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Past Matters
The newsletter of Wiltshire and Swindon Record Office
No.17 Winter 2006
- WSRO moves to Chippenham, May-Oct 2007 - and becomes WSA
- Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry archives
- Unigate returns to its roots
- GWR pension fund index to personal names
- Other new archival arrivals
- Wiltshire Wills now on-line!
- Farewell to John d'Arcy
Record Office News
When the Record Office moves to Chippenham next summer it will leave behind not only its home for the last thirty six years but its name. To emphasise that the service is moving into the Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre its new name will be Wiltshire and Swindon Archives.
Construction work on the new History Centre at Chippenham has been completed, on time and within budget. The building will be tested during the next two months to check that it can maintain the correct environmental conditions that will ensure the long term preservation of these irreplaceable archives. Early indications are that the temperature and humidity controls are working well. There are seven separate strongrooms, each accessed through an air lock. They have eight inch concrete walls, four hour fire-resistant doors, and a sprinkler system which uses inert gas rather than water to suppress fire.
When we move to these new premises, all archives will be transferred and regrettably we will have to close the office during that period. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause, but hope you will be able to arrange visits before or after the closure. Microfiche and transcripts of parish registers will remain available in the Local Studies Library at Trowbridge until September.
The office will be open at Trowbridge until the end of April 2007. The move is scheduled to start in May 2007. All records should be transferred by August, but sorting of records could take until October. The office will re-open in October 2007 and normal service will resume, in the new building, the Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre in Cocklebury Road, Chippenham, near to the railway station. There will parking for about 40 cars for staff and visitors.
If you want to carry out research and use Wiltshire and Swindon archives in 2007, please avoid May to October 2007 as archives will be unavailable during these months and the office will be closed to all visitors.
The annual closure in January will not take place in 2007.
For further information please contact us.
First in Arms
A substantial collection of archives of the Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry (3560) has recently arrived at the Wiltshire & Swindon Record Office. Formed in 1794, the Yeomanry is the senior regiment in the Territorial Army.
The prize of the collection, and a superb historical resource, is a magnificent set of photograph albums and scrap books with papers dating back to 1794 and photographs from 1861.
They cover military exercises and manoeuvres on Salisbury Plain in the nineteenth century, through the Boer War period, 1899-1902, and then continuously until the 1970s.
The period includes the Yeomanry’s Second World War campaigns in Palestine, Syria and El Alamein in North Africa.
There are also regimental letter books, with copies of orders and letters to and from the Yeomanry from 1837, and bound copies of regimental orders from 1938 to 1967.Some of the more unusual items in the collection include early menu cards from around the time of the First World War, and an 1871 handbook on sword, carbine, pistol and lance exercises and field gun drills issued by the War Office.
A regimental orderly book for 1830 is of particular interest as it records the responses of the regiment to the outbreak of machine breaking known as the Swing Riots in November and December 1830. This is the original source used by Henry Graham in his history of the regiment published in 1886, and it is good that it will now be more accessible.
One fascinating item is a handwritten letter from Brigadier B L Montgomery dating from 1937. The letter was written before Montgomery became a Field Marshal and achieved acclaim for leading the victory at El Alamein. It praises the Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry’s ‘great heart’ and expresses how grateful he is for their hard work.
Back to its roots
A major group of Unigate PLC archives (3557) has now been returned to Wiltshire by the company, now known as Uniq, whose business is based on selling packaged food. It started in Wiltshire at the turn of the last century, under the name of Wiltshire United Dairies. In 1915 it became United Dairies and moved its head office to London, and all the minute books from that date are now here, together with many other records of dairy companies that were bought up all over the south of England.
In 1959 United Dairies amalgamated with Cow and Gate Ltd of Guildford and the new firm was called Unigate. About 80 volumes of minutes have brought the firm’s history up to 1992, just before it ceased to be in the milk business. The archive is a significant one for the history of the dairy industry.
The catalogues now arriving…
The shelves in the catalogue room are groaning under the weight of a massive new arrival from the keyboard of railway enthusiast David Colcomb ably assisted by Clive Gale. Together they have compiled an index to the GWR Pension Fund registers (2525/351), relating to uniformed traffic staff (porters, signalmen and guards, but not ticket clerks), which covers 56, 000 employees between 1880 and 1956. The registers state name, date of birth, date of entry to the scheme, and cause and date of leaving.
This supplements his earlier work on the registers covering engine drivers and firemen, and means that there are now comprehensive finding aids to two of the main series of staffing records held in the Record Office; the incomplete run of Swindon Works staff registers await the same attention.
Other new arrivals
As our attention turns increasingly to our new home in The Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre, the work of collecting and making available the archives of the county and borough continues, and recent new arrivals have included the records of Clarendon Park Parish Council (3539) with an excellent run of rate and valuation books covering the years 1886-1926.
While listing the latest additions to the archives of Parker Bullen, a firm of Salisbury solicitors, as part of his course work for a Master’s degree in archive administration, Robert Pearson came across a book entitled ‘Official Memoranda’ (ref 776/1200) which contains biographical details in alphabetical order of the clients and staff of Lee & Powning as the firm was then called. It seems to have been started in the 1850s and mainly consists of death, burial and probate information. Although most references are local to Wiltshire, those overseas range from Benares (1858) and Bhutan (1866) in India – both of soldiers – to Pasadena, California (1927) and Davos, Switzerland (1898).
The book was probably started by Charles Marsh Lee (1816-1882), as there are two pages devoted to details of his own life, and it was continued after his death by other partners in the firm, the latest entry being a burial in 1939. We learn that Charles died at his private residence in Castle Street, Salisbury in 1882, and his widow, Helen, lived on for twenty seven years and died in Rome – possibly a lady who knew how to make good use of her inheritance. Members of several local gentry families, clients of the firm, such as Eyre, Matcham, Hussey and Freke - as well as combinations of those names – are recorded. The earliest note relates to the Goddards with births recorded back to 1790, which give the hour of each birth, a rare detail at a time when it is usual to find only baptismal dates.
Other events noted are the dates various places were connected to Salisbury by rail – such as the completion of the Exeter line in 1860 – and the coming of the telegraph to the city in 1854. Possibly the most intriguing entries are to do with the arrival and departure of staff at the firm. Some tenures were short, either through their own failings, such as Frederic Furlonger who “came to the Office 25th March 1861”, but who left on 9th September being “disgraced, a thief”; or through no fault of their own, like poor Mr. Speed, who arrived 22nd August 1863, but went to Fisherton Asylum two weeks later and died there. Some stayed longer – James Sutton worked at the firm for thirty seven years, but was dismissed in 1882. No official reason was given, but there is a little drawing of two barrels, one marked ‘Gin’ and the other ‘XXX’, just above his entry, implying that drink was his problem.
Wiltshire Wills’ index goes on-line
The presence on the web of our catalogues is now widely known judging by the hits on the Access to Archives site. As our catalogues are about to go live on our own website this December (http://history.wiltshire.gov.uk/heritage) it is worth perhaps pointing out to those of you who are remote users of our service that the online search is to the catalogue only, and a selection of digital images, not to all the archives themselves. An unsuccessful search for a name online need not be the last throw of the dice. As those who use sources like parish registers and local rating records will be aware it is not the purpose of the catalogues to include every name in the documents. If it was the task of listing would never be completed or at best the catalogues would require shelving comparable to that currently provided for the seven miles of archives in the Record Office.
Aided by the excellent books now available, and the advice of Record Office staff, it is possible to consider extending research into less used sources such as land and property surveys and rentals, taxation and rating records, electoral registers and similar sources that provide personal names which enable families (or, more accurately, heads of households) to be located. It is hoped that in the new History Centre more people will be encouraged to delve more deeply into lines of historical enquiry.
One more obscure source illustrates the point. The account books, 1817-1825 (ref 91/2-6) of James Bull, a tailor of Westbury, contain the names of his many local customers who had clothes made, repaired or altered. As well as being of use to historians of clothes and fashions, they have a genealogical interest. Familiar Westbury names like Benjamin Overbury, John Matravers, (clothiers who may have supplied the cloth), Nicholas and James Cockle, Samuel Otto esq, Thomas Heal Phipps esq, and Mr Pinniger, (solicitor), purchased coats, trousers and waistcoats for themselves and their sons (infuriatingly identified just as ‘Master …’ ). In April 1819 Robert Haines esq paid Bull for making a livery coat 14s, for gold lace 4d, a gallon sleeve waistcoat 19s 6d and Bedford cord breeches complete £1 8s. The hope of many family historians is to put flesh on the bones of their ancestors; these records allow some to put the clothes on their backs.
And Finally
There will be no newsletter next summer as we will be in the throes of the move. By the time of the next one John d’Arcy, Principal Archivist will have retired after 34 years in the office. During that time John has been most assiduous and persistent in gathering in archives of local government authorities, many local organisations and businesses that reflect a wide range of activities and interests and give the collections an impressive breadth. This is his lasting contribution to the Record Office. He has organised the move of the archives to their new home and will retire as that is completed. We wish him every happiness for the future.
Contributors: John d’Arcy, Mervyn Grist, Robert Pearson, Claire Skinner. and Steve Hobbs, editor.
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