GLOUCESTERSHIRE FAMILY
Jonathan Scott finds exciting plans afoot at the home of Gloucestershire’s heritage
‘We look after millions of documents including mid-12th century parchments’
At the end of 2017 a unique document held at Gloucestershire Archives was added to UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register.
The handwritten 18thcentury African slave song from the sugar plantations of Barbados, which includes musical notation alongside the lyrics, survived in collections relating to Granville Sharp (1735–1813). The abolitionist was not a Gloucestershire local, but his papers ended up here via his niece, who married a Hardwicke baker named Thomas J Lloyd.
The document was nominated by ethnomusicologist Roger Gibbs after he came across its digital image on the Gloucestershire Archives website, and you can hear a modern recording of the song at bit.ly/ slave-song.
It’s a busy time at the home of Gloucestershire Archives. The ‘50 websites to watch’ feature in our December 2017 issue mentioned that the new Heritage Hub website was given a soft launch at the end of November, and this forms just part of a major facelift on the ground, thanks to the Heritage Lottery Fund.
Gloucestershire Archives still exists as a separate body, but its home on Alvin Street is being remodelled to become the Gloucestershire Heritage Hub. Inside will be a new public space, new training suite facility, research room, Family History Centre, strongrooms and police archive, all set to open in the summer.
The archive began in 1936. The backbone of the collections are the records of the council itself and its predecessor, the quarter sessions, which stretch back to the 17th century. And the new Heritage Hub will also be home to the collections generated by South Gloucestershire Council and the official repository for the diocese of Gloucester – both partners in the project.
Gloucestershire Archives’ Kate Maisey says: “We look after millions of unique documents ranging from mid-12th century parchments to present-day ‘born digital’ records, as well as a comprehensive range of family and local history resources.”
The collections come from a variety of sources such as schools, charities, faith groups, businesses, families and individuals, as well as from official bodies such as district and parish councils, courts and hospitals. Some of the most important collections for genealogists have already been digitised by Ancestry. Indeed the website boasts parish registers, Bishops’ Transcripts, wills, inventories, gaol calendars, electoral registers and land tax assessments. The gaol calendars record detailed information about individuals admitted to Gloucester Prison to await trial, including charges, eye
and hair colour, tattoos and scars, height, age and occupation.
Many maps, including the tithe, enclosure and historic editions of the Ordnance Survey, are now available via the website Know Your Place West of England ( kypwest.org.uk).
Community maps
“Volunteers are also helping us add content to the community layer of the mapping resource,” says Kate. “For example we are using a volunteer’s database about soldiers from Cheltenham to create a World War One ‘layer’ where an image and details about each solder are pinned to the relevant address – a fantastic way to bring this information to a wider audience.”
Material currently only available on-site includes school and Poor Law records, a collection relating to the Royal Gloucestershire Yeomanry Hussars, and the Port of Gloucester collection (reference D3080), with half-yearly returns of shipping sent to the Board of Trade from 1853 to 1913. These give the name and address of the ship’s owner and master, plus details of the crew including name, age, place of birth, and date and place of joining ship.
There’s a substantial archive of material relating to Gloucester Rugby Club (D10800 and D11873), which is complemented by the volunteer-run website gloucesterrugbyheritage.org.uk. And via Gloucester Archives’ catalogue you can read about Lionel Bathe’s films of Nailsworth (reference D13153). These cinefilms, which have now been digitised, capture life from the 1960s to the 1980s. Examples shared on social
The county archive has many records documenting the lives of those who owned or worked on the land
media include girls dancing at Barton Fair in 1963 and Morris dancers in Nailsworth in 1974.
Different industries are associated with different parts of the historic county. For example the Forest of Dean is known for mining, and the archive holds records of the Forestry Commission (D5947) which include applications to be registered as free miners, plus details of ‘gale’ ownership – claims to particular pieces of land to mine. It also holds several collections relating to the cloth industry in the Stroud valleys. The archive of Winterbotham, Strachan & Playne of Minchinhampton, for example, covering 1829–1988, fills more than 60 archive boxes.
The southernmost part of the historic county (now in South Gloucestershire) is associated with the aircraft industry. The Filton Community History Group has deposited a fascinating series of oral interviews with residents who worked for the Bristol Aeroplane Company.
Engineering in general is also well represented. Kate says: “The Fielding & Platt Community Archive Project has brought to life several collections of records relating to the firm, a major employer in Gloucester from 1866 until it closed in 2003.”
Records of Cheltenham-based engineering firm Dowty fill almost an entire strongroom. And later in the year the community cataloguing archivist will begin working with volunteers to catalogue significant material. Volunteers are already carrying out oral history interviews with former employees, and you can watch out for the material that the project is generating at fieldingandplatthistory.org.uk.
Gloucestershire is probably best known as a rural county, and the county archive looks after many records documenting the lives of those who owned or worked on the land. “These range from estate management records kept by the county’s landed gentry, such as the Southern-Estcourt family of Shipton Moyne, to records of individual farmers, like the farm accounts of John Smith of Cirencester, 1878–1921 [D7506].”
There are registers and records for many nonconformist chapels held here – nonconformity was particularly strong in the Stroud Valleys and in the Forest of Dean. This includes a significant collection of Quaker records, comprising birth, marriage and death registers from the mid-17th century as well as the minutes of the individual meetings.
The fledgling Heritage Hub website (at gloucestershire.gov.uk/heritage-hub) is in a transitional phase. Kate explains, “We have already put some key content onto the new Gloucestershire Heritage Hub website, which we will add to over the coming months. This is intended to eventually supersede our current Gloucestershire Archives website. One area we’ll be looking to develop is our online training offer for community groups.” If you’re just starting out and struggling to pin down parish records, remember that some registers from within the county but outside the diocese may reside elsewhere. Our Directory has more information (page 84), but a really good place to start is the website of the Gloucestershire Family History Society ( gfhs.org. uk). The society runs a Family History Centre, and members have compiled indexes to parish and civil registration records.
Finally all of the Heritage Hub partners will be involved in the Gloucester History Festival in September ( gloucesterhistoryfestival.co.uk).