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.
“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:
I am delighted to announce some good news – we have been successful in our ‘For the Record’ bid and have received initial support from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF).
The project will improve the way the documented heritage of Gloucestershire and South Gloucestershire is gathered, kept and shared.
Development funding of £123,300 has been awarded to help Gloucestershire Archives progress our plans to apply for the full grant next year. Continue reading
I’m Jane Heward, and I am the new Cirencester Project Archivist at Gloucestershire Archives. I have recently finished a 21-month project at Cambridgeshire Archives cataloguing the records of the Bedford Level Corporation (the organisation who drained the Fens between the 1630s and 1650s, and maintained many of the drainage works until the 1920s). Before that, I was an archives trainee at Glasgow University Archives in 2010-2011 and completed the UCL Archives and Records Management course in 2011-2012.
The former offices of Messrs Mullings, Ellett and Co at No. 12 Park Street, Cirencester
In November 2013, Gloucestershire Archives was successful in its bid to the National Cataloguing Grants Programme for funding to catalogue the records of Cirencester solicitors Messrs Sewell, Mullings and Logie, formed from the merger of the practices of Messrs Mullings, Ellett and Co and Messrs Sewell, Rawlins and Logie in 1991. The records are extensive – 632 boxes were included in the project brief, and a further two collections (D181 and D182) contain related material. At present, only 43% of the collection is “box-listed” (meaning that only a summary of the contents of each box is recorded), and just 18% is available through either the paper catalogues in the Searchroom or the online catalogue.
In 2011-2012 I was an archive trainee at Gloucestershire Archives before heading to Liverpool University to qualify as an archivist. I then completed my first professional contract as a project archivist at Hull History Centre before returning to Gloucester in January 2014 as a project archivist. My post, which is externally funded, Continue reading
Gloucestershire Archives 