No peas please, just the Canadian Mould and some ca-barge, 1920’s style

Some vegetables can be thoroughly boring can’t they?

Peas for example. I find peas exceptionally boring. Without wishing to offend the world’s population of peas, they do exude as much personality and excitement as a chopping board.

But if some vegetables can be boring, can any be exciting?*

I’m not a vegetable aficionado I’m afraid, so I’ll just have to leave that question hanging like an oversized pumpkin (and look very silly amongst the botanist community because a pumpkin is actually classed as a fruit.)

The Story of one woman, throughout the census

The census can be a great tool for tracking your family history through the years. Our January Passport to the Past event focused on what the census could tell us about one women. The full event is available on our YouTube channel here!

Its Festival time again!

Next week is the Three Choirs Festival in Gloucester.  If you carry out a search of the phrase Three Choirs Festival on our online catalogue you get 579 hits, including programmes, musical scores and printed histories of the Festival and its key performers.  The Festival was originally called the music meeting and was in existence by 1718.  If you’re visiting it don’t forget that you can see any of the items listed on the catalogue here at the Heritage Hub, as long as you give us prior notice of the items you wish to see.  You can either order documents directly through the catalogue, or by emailing archives@gloucestershire.gov.uk.

The Heritage Hub is making its own contribution to the Festival by hosting two talks, both of which are free to access without prior booking, and are specifically timed to avoid events on the Festival programme.

Robert Raikes, education pioneer – and now archives mascot inspiration.

Some say that your school days are the best days of your life. I suppose that from the point of view of not having many of life’s worries, they could be right.

But having said that, when I was at school, there were plenty of things to worry about. Such as- would I get to “be” the footballer John Barnes whilst having a kick about during lunch time? (Mainly yes, as everyone else wanted to “be” Gary Lineker or Chris Waddle.)

There were so many other worries too – what was the best way to get out of the pointless cross country PE “lesson”?; who was responsible for nicking my pencil sharpener?; could I swipe an intriguingly named Hedgehog flavour crisp from Daniel during break time without him seeing?; how much Space Dust popping candy could fit in my mouth before it spat and foamed out uncontrollably?; could I make it back home in time to see the next episode of ChuckleVision on TV? And the biggest worry of all – how much of a telling off would I get from my mum after I’d fallen in the brook that ran by the school’s perimeter whilst attempting to jump over it on the way home?

However, a few hundred years ago, there was no such thing as school or education for children. Children were set to work or to simply survive in the city’s disease ridden slums. They had plenty of worries far more serious than crisps and pencil sharpeners, one of which was just trying to stay alive.

Join us at upcoming Heritage events – Part 2

Our last post announced our History Festival events over the coming week, but there’s much more happening involving the Hub and its heritage partners over the rest of the Festival.  At 14.30 on Friday 7th September Dr John Chandler, a Trustee of the County History Trust, delivers his talk Before the Spa at the Heritage Hub, looking at Cheltenham‘s development from Anglo-Saxon times until the 18th Century.  The event is fully booked though, so please don’t attend it if you don’t already have a ticket.

Gloucester’s first royal charter, from the time of Henry II (c.1155)

The Archives cares for a range of royal charters relating to Gloucester, and these will be on view at Blackfriars Scriptorium between 10.00 and 14.00 on Saturday 8th.  You can also attend an illustrated talk about them in the Buttery at Blackfriars at 11.30 that day.  Again the exhibition and talk are free, but pre-booking is required, quoting reference CV15.

Join us at upcoming Heritage events – Part 1

Yes, Heritage time is firmly upon us again, beginning this Saturday (25th August) with Gloucester Retro Day.  We’ll have a stall providing information about the Heritage Hub in Kings Walk, and we’ll be joined by members of the Fielding & Platt Heritage Group with a display about the Company, and by Gloucestershire Society for Industrial Archaeology with a Lister’s display.  We’ll be there 10.00-16.00, so do come and say hello.

Retro Day 2017: Members of the Fielding & Platt Heritage Group meet some famous faces

Gloucestershire’s archives revealed (1)

There are countless hidden gems in Gloucestershire Archives’ collections.  These range from beautifully illuminated medieval manuscripts to nuggets of priceless information and funny facts, often concealed in ordinary-looking documents.  These treasures are usually uncovered in the Archives’ research room, either by visitors using our collections or by Archives staff that handle them as part of our access arrangements.

It seems a shame to keep these special finds a secret so we thought we’d set up a new blog series to share them with you, beginning with a post we’ve written ourselves.  Here it is:

Have you ever felt like eating Hens’ Turds?  We have, but we were put off by their unappetising appearance.  Mind you, it turns out they aren’t meant to be eaten raw, as they taste as bad as they look in their uncooked state – quite acidic with astringent qualities. But they do become edible with processing…

Before we go any further, we should explain that Hens’ Turds are actually a variety of apple: a cider apple native to Gloucestershire and listed as critically rare in 2000. We’re guessing this is still the case – so you’d be more likely to find half a hen’s tooth in a field of haystacks.

We know about this unusual species thanks to a book in our collections: one that a recent visitor wanted to look at. It’s called ‘Native Apples of Gloucestershire’ by Charles Martell (ref. B544/56497) and contains a detailed inventory of all known indigenous varieties of Gloucestershire apples.  Before checking it out, we thought we’d test our apple knowledge by listing the names of as many apples as we could. And we came up with a total of ten (listed as ‘the magnificent ten’ below).  None of them were from Gloucestershire, though. Maybe you can do better?

Well, how did you get on? More than ten types of apple is good.  More than twenty is even better.  And a whopping fifty would be seriously impressive.  But the prize fund is reserved for anyone with a list of over 190 varieties, because that’s the number listed in the book as native to Gloucestershire alone.

GA ref B544/56497

Jenny and Ant next to an apple tree in the Archives’ garden

Martell set out to create his definitive account because many varieties of local apples were gradually disappearing. And his findings are useful for conservation and reference purposes. So if you want to identify an apple as being of Gloucestershire origin, or you’ve stumbled across a new example of Belchers Pearmain, this is a marvellous book to consult. Browsing its contents, we discovered: the last record of a Captain Kernel tree was before 1960 in Tibberton; there aren’t any Dainty Maids left in Cam; Rissington Redstreak has also been lost; and, sadly, there are only two Hard Knock trees remaining in Oxenton and only one Old Tankard in Westbury-on-Severn.

This trend reflects the ever decreasing acreage of traditional orchards in the County – currently around 3,000 acres, considerably less than the 15,000 estimated in the mid-1800s. Fortunately, Martell is propagating some of the lost and rare varieties of local apples, and these now form the National Collection of Gloucestershire Apples.

Interestingly, according to local legend, there’s also been an apple-linked manslaughter. Apparently, the Kill Boy apple came by its name after an Oldbury-on-Severn man became so fed up with the foolish antics the boys collecting fruit one harvest time that he threw an apple at one of them, hitting him on the head. The apple was so hard that it killed the boy. ‘Nasty weapons, those apples.

Finally, we thought we’d mention that our Alvin Street premises have an apple related link too.  The site was once home to Wheeler’s Nursery, which supplied apple trees to Queen Victoria.  Sales particulars of the nursery in 1853 (ref. D3269) advertised that it consisted of 2000 apple and pear trees.

Well, that’s it from us for now.  We really need your help to find and share more fascinating facts from our collections.  So please let us know if you’ve an interesting story to tell and would like to write a blog article about it!

By Anthony Phillips and Jenny Rutland, Archives Support Officers

PS For those who are interested, here are our magnificent ten apples: Braeburn; Royal Gala; Cox; Cameo; Bramley; Jazz; Zari; Pink Lady; Golden Delicious; and Granny Smith.

 

Kingsholm School’s 90th anniversary

We’re celebrating an important anniversary this week.  Our current building, originally designed as the Kingsholm Council Schools, was formally opened by the mayor of Gloucester 90 years ago, on 11 October 1926.

The red-brick, single storey building is a significant feature of the local landscape in Kingsholm.  And the original layout is still recognisable despite many changes over the years so it brings back memories of old friends and shared experiences when former pupils visit the Archives.

Image of the present-day front of the building.

As well as these very personal memories we’re lucky to have a variety of written material with details of the original building work and then the school’s working life.  It was the first school built by the City Council after World War 1 and its completion represented a triumph over what the mayor described as ‘extraordinary difficulties’.  These included the sudden death of the architect and shortages of both manpower and materials in the economic depression following the end of the war.  The first pupils appreciated its innovative, modern design and state-of-the-art facilities including central heating and hot water on tap.  Amenities we take for granted today but which few of the pupils would have enjoyed at home in the 1920s.

Image of the opening ceremony on the front steps from the Cheltenham Chronicle and Gloucestershire Graphic, 16 October 1926

After the school closed in 1973, Gloucestershire County Council bought the site and adapted the building to house the County Record Office.  The move across Gloucester from Shire Hall took place in 1979 and we’ve been here ever since!

We want to celebrate our building’s 90^th anniversary so we’re holding a free ‘drop-in’ event in Roots Community Café in Alvin Street on Tuesday 22 November between 10:30am and 3:00pm.  There’ll be a small display about the history of the school and also the county’s archives service which is celebrating its 80^th anniversary this year.  So it is a double celebration for us.  If you (or a member of your family) were a pupil at the school or attended social events there, we’d love to hear your memories so please contact us.