Those Places Thursday - The State of the Poor UPDATE

Yes, I know it's Sunday, but this is worth mentioning now rather than waiting another four days.

Berkshire: Reading Poorhouse

An eagle-eyed blog reader, Adrian Bruce, found The State of the Poor: Volume II on Google Books. This is the volume with the rest of the Parochial Reports, as follows:

Bedfordshire: Dunstable, Houghton Regis, Humbershoe, Houghton Regis
Berkshire: Reading, Streatley, Wallingford, Windsor
Buckinghamshire: Buckingham, Maid's Morton, Stony Stratford, Winslow
Cheshire: Chester, High Walton, Mickle Trafford
Cornwall: Gwennap, Kenwyn
Cumberland: Ainstable, Bromfield, Caldbeck, Carlisle, Castle Carrock, Croglin, Cumrew, Cumwhitton, Gilcrux, Harrington, Hesket, Kirkoswald, Nent Head, Sebergham, Warwick, Wetheral, Workington
Derbyshire: Chesterfield, Derby (St Alkmund, All Saints, St Michael, St Peter, St Werburgh), Wirksworth
Devon: Clyst St George, South Tawton, Tiverton
Dorsetshire: Blandford, Durweston
Durham: Durham (St Margaret, St Nicholas), Holy Island, Monk Wearmouth, South Shields, Stanhope, Sunderland, Tanfield
Essex: Colchester (All Saints, St Mary, St James)
Gloucestershire: Bristol, Rodmarton, Stapleton
Hampshire: Gosport, Hawksley, Newton Valence, Petersfield, Portsea, Portsmouth, Southampton, Isle of Wight
Herefordshire: Hereford (All Saints, St Nicholas)
Hertfordshire: St Albans, Chipping Barnet, Redbourn

Norfolk: Yarmouth 'A row'

Kent: Ashford, Chalk, Great Chart, Little Chart, Cobham, Hothfield, Meopham, Westwell
Lancashire: Bury, Lancaster, Liverpool, Manchester, Preston, Warrington
Leicestershire: Ashby de la Zouch, Carlton Curlieu, Kibworth Beauchamp, Leicester
Lincolnshire: Alford, Cockerington, Louth, Spilsby, Swineshead, Tattershall, Willoughby, Lincoln
Middlesex: Ealing, Hampton, St Martin's Westminster
Monmouthshire: Abergavenny, Monmouth
Norfolk: Downham, Gressinghall, Heckingham, Norwich, Yarmouth
Northamptonshire: Brixworth, Kettering, Northmapton (St Giles, St Peter), Rode, Yardley Goben
Northumberland: Newcastle, North Shields
Nottinghamshire: Newark, Nottingham, Overingham, Worksop
Oxford: Banbury, Deddington, Oxford
Rutland: Empingham, Luffenham
Shropshire: Bishops Castle, Ellesmere, Shrewsbury
Somersetshire: Frome, Minehead, Walcot (Bath)
Staffordshire: Litchfield, Wolverhampton
Suffolk: Bulcamp, Melton

Shropshire: Shrewsbury, Battlefield Road

 


 

Those Places Thursday - Chesham 'Boots, brushes and baptists'

Ornamental pillars at
Chesham station

Chesham is a market town in Buckinghamshire, and it has been my home since 2002. It's a nice place to live, surrounded by the open countryside of the Chiltern hills, but with a fast train service to London. In fact, the station is art of the London Underground, despite the fact that you have to walk up quite a steep hill to get to the station, and travel about 20 miles before the train actually goes under the ground. There is still a water-tower, a reminder of the days of steam trains, and there must still be water in it, because in the summer you can see bullrushes growing there.

It is a pretty little town, with a proper high street that still has independent shops, and a market twice a week. There used to be a market hall, too, but only the clock tower remains, as the main building was demolished a number of years ago. There is a medieval parish church, and wide range of other places of worship; Methodist, Roman Catholic, United Reformed, Salvation Army, Spiritualist and two Baptist churches (there used to be three) as well as a mosque. The local branch library is not very big, but it has a good family history and local history section. But the best place to start if you want to know about the town's history is Chesham Museum. Their site has a great collection of photographs and links to lots of other useful resources. One of the most interesting is the Roll of Honour listing the names of Chesham men who fell in the two world wars, with biographical details for most of them.

Chesham War Memorial - Remembrance Day parade 2010

Chesham was in the registration district of Amersham, from 1837 until 1974, since when it has been part of the Buckinghamshire district. Registration districts were based on Poor Law Unions, formed in 1834 by amalgamating groups of parishes. The Union Workhouse and the administration of the Union were usually based in the largest parish in the Union. In 1834 Chesham was much the largest of the parishes concerned, but the Poor Law Commissioners judged that the parish workhouse in Chesham was badly run, so the new Union was based on Amersham instead. When the paupers in the old parish workhouse were moved to Amersham in 1835, there was riot in the streets of Chesham. There is an account of this and more about the history of Amersham Union on Peter Higginbottom's wonderful The Workhouse site.

Parish church of St Mary, Chesham

Most of the records for Chesham are held at the Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies in Aylesbury, but those for the various nonconformist churches and chapels are at The National Archives in record series RG4 and RG 6. They can be searched and downloaded from the BMDregisters site. Another good way of finding out about Chesham, its records, and where they are held is by entering it as a search term on England Jurisdictions 1851 which is part of FamilySearch. 

The George and Dragon

For general information, maps and population statistics there is A Vision of Britain Through Time and you will find pictures of listed buildings on the Images of England site. This last works better if you register (free of charge) to use the advanced search facility. 

The listed buildings include the George and Dragon (left) in the High Street. Quite a number of pubs all over the country have closed in recent years, including this one, but fortunately it has recently re-opened under new management; it's much too attractive to be empty and unused.

Finally, I haven't forgotten about the 'Boots, brushes and Baptists' part of the title, above. This is something I was told by the estate agent when I was looking at houses here, and it reflects some of the main features of the town's history. I've already explained the 'Baptists' part, and two of the main local industries were the manufacture of small wood items, especially brushes, and boot making. You can see this for yourself by browsing the census for Chesham, where you will see that much of the population was engaged in one of these occupations. You might also notice that many of the women worked in lace-making or straw-plaiting, but neither of these starts with B so it wouldn't be such a snappy title if they were included.

 

Shopping Saturday - High Wycombe Market Place

I have lots of old books with engraved illustrations, and by 'old' I mean a hundred years old or more. I have scanned some of the illustrations, which are often only about 4 or 5 inches across, and I am amazed at the level of detail you can see when you zoom in. In fact, there are details that you can't really see WITHOUT zooming in.

This picture shows the Market Place in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, and if you zoom in you can see that the name over the shop next to the Market Hall is 'D L Smith'. Like many of the images I have scanned, this one is undated - the date of the book is not always helpful, because the engravings are often older. This one is late 19th Century, and the 1891 census shows Daniel L Smith, grocer, in High Wycombe Corn Market. He was a single man, aged 42, with his 40-year-old sister Sarah, an apprentice and two assistants one of whom was their nephew Percy, aged 25. Ten years later in 1901 Daniel has married, and only his wife, Alice, and a servant are in the household. Daniel is still described as an employer, so any assistants or apprentices he employed must have lived elsewhere by then.

Daniel and his sister came from Hemel Hempstead, in Hertfordshire, a neighbouring county, but he did not go directly from Hemel to Wycombe, because the 1871 census finds him in Kent, working as a wholesale grocer's clerk in Canterbury, presumably learning his trade. His full name was Daniel Liberty Smith, according to his birth entry in the September quarter of 1847 in Hemel Hempstead registration district.

I haven't done exhaustive research on this person; all I have done is a few quick online searches, but it just shows how a book illustration and a little idle curiosity can uncover some family history. In this case the intriguing detail is Daniel's middle name of Liberty. Liberty is a surname associated with Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire, and in particular with Arthur Lazenby Liberty, founder of the famous London department store, and who was born in Chesham (where I live), not far from Hemel and Wycombe. Now I wonder...

Do you love libraries?

I certainly do, and I can't remember a time when libraries were not a big part of my life.

This Saturday, 5 February is Save our Libraries Day. and there are lots of things you can do to show your support, even if you only have a few minutes to spare. I will be doing my bit online, because I won't be able to visit my local library in person on Saturday. This is because I have to be at work.

Luckily for me, though, work involves spending the day in a building where there is a wonderful library (shameless plug - if you are visiting The National Archives in person, don't forget the check out the Library, it's probably bigger than you thought).

One of my earliest memories involves a library, and not just any library, it was the Mitchell Library in Glasgow. I must have been about four years old when my dad took me there, and I must have already been  used to going to our local Langside Library and borrowing books. I know this because my memory of the Mitchell is a) being really impressed at seeing so many books and b) yelling the place down with disappointment when I found out that I couldn't borrow any of them! This was the old marble hall part of the library, quite possibly the staircase, where there is a really good echo

We moved to Wootton Wawen, Warwickshire when I was 7, and lived in Wootton Hall - there is a picture of it in an earlier post. Mum and I wanted to find out about the history of this amazing building, so we went to Henley-in-Arden Library nearby and found a book on the history of the village, which told us that our flat used to be the Bishop's Rooms. I may write about that sometime.

The following year we moved to Gillingham in Kent, and I spent a lot of time in Gillingham Library, first of all in the Children's Library, a wonderful traditional high-ceilinged room with murals of scenes from 'Wind in the Willows' where a clock in one of the pictures was a real working clock. I graduated to the adult library, and also enjoyed the temporary exhibitions in the library, but I particularly loved the reference library upstairs. I may be the only person to have bunked off school to spend more time in the library!

As a student I was first introduced to the Library of Congress classification system used in the University of Warwick Library, but the university and its library were still pretty new back then, so when I had a serous research project to do, I used the fabulous Birmingham Central Library. This was where I first experience the thrill of doing original research for myself, and there is nothing quite like it (hands up who agrees with me on that!).

I took a long break from education, and did the motherhood thing too. And what did I do when I discovered that Firstborn was on the way? I went to Hendon Library and borrowed some baby books of course! When we moved a few miles to a bigger house I joined Harrow Libraries, borrowing books and  vinyl records - remember them? I attended evening classes in more than one branch library, and when I took up family history I used the Local Studies collection in the Civic Centre Reference Library.

Once the family history thing had really kicked in, I helped my local family history put on an exhibition in the library, and carried on with evening classes in libraries in Harrow and elsewhere, only this time I was teaching them. I don't teach any more, but I do a lot of talks to family history societies and other groups, who often meet in...libraries!

Now I live in lovely, leafy Buckinghamshire, within walking distance of Chesham Library, and my library card gives me access to all kinds of wonderful online sources, as well as the books, DVDs and other facilities in the library itself. So far, Chesham Library is not under threat, but others in the county are, and the Friends of Stony Stratford Library, at the other end of the county mounted a brilliant campaign, which got massive media coverage. The author, Philip Pullman made an eloquent defence of Oxfordshire libraries at a meeting on 20 January at Oxford Town Hall, which is worth reading in full.

I can't imagine how my life would have been without all the libraries I have known and loved. The way I have used them over the years has changed, but they are still essential to me. I am very pleased to say that both Firstborn and his younger brother have turned out to be avid readers (and they both write well, too), and my lifelong library addiction must have had some influence there. My elderly mother, who passed on the habit to me, still makes regular trips to her local branch library, which is within walking distance of her house, even though she needs her walking stick to get there these days.