Here at Gloucestershire Archives, we are lucky enough to deal with many rare and unique items. One such item that recently made its way to us from Canada is the Catherine Dickinson sketchbook which has been assigned the reference D6/F172/5.
What is the connection between Gloucestershire, India and Canada you may very well ask?
Continue readingThe subject of mental health is very much in the news these days, but the historic record shows that the topic is anything but new. In fact, Gloucestershire Archives holds the largest collection of mental health records of any repository in the country. These are on the whole related to the City’s three mental health institutions Barnwood House Private Mental Hospital and Trust, Horton Road County Lunatic Asylum and Coney Hill Hospital.
Continue readingOur tale this time takes us to Cheltenham. Or as it was known when I was a wee boy “Chelpenum”. Cheltenham is the second biggest town in Gloucestershire after Gloucester which is the county town. Cheltenham is famed as a spa town and the home of the Cheltenham races. Cheltenham stands on the small River Chelt, which rises nearby at Dowdeswell and runs through the town on its way to the Severn. It was first recorded in 803, as Celtan hom; the meaning has not been resolved with certainty, but latest scholarship concludes that the first element preserves a Celtic noun cilta, ‘steep hill’, here referring to the Cotswold scarp; the second element may mean ‘settlement’ or ‘water-meadow’.
Continue readingIt is that time of the year again when we look at the accessions of the first quarter of the year, January to March 2024. The accessions can be from any place, person or organisation in Gloucestershire and South Gloucestershire.
Continue readingI’m retiring after a very fulfilling and happy 36 (gulp!) years working at Gloucestershire Archives and have been asked to a write a farewell blog. So, here it is. I have eschewed any attempt at a chronological narrative, and instead have decided to focus on three collections which have run like threads throughout my career. My acquaintance with all three began early, during my ‘Collections’ era, and I’ve been able to reconnect with them several times as my role has become more outward focussed.
Continue readingAmongst the records placed onto the online catalogue in the last quarter was a long-distance traveller, all the way from Australia! A register of cases at the Cotswold Maternity Hospital for the years 1937-1945, it emigrated post-War with one of the former midwives. Recently her daughter contacted the Archives (through Gloucestershire Family History Society) offering to return the register. We are very grateful to her for this initiative, and for offering to pay a fair sum in postage.
Back in March, Gloucestershire Archives was given some documents and photos pertaining to the Pringle family of Longhope (D11928, accession 16319).
The photographs came into Collections Care to receive custom protective enclosures, as carefully wrapping and boxing in archival-quality materials is one of the best ways of ensuring their preservation. Good protective enclosures help to protect them from physical damage and other agents of deterioration.
All the portraits were attractive and appealing, but there was something particularly intriguing about this portrait of a little girl.
Continue readingChurchwardens are lay officials who oversaw the routine running of parishes. They were elected to their positions by other members of the laity (a body of people not in orders as opposed to the clergy) and usually served a single term. Their primary job was to procure and disburse funds from parishioners for the maintenance of the parish church and other parish buildings. To keep track of all this, churchwardens created account books which recorded their income and expenditure. All manner of things are represented including incomes and expenses of parish officials, church repairs (to doors, gates, pews and graveyard walls), plus sundry items such as washing surpluses, brooms, bell ropes and communion bread and wine.
However, another, more tragic aspect of these records is that they usually list bounties paid for catching ‘vermin’. By the mid-1500s, the population of Britain had recovered from the Black Death and was starting to rise rapidly. However, agriculture didn’t keep pace and frequently harvests were poor – the harvests of 1527, 1528 and 1529 were particularly dreadful. In just over three years, most food prices doubled in England. A further abysmal harvest in 1532 was the final straw and concerned least this cause major civil unrest, Henry VIII passed ‘An Act made and ordained to destroy Choughs Crows and Rooks, 1532’. This Act was specially aimed at reducing the number of rooks, crows, and choughs [jackdaws], in the hope of protecting grain harvests and it stated that:
Continue readingThe one thing that I think most people know about the coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953 was that it was the first such event to be televised, and many people bought TV sets just so that they could watch it. My dad was six at the time and I remember him telling me that half the street crowded into his parents’ living room to peer at the tiny screen as the Queen was crowned.
In Gloucester, the TV service arrived in the spring of 1951, and I’ve recently discovered, from the Town Clerk’s file on the subject, that Gloucester was the first place in the world to have a television service provided by relay -in other words, the signal from the transmitter was too weak to reach the city, so a further transmitter was placed on Chosen Hill to relay the signal right into Gloucester residents’ homes.
The Corporation of Gloucester had advertised for a company to work with them to provide the service and Link Sound and Vision Services Ltd got the contract. It seems as though there was a bit of a race to be the first place with a relay service, and after Gloucester ‘won’, the Deputy Town Clerk had to correct at least one claim from another local authority in an article he wrote for the Municipal Journal.
This blog provides some details of the accessions received and processed at Gloucestershire Archives during the first quarter of 2023. These can be from any place, person or organisation in Gloucestershire and South Gloucestershire.
During the first three months of this year we added 342 new accessions to our online catalogue. That includes numerous books and other publications, which are part of our Local History Collection.
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Gloucestershire Archives 