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There’s great depth to primary and secondary sources for Surrey researchers, writes
Everything you need to know to find your Surrey kin
Afascinating addition to the archives at the Surrey History Centre (SHC) in Woking is a collection of letters written by Lady Mary Wallis. In 1925 ‘Molly’ married her cousinin-law Barnes Neville Wallis, the inventor of the bouncing bomb used in the Dambusters raids of May 1943. The letters, written to her closest female friend, offer a vivid and intimate glimpse into family life in the 20th century.
“From sex and contraception to cooking, gardening and household chores, almost every subject is discussed,” says Julian Pooley, manager of the SHC.
Molly’s comments on politics and the world are often very direct. Her view of Winston Churchill, for example, fluctuated from “wonderful” during the war, to “silly old Mr Churchill” for the “abusive fuss” over bread rationing in 1947, and later still “the reverse of a ‘grand old man’, being overcome with conceit… his English is as wonderful, as his painting is execrable… he is scurrilously rude”.
If you’re not able to visit in person, there are lots of online resources open to you. The Surrey collection at findmypast.co.uk is due a substantial update in 2019, while ancestry.co.uk has material from metropolitan Surrey through its partnership with the London Metropolitan Archives. This joins a wide variety of projects helmed by the SHC, which seek to place important social history material, indexes, crowdsourced information and catalogues at remote researchers’ fingertips.
The website www.exploringsurreys past.org.uk provides a “panoramic view” of the collections in Woking, alongside a host of material looked after by partner museums across the county. There are hundreds of themed pages on people and places, industry, agriculture, hospitals and mental health institutions, all organised in a simple wiki-style layout.
The SHC itself has a light, welcoming searchroom, a foyer for exhibitions and displays, and a conference room where lectures, study days and family/local history fairs take place. Staff also link up with local history libraries to organise a ‘Heritage Showcase’ fair at a different town ever year.
A major focus for the past four years has been the Great War Project, which is supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF).
Julian says: “Using Surrey’s historic newspapers alongside war memorials, rolls of honour and the vast amount of research by family and local historians across the county, we have been researching and sharing the stories of people and places during the First World War.”
The project website, located
‘The website has hundreds of pages on people and places’
at surreyinthegreatwar.org.uk, has research guides; memorial information; footage; learning resources; the names of more than 25,000 Surrey men and women who contributed to the war effort; over 1,000 published stories; and a 66,000-strong index to First World War-related articles spotted in Surrey newspapers by volunteers. The project will continue into 2019 with a final showcase event at Dorking Halls on Saturday 20 July, and the publication in November of a thematic book telling Surrey’s story during the struggle.
Celebrating Suffrage
In 2018 the SHC also launched The March of the Women: Surrey’s Road to the Vote. This HLF-supported project marks the centenary of the 1918 Representation of the People Act, which first gave the vote to women of property over the age of 30. “We’ve been able to reveal the lesser-known men and women in Surrey who were involved in Surrey’s suffrage campaign on all sides of the fierce debate. Our project includes cataloguing of our suffrage archives, and the indexing of Surrey newspapers from key years to extract names of individuals and organisations involved in the campaign. By the end of the project in April 2019, these indexes will be available in a searchable format.”
For further details and updates about the project, see www. exploringsurreyspast.org.uk/themes/ people/activists/road-to-the-vote.
The Surrey Record Society is currently preparing a series of volumes containing transcripts of articles from The Gentleman’s Magazine between 1731 and 1868. These will include Surrey people; places; institutions; buildings; charities; weather; crime; births, marriages and deaths; civil and ecclesiastical appointments; and rural customs and beliefs, and will cover the whole of the ancient county, including Croydon, Lambeth, Southwark, Rotherhithe, Wandsworth, Kingston and Richmond.
“A small team of volunteers is steadily working through the volumes of the magazine held in our reference library,” says Julian. “They are making excellent progress and uncovering many amazing stories of Surrey life in the 18th century, including ‘Crazy Sally’, a travelling bonesetter who attracted crowds of the lame, wounded or simply curious to Epsom in 1736, and Mr Sibthorpe of Guildford who was so fearful of bodysnatchers that, when he died in 1778, he left £5 to the sexton if he produced his body undissected 12 months after interment.” The society is hoping to publish the first volume covering 1731–1754 soon. “Our transcribers have reached 1806, and the Surrey entries run to nearly a million words.” Online finding aids already available include transcripts of Guildford Workhouse births and deaths ( bit.ly/guild-house); Surrey Poor Law Union vaccination registers 1872–1909 ( bit.ly/surreyvacc); and the Military Indexes page, which now has an index to a vast volume of press cuttings about the East Surrey Regiment ( bit.ly/regiment-cuttings).
Other external resources include transcripts of Surrey recruitment registers, which are at forces-war-records.co.uk/ collections/188/surrey-recruitmentregisters-1908-to-1933, and the casebooks and admissions for the Holloway Sanatorium, Egham, which can be viewed for free via the Wellcome Library’s online catalogue ( bit.ly/wellcome-holloway). Remember too that the SHC holds records of many asylums and hospitals, including the ‘Epsom Cluster’ – Horton, The Manor, Long Grove, St Ebba’s and West Park.