It’s back!

Barton and Tredworth website home page

The “It” is the Barton and Tredworth community heritage website, an outcome of the Hidden Lives project of 2011-12 in which the Archives was a partner.  The site was created using a bespoke platform designed by Community Sites, who specialize in assisting local communities to create their own web sites.  However the format wasn’t ideal for the wider range of devices that can now access web sites, so Community Sites have just converted it into a WordPress based site.

Lucky 13 for Gloucestershire history

Founded in 1899, the Victoria County History (so named because of its dedication to Queen Victoria) aspires to create a scholarly history of every parish in every County in England.  It is organised on a County basis and the first Gloucestershire volume was published in 1907.  There was then a gap in production until the 1960s, but volumes have since been produced on a regular basis.

150 years of Engineering Excellence

The celebrated Gloucester engineering firm of Fielding & Platt (F&P) was based, until the early years of this Century, at the site of what is now the Quays retail unit. Eagle eyed visitors to the Quays can spot information panels giving background information about the Company in a number of locations. In its day F&P had a world-wide reputation and was involved in the building and developing of machines and equipment that have touched our everyday lives – everything from Concorde to the first vacuum cleaner!

A voyage from the Port of Hull to South Australia, by Catherine Vaughton

Gloucestershire Archives has been granted funding by the Federation of Family History Societies to catalogue the papers of Yearly & Wadeson Solicitors of Mitcheldean. In the collection is the journal of George Eaton Stanger, a surgeon and chaplain employed by the South Australian Companies, which was set up to assist merchants colonising South Australia.  Stanger served aboard the Sarah & Elizabeth, a ship sailing from Hull to South Australia under Captain Wakeling.

The “Boxes of Delight” project reveals the amazing but true tale of the Bown family, by Lauren Perrett

“Boxes of Delights” was an 18 month project funded by the National Cataloguing Grants Scheme. It focussed on the archives of two long established firms of Cirencester solicitors (now merged as Sewell Mullings Logie LLP).  Our online catalogue now holds detailed descriptions of both firms’ archives:  Sewell, Rawlings & Logie collection  D181 and Mullings Ellett & Co collection: D1388. Their clients came from far afield, not just Cirencester, so the documents reflect this spread with many deeds and estate papers relating to the South Cotswolds area.  A team of volunteers contributed over 1,000 hours support to the project, and here Lauren, one of the team, reveals the results of some of her work:

Helping hands make light work of Listers

Gloucestershire Archives was delighted to be awarded £2,000 in 2014 from the Business Archives Council to fund the cataloguing of a significant Gloucestershire-based engineering archive, Listers of Dursley. The project has depended from start to finish on the help of enthusiastic volunteers.

D13099 Research papers of Michael Boyes concerning the Le Marchant family of Little Rissington

I recently catalogued the research papers and archive material collected by local historian Michael Boyes. The collection forms the basis of his two books ‘A Victorian Rector and Nine Old Maids’ and ‘Dying for Glory: The Adventurous Lives of Five Cotswold Brothers’ and tell the story of Robert Le Marchant, the Rector of Little Rissington, his wife Eliza and their fifteen children.

What’s beneath our feet?

As part of the development activities for our For the Record project, we’ve been looking into the history of our Alvin Street site. And we’ve unearthed some fascinating facts.

More from the ‘Boxes of Delights’

Since January, I have been working on the Cirencester project, cataloguing the collection of two busy solicitors offices: Mulling Ellett and Co and Sewell, Mullings and Logie. The project is entitled ‘Boxes of delights’. Here are a few of the delights which I have found so far: