish’ accounts would be collected and submitted by volunteers, using a standard form (either printed or to be completed on computer). The funding sought by the department would pay for the inputting of the volunteers’ information and the construction and maintenance of a website. The latter would not only provide access to the database but also supply general information about churchwardens’ accounts, links to other websites, a detailed bibliography of published accounts, and articles and monographs on them. Although volunteers are not needed yet – the pilot scheme has to run first – the purpose of this report is to make readers of Local History News aware of these developments concerning what is arguably the most useful class of documents for historians working on late medieval and early modern parishes and their parishioners.
            And just as a PS, in June 2011 the Suffolk Records Society will be publishing the churchwardens’ accounts of Mildenhall, 1503-1553, together with accounts of parish collections from 1446-1454.   
 

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Why use the BBIH; or an unusual Christmas present?
If you are carrying out a piece of (local) historical research, you will want to know what others have written before on the same theme, perhaps for a different region.
The Bibliography of British and Irish History (formerly the Royal Historical Society Bibliography) offers the opportunity to carry out a very extensive search of the literature in a quick and simple way. If you remember the bad old days of doing literature searches by traipsing round libraries or hunting down pieces of writing individually in the internet, while hoping not to miss anything vital, you will certainly want to use this electronic resource where you can quickly and easily identify books, articles and even chapters within edited volumes. You can search by author name, title or, perhaps most importantly, by subject and by place. Once you know the BBIH you will use it often. However, the BBIH is now a subscription-only service. University staff and students frequently, but not always, have access to the BBIH via their institution’s library subscription. For independent scholars, access is more challenging and involves a trip to a distant library, usually in Aberystwyth, Edinburgh or London. On this see ‘ “Connect to the native interface”: access to electronic resources and websites for independent scholars’ in the current issue ofThe Local Historian (November 2010). An individual subscription allowing access to the BBIH from your home or library or internet café computer (or similar), costs £110 plus VAT per calendar year. In response to concerns expressed by BALH members, a ‘Bargain of the Year’ has been arranged. Individual members will be able to have a year's subscription to the BBIH for a further payment of just £5 in addition to their BALH membership renewal (£25) this autumn, provided it is paid by 15 December 2010. After that date BALH will incur an additional administrative charge so the further payment will be £10. In both cases the subscription will run to 31 December 2011.No other organisation offers anything like this! Do take it up and even tell your friends who do not yet belong to BALH. They can join in too.
 
Existing members will receive all this information with their renewal form.
A reminder:
 
 To take advantage of this offer you must do three things before December 15th, 2010. 
1) Ensure that you are or become a BALH individual member for 2011.
2) Send a cheque for £5 made out to BALH to BALH, PO BOX 6549. Somersal Herbert, Ashbourne DE6 5WH, with your name, membership number and email address. Your membership number is on the address label on LHN. 
3) Send an e-mail to mail@balh.co.uk with the subject line BBIH, giving your membership number, first name, surname and e-mail address, in that order. 
 

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Federations visit the house of a pickled earl
 
On Saturday 3 July members of the Republic's Federation of Local History Society and Northern Ireland's Federation of Ulster Local Studies held a joint visit to Naas, Co. Kildare. The day began with a civic reception for over 70 delegates in the old town hall chamber, hosted by the Mayor of Naas. There was a walking tour of the historic town centre, visiting the North Moat, canal harbour, courthouse, St. David's Church, and castle. Lunch in Lawlor's Hotel, another famous Naas institution, was followed by a tour of Palmerstown House, the ancestral home of Richard Southwell Bourke, 6th Earl of Mayo, known locally as the ‘Pickled Earl’ (after his assassination in India his body was returned to Ireland for burial in a barrel of rum). The visitors heard about the restoration of the house, and its long history, as well as the role of the Bourke family.
 
Important historic library taken into care

The Bolton Library in Cashel, Co. Tipperary, was originally established by eighteenth-century Church of Ireland bishop Theophilus Bolton. It comprises over 11,000 antiquarian books, maps and pamphlets, including works by Dante and Machiavelli, and has now been taken into State care by the Office of Public Works. The collection is housed in the chapter house of the Protestant cathedral of St. John the Baptist and was traditionally looked after by local clergy, but despite its proximity to the celebrated Rock of Cashel, the existence of the library was little known and it attracted few visitors. Martin Manseragh, Minister for State with responsibility for the Office of Public Works, said that a new visitor facility would be established at the library which would then form part of the Rock of Cashel complex. It will be managed jointly by the library of Limerick University and the Office of Public Works, and the building will be acquired by the State on long-term lease from the Church of Ireland. Dr. Manseragh acknowledged the care and custodianship of the library by successive deans and bishops and also the financial support provided by the late Tony Ryan, founder of Ryanair, who died in 2007.

 
Irish 1901 census available on-line

On 3 June Ms. Mary Hanafin, Minister for Tourism, Culture and Sport, launched the 1901 census of Ireland which is now available online from the Irish National Archives (www.nationalarchives.ie) The INA has posted some 4.5 million individual returns from 850.000 households from the 32 counties of Ireland, taken on the night of 31 March 1901. A matter of envy to those of us in this side of the water, the entire work is available free of charge. The 1901 census is the earliest complete population record available for Ireland since the great majority of earlier material was lost in the tragic destruction of the Irish Public Record Office during the Civil War in 1922. Other returns were classed as surplus to requirements and were pulped and recycled during the Emergency (Second World War). Its expected that inquiries about the 1901 census will at least equal those already made concerning the 1911 census, which is already available online for free. The minister said that these records, conserved and held in the National Archives, represent an extremely valuable part of the national heritage, especially those trying to trace their Irish roots. The 1901 census records the name, age, sex, religion, occupation, education, marriage details, disabilities and language spoken (English or Irish).

 
Celebrity involved in local history 

A visitor to Enniskerry, Co. Wicklow, on 22 June was veteran BBC presenter and radio broadcaster Terry Wogan, filming part of his new documentary series ‘Terry Wogan’ s Ireland’, during which he explores his Irish roots. Wogan's father was born in Enniskerry. Wogan and the production team were given a tour of the village by local historian Brian White, who first revealed the family’s links with the village in a lecture to the Enniskerry History Society in December. Some of Terry Wogan's extended family were also interviewed before the production crew moved on to Cork and Limerick to film further parts of the series. It is scheduled to be screened by the BBC sometime this autumn or early next year.

 
New Cork County Library 

On 22 June the new £24 million Cork County Library was opened, some seven months after the basement of the building was submerged by flood waters when the River Lee burst its banks in November 2009. It was designed by Shay Cleary Architects who also designed the nearby, and refurbished, Cork County Hall, which was also flooded despite apparently strict protection measures incorporated in the design. In his opening address the Mayor of County Cork said that the new building was a major asset to the library service, as a headquarters for co-ordinating services provided by 28 branch libraries, 5 mobile libraries, central reference and local studies departments. For the general public the building provided improved access and was a fitting repository for the very extensive and unique resources which had been purchased or donated and carefully collected over many years. The building, covering some 4,500 square metres on seven floors, forms part of a civic campus on the city's outskirts. For the first time since its establishment in 1917 the county library service has a worthy headquarters and focal point. In the local press members of the public subsequently raised serious concerns that the new building had been flooded in this way. 

 
South Dublin and Fingal Libraries local history collections

This summer members of the old Dublin Society visited two important local history collections. In 1994 the old Dublin County Council was dissolved, and three new authorities created in its place – the counties of South Dublin, Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown, and Fingal. The existing City of Dublin remained unaltered. On 30 June members visited the Fingal Local Studies Department in Clonmel House, Swords, Co. Dublin, to view its local history collection. Since 1994 the new Fingal County Library Service has built up an impressive collection of material relating to the northern part of the old County Dublin, including books, directories, maps, estate records, newspapers, photographs, on-line resources, census material and church records. Fingal Archives hold the records of the former Dublin County Council. A month later the Society visited the South Dublin Libraries local history collection which is housed in the Local Studies Area of Tallaght Library in Tallaght town centre. The librarian, Síle Coleman, gave members a special presentation in the Technology Teaching Room of what material can be viewed on-line, as digitising as much material as possible is a policy of the South Dublin Library Service. 
 

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The WWII slipway or ‘Tank Ramp’ as it is known locally, was built by the Pioneer Corps of the army in early 1944 and remained in military use until 1948. Its purpose was top secret testing of prototype amphibious craft and ancillaries prior to planned invasions and river crossings in Europe. This particular point on the River Trent was chosen as conditions here perfectly match that of the Rhine. It lies north of the village of Burton upon Stather on the eastern bank of the river immediately below the escarpment that forms the northern end of the Lincoln Edge.  The tanks that were tested were Valentine tanks, and later Shermans. They had a cover which could be pulled up over them to disguise their shape, and one version, nicknamed the Holy Roller, had a type of carpet roller attached to the front of the tank to enable a stable surface to be laid onto a soft riverbank. This particular model never saw production, as did many of the other prototypes to be tested at Burton.  During this time the engineer Barnes Wallis stayed for a short while at the local public house, the Ferry House Inn, which is on the river and is where BSHG hold our meetings. He was involved in a plan that would have seen tanks transported across the river using a revolutionary wire mechanism known as the Pendulum, which would be precipitated from one bank of the river to the other, then attached to the tanks, and they would cross by that means. 
 
The Burton upon Stather Heritage Group (BSHG) was formed in May 2009.   The first official meeting took place on Monday 28th May 2009 and it was decided that although the restoration of the Slipway should be our immediate priority, as a volunteer group we would help with any local project that enhances the history and heritage of our area and this remains a goal. BSHG meets once a month at our local pub, where the landlord is a member of our committee.  Unless extraordinary, meetings are kept informal and guests are welcome to join us for a pint and a chat.  Fund raising is a vital part of our work and monies raised then are used to finance our projects.  In December 2009 we leased 11 acres of land immediately above the Tank Slipway from the local landowner and have so far built access paths down the hills, created a recreation area, started planting an orchard, and fully cleared the ramp itself. We have full public liability insurance, and were keen to proceed with the lease to put the project on an official footing.
 
We obtain most of our data from veterans that were stationed locally and who still live in the area and it is then carefully checked via public records, the Imperial War Museum, and the Tank Museum. We have just celebrated our first anniversary with an Open Day/party on the ramp itself, which was very enjoyable. We are learning along the way, and are amassing a store of knowledge regarding fund-raising, legislation concerning public rights of way, and running a not for profit organisation. We operate two websites, www.burtonstatherheritage.org (the original site) and www.bshgremembers.org.uk, which deals solely with reminiscences and oral history, as we found that the growing collection of stories and interviews from veterans was demanding a site of its own.
We also have a Facebook page, which is very useful for disseminating information regarding fundraising events, and there is a PayPal link on the website for donations. We are gradually developing links with other agencies, such as Humberside Fire and Rescue (who use the ramp for their training exercises), and the Fritton Lake development in Norfolk, where the same type of testing was run on a larger scale.
 

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Civil War Remains at Basing House wins Local History Prize at Winchester Writers' Conference
 
For the 30th year, the Local History Competition, a valued part of the Winchester Writers' Conference, University of Winchester, has attracted an interesting variety of research topics which included Kimpston Manor, The Country Residence of William Hornby, Cannon Hall, Kingsclere and The Wheeler Enterprise. This competition is sponsored jointly by the Hampshire Field Club& Archaeological Society and the University of Winchester. Jane Selby, Hampshire County Record Office, is a tremendous supporter of this project.
 
Writers were invited to submit any aspect of local history in Hampshire, complete with photographs, sketches, maps and other illustrations., from 1,000 to 10,000 words in length.
 
Dr James Thomas, Reader in the School of Social , Historical and Literary Studies, University of Portsmouth, adjudicated all of the entries but felt that no entry was of sufficiently outstanding quality to merit the £250. prize and the Margaret Kryle Silver Salver Trophy. Nicola Turton's paper on the English Civil War Remains at Basing House was awarded second prize, £75. and Mrs Elizabeth Knight's entry Three Centuries of Simplicity was awarded third prize, £50.   Traditionally the first place winning entries for all of the 18 competitions are published in the conference anthology, The Best of 2010. Last year's winning entry was Hampshire Highways under Military Occupation submitted by Malcolm Walford. The anthology can be ordered from the Winchester Writers' Conference office priced at £8.95 including postage, and is an excellent benchmark for writers.
 
This 31st Local History Competition will open for entries on January 6 and will close on May 31, 2011. For entry forms and further details, please Contact Barbara Large MBE, Centre for Research and Knowledge Exchange, University of Winchester, Winchester, Hampshire S022 4NR Email Barbara.Large@winchester.ac.uk Telephone 01962 827238. We welcome your well documented and referenced essays.
 

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THE top three awards in this year’s Yorkshire History Prize have all gone to researchers based in Huddersfield – two of them are students at the town’s university.
 
Awarded annually by The Yorkshire Society and judged by a panel of leading historians, there are two categories of prize, for essays of 10,000 or 5,000 words.
 
The longer essay award, known as Beresford Prize, goes to Maggie Bullett, currently studying for an MA in history at the University of Huddersfield. She impressed the judges with her investigation of how the people of three contrasting areas of Yorkshire responded to the religious upheavals of the Elizabethan era.
 
Runner-up in the Beresford Prize was retired local government officer David Griffiths, who submitted an essay on a long forgotten but massively ambitious and successful exhibition of artworks, curios and industrial artefacts that was held in Huddersfield in 1840.
 
The shorter essay prize, the Bramley Award, has been won by William Marshall, a PhD student at the University of Huddersfield. He wrote about F.W. Moorman, a Professor of English at Leeds University in the early twentieth century who was eager to boost Yorkshire culture, and suggested that the county should have it own Welsh-style eisteddfods.
 
The prizes will be handed out at a special event to be held by The Yorkshire Society in September.
 
 
Maggie Bullett, a mother of three and a former Environment Agency water resources officer, graduated with First Class Honours in 2009 after studying part time for a History BA at Huddersfield. Her dissertation, supervised by Dr Sarah Bastow and Head of History Dr Pat Cullum, was joint top of her year and would be the basis for Maggie’s entry for the annual Beresford Prize.
 
Born in York and brought up in Halifax, Maggie studied geology at Nottingham University in the mid-1980s. This led to a 15-year career with the Environment Agency. But while on extended maternity leave she rekindled her interest in history and began as an associate student, one evening a week at the University of Huddersfield.
 
Soon she was gripped by her studies and enrolled as a part-time student. “I was attracted by the range of modules but I didn't realise until I started at Huddersfield how much I was going to enjoy it.
 
“To begin with I wasn’t interested in a particular period; it was the studying and the quality of teaching that I enjoyed”.
 
But her interest in religious identities meant that she began to home in on the Elizabethan and Stuart periods – in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries – when religion was of vital importance and the people of England were confronted by enormous changes.
 
She focussed on three contrasting Yorkshire parishes -  Sheffield, Masham and St Martin’s in York - poring over churchwardens’ accounts to gather material.
 
“I discovered that in Sheffield there was a strong, Godly element that fairly quickly became enthusiastic about sermons and psalms.  In York, once they finally accepted the changes, they veered towards the more ceremonial side of Protestantism.  At Masham they didn’t want to change at all and this led to quite a lot of conflict, including fight between parishioners and the vicar over the burning of images. ”.
 
“The amount of changes people had to make, the speed of the changes, and the degree of negotiation between parishioners and those in authority all effected upon how the Reformation progressed.”
 
Maggie is currently studying for an MA in history at Huddersfield and will write a 12,000-word dissertation based on her investigation of churches in Sheffield and Bradfield in the early Stuart period. Further study, to PhD level, might follow.
 
David Griffiths, runner-up in the Beresford Prize, is a member of Huddersfield Local History Society, which has published his booklet on local government in the town between 1820 and 1848. While researching this, David – who worked for Kirklees Council for 20 years – came across references to an Exhibition of Paintings, Curiosities, Models, Machinery, Philosophical Apparatus and Specimens of Nature and Art which took place at Huddersfield’s Philosophical Hall – now demolished – in 1840.
 
It contained thousands of exhibits – including Old Master paintings loaned by the region’s gentry – and over 15 weeks it clocked up 130,000 admissions. Yet David could find no reference to it in published histories of Huddersfield. He has rectified this with his award-winning essay, which he now aims to publish.
 
Rochdale-born, David studied social sciences and economics at Cambridge University and Birkbeck College in London. When his career in local government brought him to Huddersfield he developed a passionate interest in the town’s history. He is currently completing a history of the town's newly-restored Greenhead Park.
 
The winner of the Bramley Award,  William Marshall, who lives in Huddersfield,  is researching a PhD at the University of  Huddersfield, examining how Yorkshire’s cultural identity was shaped and expressed in books, newspapers, periodicals and other outlets in the late nineteenth century. It was in the course of his research that Mr Marshall, an ex-local newspaper journalist, encountered the life and work of F.W. Moorman.
 
“He was born in Devon, but spent most his career in Yorkshire and became passionately committed to the cause of dialect literature, writing books of poems, stories and plays that he hoped would be the raw material for a kind of cultural revival in the county, “ said William
 
“But he died in 1919, at the age of 47, in a drowning incident in the Dales, so most of his work is forgotten. His best known poem is probably the ‘Dalesman’s Litany’, sometimes performed by folk singers and often thought to have a traditional origin”.
 
University of Huddersfield staff and students have a tradition of success in the prestigious Yorkshire History Prize. For example, Professor Tim Thornton won the Beresford Prize in 2001, Dr Sarah Bastow won the Bramley in 2000, and MA student Lewis Coates won same award in 2003.
 
The University’s Head of History, Dr Pat Cullum, commented: ‘I am hugely proud of the achievements of both Maggie and William.  They demonstrate the quality and diversity of the work being done by a growing and successful community of Huddersfield History postgraduates, and the excellence of the supervision they receive.
 
“To have won the Beresford prize twice and the Bramley three times in the last decade is an achievement that the whole of the History community at Huddersfield University takes great pride in”.
 

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Between early 2009 and mid-2010 over 200 people, local and family historians, archivists, local studies librarians and members of museum groups have been working on a project to catalogue 105 volumes of the huge poor law union correspondence archive held at The National Archives (TNA) in Kew.[1'>more... The results have been uploaded in TNA’s Catalogue and are now accessible via TNA’s website at www.nationalarchives.gov.uk; follow the links to ‘the catalogue’.. Moreover, the scanned images of all of the selected volumes are available for free to download. At the last BALH ‘Open Forum’ Dr Paul Carter, Living the Poor Life Project Director, went through the project.
The kind of information held in the correspondence volumes is difficult to get elsewhere. References to the running of the workhouse, individual pauper cases, staff appointments and work, financial fraud, medical care (or medical neglect), abuse of inmates, references to local employment opportunities and wages, details of local emigrants, industrial unrest and Chartism; the subject matters are wide ranging and cases are often presented in a wealth of detail. The volumes themselves are made up of the various incoming letters from the 600 plus poor law unions and their attached reports, memos, posters etc. In addition are the draft letters and responses from the central agency in London;[2'>more... the office copies if you will. This means that the poor law union correspondence provides researchers with both ends of the millions of conversations as the Centre and poor law unions engaged in a continuous round of communication from 1834.
Although one of the largest and most important series for local history, they are shamefully neglected due to their location and poor listing; most just being listed by the place name of the union. So the Bradford Poor Law Union, made up of 20 parishes, is listed as only ‘Bradford’ and then each volume listed by the years covered. There is no mention of the thousands of names, places or subject matters so important to local, family and social historians. The ‘Living the Poor Life’ project is changing this.
Groups were formed in 20 locations across England and Wales, mostly set up through county or borough archives, local libraries, museums or local and family history societies (without the help of these organisations this project would never have got off the ground). The 105 volumes were digitised and the images held on a project web site. Volunteer editors were provided with guidance, and enabled to access or download images from the website. Each editor would read through ‘their’ selected records and provide a catalogue entry taking into account the required sections of date, names, places and subjects. The entries were returned to TNA where they would be uploaded into the Catalogue. Now instead of the brief list mentioned earlier for Bradford we get a detailed entry, and each word in the new description is searchable.
So if a researcher was interested in James Perks, an inmate of the Kidderminster Workhouse, they need only type in the name, (and optionally restrict the search to MH 12 the poor law union correspondence) and any reference to James Perks would appear. They would find that in 1840 James Perks, a six year old boy, was tied up in an old sack and left in one of the out buildings by John Stokes, the workhouse porter. Perks was found by Charlotte Guest, an inmate of the workhouse, who saw a sack suspended about a yard off the floor. She found Perks in it and told Mr Stevens [Joseph Stevens'>more..., workhouse master, about it. Stevens tackled Stokes who said he had put the boy in there because he had wet the bed; he also said that Perks was a very mischievous boy. Joseph Saunders, union clerk, later took out a summons against Stokes for an assault on Perks which resulted in a fine. It was later moved by Mr Fisher and seconded by Mr Beddoes, both guardians, that Stokes immediately be dismissed and that his wife be asked to leave with him. The letter was annotated by Sir Edmund Head, [assistant poor law commissioner'>more... that a sealed order should be immediately issued for the dismissal of Stokes. It was deemed a \'very bad case\'.
Remember a researcher looking for (1) any of the names mentioned in the entry, (2) any of the places, and (3) any of the multitude of subject matters: ‘wetting the bed’, workhouse, assault, summons, petty sessions etc. will find the object of their search. Hence the project will serve the first time family historian, the somewhat experienced local historian or the scholarly academic. Records are ‘user blind’ but only a detailed catalogue opens the records to real access.
            The digital scans used by the volunteer editors are linked to the catalogue entries through TNA’s DocumentOnline section of the website – so when finding something of interest for the researcher can click through to the scans themselves.
            In total the volunteer editors have added 4.6 million words to the catalogue; hundreds of thousands of names, places and subjects are now searchable. They should be extremely proud. It has been an immense effort and is a pointer to the future as it shows what is possible when archives, libraries, museums and hundreds of volunteers work together. 
 
 
Paul Carter
The National Archives
paul.carter@nationalarchives.gov.uk
 
 
List of unions/volumes included in ‘Living the Poor Life
 
 
Name of union                           MH 12 references            Years catalogued and digitised
 
1.         Axminster                    2095-2099             1834-1848
2.         Basford                         9228-9235             1834-1845
3.         Berwick                         8976-2981             1834-1852
4.         Bishops Stortford      4536-4540             1834-1852
5.         Blything                        11728-11735         1834-1840
6.         Bromsgrove                    13903-13903      1834-1842
7.         Cardiff                           1624616249          1834-1853
8.         Clutton                           10320-10324      1834-1853
9.        Keighley                         15158-15161        1834-1855
10.         Kidderminster                  14016-14019      1834-1849
11.    Liverpool Select Vestry     5966-5970             1834-1856
12.    Llanfyllin           16546-16548[3'>more...      1834-1856
13.    Mansfield                   9356-9362             1834-1849
14.    Mitford and Launditch       8474-8478             1834-1849
15.    Newcastle under Lyme      11363-11365      1834-1856
16.    Newport Pagnell         487-491               1834-1855
17.    Reeth                            14587-14590      1834-1871
18.    Rye                                13076-13080      1834-1843
19.    Southampton Incorporation     10997-11001      1834-1858
20.    Truro                              1527-1530             1834-1849
21.    Tynemouth                    9156-9159             1834-1855
22.    Wolstanton and Burslem      11196-11198           1834-1851
 
Prior to the ‘Living the Poor Life’ Project, two other poor law union’s correspondence were worked on and catalogued. Firstly, a group of local historians in Nottinghamshire have catalogued the complete Southwell Poor Law Union correspondence, 1834 to 1900 (MH 12/9524-9548). The material to mid 1871 are available online for free but there are no images available after that date. For Manchester, TNA staff and a small body of volunteers catalogued the correspondence for the period 1834 to 1847 (MH 12/6038-6043). However, none of the Manchester volumes are online.
 
Living the Poor Life Conference, May 2011
 
BALH is examining ways to continue the project. To celebrate the completion of the work and to further the dissemination of the mass of information uncovered during the Living the Poor Life project, BALH have organised a one day conference. This will be held at the Conference Room in Canterbury Hall, University of London, Cartwright Gardens (just off Euston Road, (handy for both Kings Cross and Euston) on Saturday 7 May 2011. A full conference programme and details for booking will be available on the BALH website by the end of November 2011.
 
 
 

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Hereford event Monday 6th September 2010
 
Hereford cathedral would not rank in the premier league, but has a little of everything from Norman to the contemporary feature which replaces a derided Victorian 'powder pot' screen (which I loved, and has gone for ever). Typical of the treasures of the cathedral was the Mappa Mundi, badly framed, stuck on the wall of the choir aisle. They thought they might sell it. It was rescued and restored mainly thanks to a donation of £3 million by John Paul Getty in 1989.
 
Fifteen members and friends assembled to see the map and to learn more about it from the archivist. There is an excellent account of the map and its importance on Wikipedia and other sites, but nothing beats the real thing, now superbly presented and housed in a brand new extension to the cathedral. When it was suggested we see it as a kind of tube map, a diagramatic visual aid geography, it all began to make sense. This was not a 'navigational' but a quasi-spiritual map, telling you as a Christian where you were and how the world surrounded you in relation to Jerusalem at its centre
 
After a further talk in the chained library, another unique possession of the cathedral, we adjourned to the upper library where Rosalind Caird extended her talk on books, their making and materials and the development of printing. Some of us knew quite a lot about these topics but the talk was superb and everyone learnt a great deal more. This new upper library, entirely timber-built, was a delight to see, full of light, an inspiration. I think it was said this is the only continuously functioning medieval library to survive in an English cathedral, still buying books.
 
The Woolhope Club, founded in 1851, occupies the front upper room of the Victorian City library and museum built at the expense of a member of the Club, Sir James Rankin, in handsome Ruskinesque style opposite the Cathedral Close. First opened in 1873, it remained the city library until 1996 when a new building was opened nearby.
We spent the afternoon session looking at and handling treasures from the Woolhope collections in their clubroom together with material from the Reference Library: a Herefordshire Pomona, photographs from the Alfred Watkins archive, rare older books and maps, including the delightful Monnington-on-Wye estate map drawn by J Bach, with a grand title page featuring the artist's beaming face hidden in a tiny curlicue. He had every reason to be pleased with his work. As well as providing a link with the illuminated books we had seen at the Cathedral, I hope it is not too fanciful to imagine he summed up a great day out.
 

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BALH Visit to Whitby
 
Members from York, from Laxton History Group, and from Barningham Local History Group joined the BALH visit to Whitby in October. Thanks go to Christiane Kroebel and Sophie Forgan for their expert guidance at the two venues. Lynda Milner has written about the visit in the morning, and Joy Allison in the afternoon.
Approaching the town from the North York Moors reminds one of those deep sided fishing villages and towns of Cornwall where the river valleys meet the sea, houses cling to the steep sides and huddle round the harbour. We need to understand the geology! After our visit to the Pannet Art Gallery and Museum all was made much clearer.
Whitby Jet is famous beyond these shores. Fossilised trees, similar to Monkey Puzzle (araucaria), are responsible. Deep in Lias shale, where they fell into stagnant water and were subsequently buried and pressurised over millions of years, lies the dense black lignite. The popularity of jet was unbounded in Victorian society when it was polished and fashioned into the most elaborate jewellery and ornaments. A small amount is still extracted and refined.
Alum extraction was a vital industry too along this section of the East coast. This mineral is also found amongst the shale and is subsequently burned for several weeks, after extraction, until one hundred tons of shale produces one ton of pure alum. During C18 and early C19 this was then used as an important fixative in the dying of fabric. For this process, tankers full of urine from major cities were brought to the area where it was mixed with the alum to complete the process!! What a job!! Alum was also used to bleach leather to the purest white for the richest markets, and without any additives(!!), effective as Epsom salts, useful for pickling, deodorant and a bleaching agent in baking powder.
What else? A museum full of artefacts from the seafaring history of the town and, of interest to the visitors from Laxton, pictures and descriptions of a Court Leet in nearby Danby.
The gallery is run by volunteers who are enviable for their enthusiasm and currently hard at work digitising archives and documents.
 
The mid-event break enabled everyone to visit the old town and sample the fabled local fish and chips in some unexpected sunshine before we reconvened at the Captain Cook Memorial Museum. Here we heard James Cook had served his apprenticeship with Captain John Walker, whose home this was, and had lodged here.
Inside a collection of maps from the late 16th to 18thcenturies showed how the world was mapped before Cook’s voyages. We learned that his maps of New Zealand were in use up to the 1980s. In Cook’s time it was believed that an undiscovered southern continent (Antarctica) existed in temperate climes.
A widely accepted theory of the day held that salt water does not freeze and ice was thought to be fresh water outflows from rivers, which, once crossed, would lead to the open ocean. A portrait of Sir Joseph Banks, who travelled on Cook’s first voyage, shows him in silk stockings and breeches, very ill clad for the ice surrounding him, while his men toiled to drag their boats over the ice in search of open water. A special exhibition in the attic, formerly the apprentices’ quarters, featured rare examples of clothing recovered from very cold mud in northern Europe. The near new condition of the hand knitted gloves, stockings and pompom hat belied their 200+ years, yet they looked wholly inadequate for severe temperatures.
The simple Quaker style of the family house has been preserved. The kitchen has been recently excavated, revealing the herringbone brick floor which Cook would have known. This work also showed that the house had no foundations and on asking the builder securing it for the future how it had stood so long, the answer came ‘Habit’!
The rooms in the house are themed and feature many beautiful paintings of Cook, his contemporaries and the people and plants discovered on his voyages. The fascinating original documents, helpfully transcribed, include a poignant letter from Cook’s widow seeking a pension, but also informing the visitor that she lived to 93 years of age in apparently comfortable circumstances.
 

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BALH Conference 2011
Our Regional Conference in 2011 will be held from 15-17th April, at Aberystwyth and has been organised in association with the National Library of Wales, the Ceredigion Archives Service, the Ceredigion Historical Association and Ceredigion Museum, the contact point for the Ceredigion Local History Forum. The theme of the programme is ‘Houses and Communities in Wales’.
Helen Palmer, the County archivist, will open the conference on Friday evening with a paper on ‘Ceredigion and its archives’; and after dinner, William Troughton of the National Library of Wales, an expert on the history of the town, will talk about the historic ‘Port and Streets of Aberystwyth’. Events on Saturday will take place at the National Library of Wales. In Y Drwm (the Drwm lecture theatre) we will hear fromBeryl Evans, an expert on sources for Local History at the Library. Dr. Richard Suggett and Dr Eurwyn Wiliam of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales; Prof. David Austin of Lampeter and Gerald Morgan of Aberystwyth University will share with us the fruits of their research into ‘Houses and communities in Wales’; and the plenary lecture, ‘Horses for Courses:  Writing different histories of Wales’ will be given by Professor Geraint H. Jenkins, the former Director of the University of Wales Centre for Welsh and Celtic Studies. The Library closes at 5pm and the afternoon session will be followed by guided historic walks into and around Aberystwyth, before dinner.
The Sunday morning session will take place in Ceredigion Museum and consider ‘Local History in Ceredigion Now’.  Michael Freeman, the Curator of the Museum, will talk about and discuss the work of the Ceredigion Local History Forum, after which the conference will officially close.  However, arrangements have been made with the Forestry Commission for delegates to visit Hafod,12 miles away up the Ystwyth valley, a journey described by the AA as ‘one of the ten most scenic drives in the world’.  Originally one of the holdings of the Cistercian Abbey of Strata Florida (the subject of Prof Austin’s presentation), Hafod Uchtryd’s late eighteenth century owner Thomas Johnnes made it one of the finest examples in Europe of a Picturesque landscape. It remains a Grade 1 listed historic landscape. Anaward winning reforestation project, currently underway, will ensure that the landscape around the historic walks and the views from them do justice to Thomas Johnnes’s creation. Lunch can be obtained locally at the Hafod Arms or in Aberystwyth. Lifts will be available back to Aberystwyth station. 
The Conference accommodation will be in single rooms in Aberystwyth University’s Pantycelyn hall of residence, adjacent to the National Library of Wales.  The Conference Fee includes bed and breakfast and evening meal on Friday 15th and Saturday 16th April and lunch on Saturday.  Places can be booked online at the BALH website (where there will be further details of the programme) or by requesting paper copies of forms from BALH, PO Box 6549, Somersal Herbert, Ashbourne, Derbyshire, DE6 5WH. Parking is available at Pantycelyn and the station in the town is some 15 minutes walk away – taxis are available to bring delegates up the hill to the Hall, where delegates will be welcomed.
 

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The origins of the Forum lie in the former Durham County Council’s Community Heritage Project which over a period of five years and with help from Heritage Lottery Funding and the backing of local archives and museums sought to raise public awareness of the rich resources that existed within local communities for the study of the past and to facilitate the use of them by offering advice and training to interested groups. Over the five years of its existence the Project produced regular editions of Community Matters an illustrated free magazine giving news of events being planned ,.reporting on the progress of existing projects, listing relevant publications and publicising training sessions of all kinds. It also organised annual themed networking days at which those with a shared interest in a particular aspect of Durham’s heritage could meet and exchange ideas.
 
In 2008 as the Project drew to an end there was a strong feeling among participants that its, by now well established, activities should be continued by some other countywide organisation.. During the planning period every effort was made to maintain the existing links and after months of negotiation what emerged was the Forum which was formally constituted on 16 February 2010 at a meeting addressed by the organisation’s President John Grundy .
For those readers outside the region John Grundybased in Newcastle is a well known presenter of short local history programmes for BBC1’s daily half hour magazine programme ‘Look North ‘ and a great enthusiast for anything relating to the culture and heritage of the North East.
 
The launch was followed on 27 March by a very well attended half day seminar held in county hall on the theme of ‘County Durham History : what’s going on between the Tyne and the Tees’ the idea being to bring members up to date with some of the more recent development s
 
The speakers were Gill Parkes on Mining Durham’s Hidden Depths  the Durham County Archives’ community volunteer project transcribing mining union records which will constitute an important addition to the great wealth of accessible information about all aspects of coalmining in the County  held in the archive. On a completely different note Joy Pounder one of the instigators of the very localised Crowtrees Heritage Group’s Archaeology and Landscape project outlined the way in which environmental issues and the provision of an amenity for local residents and schools could be incorporated into a heritage project,  Samantha Belcher of the Bowes Museum explored the means whereby a little known archaeological collection housed in a museum much better known for French antiques and classical paintings.could be opened up to the public, Finally John Smith of the Durham VCH who has had a major role in the training of the volunteer researchers on whom this venerable enterprise depends for its completion talked about the difficulties encountered but also about how the long term interest generated for the participants pointed forward to the next stage of the trust’s work the researching East Durham’s villages. Finally John Grundy reminded us of the wealth of history enshrined in the Methodist chapels of the county, many of them under threat from modern developers as congregations dwindled and local communities requirements and priorities changed.
 
The Forum produces a regular newsletter listing events and work in progress and will hold its first AGM on 20 November in the context of a local history fair held at Locomotion the Shildon based branch of the National Railway Museum. The appropriate highlight of the meeting will be a lecture by John Addyman the chairman of the North Eastern Railway Association entitled ‘ How they built them Early Civil Engineering in County Durham with particular reference to railways’.
There have already been several projects on specific local industries which it is hoped will feed into the topic of Forum’s next year’s programme ‘Working Lives’ and generate further participation and exploration of surviving evidence from groups across the county. This after all is what the Forum was set up to do. 
 

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Isambard Kingdon Brunel Through Time
John Christopher
Amberley Publishing 2010
£14.99 ISBN 978 1 84868 963 3
 
Another book on Brunel? We might have expected books on Isambard Kingdom Brunel to have been exhausted by the plethora produced in recent years to mark the 200 anniversary of his birth in 1806,and 150 years since his death on 1859. And perhaps there is indeed little new to be said about the man; phrases such as ‘greatest engineer’, ‘one-man industrial revolution’, life of superlatives’ echo here again. But John Christopher has taken a fresh approach. This book appears in the Amberley series ‘Through Time’, and it is legitimately reviewed in a local history magazine, within the ‘picture books’ slot. Brunel’s engineering achievements left their mark on rural and urban landscapes across the southern and western regions of the country. It is this legacy that the author has revisited, taking many new photographs in exploring how time has changed the bridges, tunnels, buildings and railways resulting from Brunel’s vision and skills.
 
Using the tried-and-tested format of old and new images juxtaposed on the page, the reader is emphatically shown how durable most of Brunel’s engineering achievements have proved, and how, even in the examples where subsequent developments have taken place, the original design and structure is still a vital part of the whole. Most of the book focuses on railways and bridges, with a somewhat contrived division between them. There are many bridges as well as tunnels, stations and other buildings in the ‘railways’ section, and most of the ‘bridges’ were built to carry railways. Entirely distinct were Brunel’s three magnificent steamships. As John Christopher says ‘[i'>more...t was considered perfectly reasonable for him to dip into a wide range of engineering disciplines. The fact that he had never designed a ship of any kind was of no consequence’. Today SS Great Britain can be seen in Bristol, beautifully restored in the very dry dock where it was built. Photographs of significant parts of the ship, and of issues that arose during its reconstruction, reflect the fascination still held by Brunel, and should tempt readers who have not visited to do so.
 
Bingham, Back in Time
A History of Settlement in the Parish of Bingham, Nottinghamshire
 
Peter Allen, Geoff Ashton & Adrian Henstock
 
Bingham Heritage Trails Association, with Lowdham Writers’ Group 2010
ISBN 978 0 9554359 3 5
£12.50 from Bingham Library, the Lowdham Bookshop, or £15 post-paid from BHTA 3 Quantock Grove, Bingham, Nottingham NG13 8SE
 
This impressive publication is the result of a massive project, and demonstrates what can be achieved over time, with a substantial team of volunteers, clear planning, professional support and advice, and a huge amount of hard work and enthusiasm, plus some lottery funding.
Investigating the history of human settlement in Bingham parish was a huge task; the resulting story told in this book covers half a million years, and shows that people have been living in the area and working the land since Mesolithic hunter-gatherers came to spend their summers.
The project was in three parts. Archaeological fieldwalking was carried out on all the arable land in the parish, plus cleaning, classifying and recording the finds. This winter exercise required large numbers of dedicated people, encouraged by regular ‘wine and finds’ evenings; when the last field was completed in Nov 2007 over 2,400 km had been walked. Analysis of all available historical maps and other supporting material was the second element. Written surveys exist from 1586 and 1776, and conjectural parish maps were constructed from these, to compare with the tithe map of 1841/2 and later OS publications. Thirdly a topographical and geophysical survey was made of the deserted medieval village in Crow Close.
 
Chronological chapters, copiously illustrated, show how the results of the archaeological and documentary research reveal the life of people in Bingham through the ages. Photographs of the finds – from Palaeolithic flint tools, medieval pottery, Georgian wig curlers, to pieces of school slates; maps showing the distribution of types of finds, and as time passes, samples of documentary sources, early and then modern photographs of the village all contribute to sharing the results with the wider world. The effective use of colour adds clarity to what could have been confusingly technical information, encouraging the general reader, and making this project even more accessible.
 
All aspects of the book’s production were undertaken by members of the team.. Unfortunately it is rather too large for the style of paperback binding selected, and the landscape format does not facilitate handling.
On the plus side there is an index, comprehensive bibliography, clear captions, text boxes explaining key terms and issues, and a ‘roll of honour’ listing the names of those contributing to what was truly a community project.
 

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You may have seen the BBC 1 series Turn Back Time The High Street in which shops of various eras are briefly recreated in a dozen towns for our education and entertainment. The first programme centred on Shepton Mallet in the 1870s. BBC Hands on History creates research and learning resources to accompany the programmes in the form of another shop which ‘pops up’ for three days in these towns. The public visit the recreated shop and bring in their own period documents, photos, artefacts and memories. They also experience the sounds and smells of shopping history decade-by-decade on a timeline. Visitors receive a guide to researching the history of their local high street or teaching materials for schoolchildren (see the Hands on History website), while the local press, radio and TV do interviews.
In the first half-hour of opening, 170 people entered a pop-up shop in Chatham Pentagon Mall. They arrived in the set of a 1930s grocer’s, with actors playing the shopkeeper and customer, and Chatham Local History Society’s president, Bryan Joyce, ready to answer questions. Another local historian, Tony Wheeler, guided walks along the real High Street, and Medway Archives and Local Studies Centre lent 1930s illustrations of Chatham and local newspapers to browse. Schoolchildren enjoyed putting on shop assistants’ costumes, and their teachers led them away happy to start investigating the past of their own high streets, using the guide to which BALH contributed.
 

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Security in record offices has become a significant issue during the past quarter-century, as staff have realised that theft of documents does unfortunately take place. High profile cases in which people have been found with hoards of stolen items, or pilfered material has appeared at auction rooms and online sales venues, have raised major concerns. As almost any record office user now appreciates, this means electronic barriers, assiduous counting or weighing of documents, restrictions on the number of items made available at one time, and the banning of bags, folders, and files.
 
But the Cumbria Record Office at Whitehaven has, if my recent investigation is correct, introduced a much more drastic solution to the problem. As would be entirely proper, no details of this strategy were released to the general public, perhaps for fear of a major backlash from users or because, if it was more widely known, the determined thief would find a way round the strategy. Although I know Catherine and Robert, the archivists at Whitehaven, quite well, they have clearly been tight-lipped about it - I imagine, in fact, that they would not be too happy if they knew that I am now giving publicity to the scheme … but, well, ‘publish and be damned’. I became aware of what was going on only through a casual reference a few weeks ago, when I was working through the catalogues of one of their major collections and came across the following reference:     
 
DCU/5/225            Estate maps: plan by J. Steble of lands in Harrington, including Holehouse and Walkhow, Lowca Gates, Tarn Fields, and Micklam; with field names and acreages. [Part missing'>more...; Guarded by rodent
 
Sitting, eyes closed and breathing deeply as I pondered, I suspected that this might be a capybara, the giant South American guinea pig which grows up to 4 feet 3 inches and can weigh 140lb. Given that it is normally a peaceful creature, my deduction was that Cumbria Record Office had developed a special fighting beast, which will bare its fearsome jaws and utter terrifyingly loud squeaks to deter the potential thief. In its natural habitat, the forests of Brazil and the Andes, the capybara is semi-aquatic, but clearly the strongroom at Whitehaven will not provide a suitable habitat, so I postulated, as I mused on the subject, that after the office closes at 5 pm one of the staff takes the animal down for a swim in the harbour. 
 
Of course, this was pure speculation, but I couldn’t believe that any other rodent would do – a rat would be more inclined to eat the documents, a mouse would be too small and not sufficiently scary to deter the determined criminal. Or that criminal would only need a cat (or be a cat burglar?) to defeat the guard. But what also puzzled me was why this particular map should have been guarded in this way. It would seem, from the catalogue entry, to be entirely innocuous – unremarkable, dated 1763, the sort of item which might be found in any estate collection. So I could only assume that there is something very unusual about DCU/5/225.
 
I wondered if perhaps it holds some secret code – that on it is inscribed, in cryptic and elusive symbols or some ostensibly harmless text, the whereabouts of the Holy Grail? Did that eighteenth-century estate surveyor in West Cumberland find the answer to the mysteries of the universe and, failing to persuade the good people of Harrington of the truth of his discovery, then wrote it down for posterity - but set a specially terrifying guard upon the document. Maybe a dynasty of killer rodents, the care of which is entrusted to the archivists, a torch passed down untold generations. I see a best-selling thriller emerging …
 
I open my eyes, determined to investigate further … but what is this? An enigmatically-mysterious word is written beneath the catalogue entry. It is … ah, alas, all is made clear. An unknown later hand has crossed through ‘Guarded’ in faintest pencil and beneath has written ‘Gnawed’. It’s a typing error.  
 

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Local History Day 2011: plans are well advanced for our main event of the year. There is a flyer with this mailing and a booking form in the centre pages. Please book your tickets and encourage your friends to come too. The topic for discussion in morning session will become increasingly relevant as public spending cuts begin to bite. It will be a time for making the best use of existing resources, and thinking creatively about alternative ways of doing things, so exchanging ideas will be vital.
 
Local History Day 2012: just in case you are looking at the following year’s diary, our regular choice of the first Saturday in June will fall next to the retimed Bank Holidays of 4 and 5 June. So Local History Day will be on 26 May.
 
BALH Awards for personal achievement: remember the closing date for nominations is 31 December 2010. The form was in the August issue of Local History News and can be found on our website www.balh.co.uk/awards.php
 
WDYTYA 2011: BALH will again be at the huge event Who Do You Think You Are Live! for the weekend 25 – 27 February 2011 at Olympia, spreading the message that ‘local history’ is important for ‘family history’
 
Web-based resources: in the last issue I hinted at the plans we were considering for offering members direct access to one of the most valuable bibliographies for historians. You will have received details with your renewal letter, and we are delighted at the response so far. It is important that as many members as possible take up this opportunity, and also spread the word to encourage others to join BALH in order to benefit. We would very much like to be in a position to continue with this as a service to our members, many of whom are independent researchers without access to institutional subscriptions to such resources. See page 15. PLEASE REMEMBER TO SEND THE EMAIL TOO!
 

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Between 1897 and 1970 British Pathé recorded thousands of hours of newsreel throughout the country. This is a potentially amazing source for local historians. Everyone is being asked to visit the website, search for people, places and events in areas they know, watch the films and check the notes. Any errors or omissions should be emailed (with the film ID) to localhistory@britishpathe.com www.britishpathe.com
 
The digitisation of Cheshire’s tithe maps has been a hugely successful project, generating large numbers of hits on the Cheshire Archives and Local Studieswebsite. A new project, funded by the Cheshire Local History Association, has made a selection of early Cheshire maps from the collection at the Cheshire Record Office, scanned and made available online. It includes the first map of the county (Saxton 1577). Later maps over several sheets have been seamlessly ‘stitched’ together. www.cheshirehistory.org.uk/archve/
 
Never get complacent about the safety of archives! The following is from a recent issue of Friends of Cumbria Archives newsletter, the Chairman has a long standing interest in the Charlotte Mason archive; the eponymous campus is now largely closed: ‘I was surprised to learn … that several boxes of materials from the days of the independent college were due to be dumped … we rescued six boxes including the official minute book (the old sort in which sheets were stuck into a large ledger) for the years 1960-1972. As far as I know there is no other copy. The materials are now in the Armitt Library’. The Charlotte Mason Archive has been subject to a substantial digitisation, and will shortly be launched at the University of Toronto.www.focas1991.co.uk
 
Corporate websites can be a useful source on the history of the organisation and the industry or activity involved, though this information is not always simple to find. Try http://www.ordanancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/aboutus/history/index.html. Or http://www.Cadbury.co.uk/cadburyandchocolate/ourstory/Pages/ourstoryFlash/aspx
 

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The new Wandsworth Museum, housed in the old West Hill Library, was officially opened by Boris Johnson Mayor of London at the beginning of September. A timeline running round the first room starts in 23,000BC and ends in 2010AD. The permanent displays are divided into three strands, Natural Landscape, Cultural Landscape and Human Story. In addition there is a temporary exhibition space, where the first offering is ‘Wandsworth: a History in 100 objects’. It is three years since the old museum closed, community support for the new one has been potent; it would not have been possible without a generous £2m donation but will need to become self-financing. Wandsworth Historical Societywww.wandsworthhistory.org.uk
 
The Samplers project at the British Schools Museum, Hitchin, has obtained a grant for the conservation of two samplers in their important collection, and an application is being made for further funding to treat another ten. The Friends of the Museum have contributed towards the purchase of a display cabinet which will both keep the samplers in suitable conditions and permit access. Five more samplers needing attention are being promoted on an ‘adopt-a-sampler’ scheme to raise the necessary support. Many of the samplers were actually made in the schools, they taught not only needlework skills and techniques, but also the alphabet, numbers, and geography.
  
Sheffield’s secret museum’ is the headline on an article inWoodsetts Local History Society Magazine introducing the Traditional Heritage Museum at the National Centre for English Cultural Tradition at Sheffield University. Run by volunteers in a former church hall, the museum was started by Professor John Widdowson, and shows life and work in the city from 1850 to 1950, including workshops of a basketmaker, a clogmaker and a filemaker. www.thm.group.shef.ac.uk
 
Another unusual museum is drawn to the attention of readers of Edmonton Hundred Historical SocietyNewsletter. Under Fire is Britain’s only wartime fire service museum. Located on the former Night Fighter Training Station at RAF Twinwood, Bedfordshire, it is funded, maintained and staffed solely by volunteers who are all fire service enthusiasts. The museum is open on Sundays and bank holidays from May to October.www.twinwoodairfield.co.uk (there is also a Glenn Miller museum at Twinwood!)
 
Mill Green Museum, Hatfield, has just held its Second World War II Intergenerational Day. In September people from the ‘wartime generation’ shared their reminiscences of the war with school children from Countess Anne School. Lunch was prepared using wartime recipes and a re-enactment group appeared as Hatfield’s Home Guard.museum@welhat.gov.uk 01707 271362 Hatfield Local History Society hatfieldhistory@ntlworld.com
 
‘Photographing Wiltshire’s Treasures’ is the result of an exciting and unusual project run by Wiltshire Council Museums Service in conjunction with New College, Swindon and museums within the county. Photography and media students from New College undertook week-long volunteer placements at the museums. Their objective was to produce a set of quality digital images of objects from each collection, with guidance from a professional photographer and from the museums’ curators. Students, professionals and volunteers at the museums all benefited from this project. It took the Winner of winners award – ‘Making a Difference’ - at the recent Voluntary & Community Sector Awards ceremony in the county, after leading the Innovation category by showing ‘that with a little bit of imaginative thinking an otherwise everyday project can make creative use of the resources and people on its door step…[and'>more... provides new opportunities for people to work together whilst broadening their experiences of community life’.www.newcollege.ac.uk/wiltshirestreasures