Death & Demons season at Nottinghamshire Archives

Nottinghamshire Archives is running a series of talks this month under the banner of 'Death & Demons Season'. They promise 'stories of murder and dastardly deeds from letters and diaries held at [the] Archives, with tales of the macabre inspired by the county’s history.' The next talk is at 2.30pm on the 17 November and the third in the season is about John Darrell, the Mansfield-born 16th century exorcist and takes place on 25 November.

Further details are here: www.exploreyourarchive.org/category/east-midlands/

Nottinghamshire Archives re-opens on 28 April 2015

Nottinghamshire Archives, currently closed while it is extended and refurbished as part of a £2.5m project, will re-open on the 28 April. According to the county council press release the building now has

• 'additional space to accommodate new archives for decades to come, including specialist storage for photographs and digital media
• a computerised building management system
• an additional new meeting room/multi-purpose learning space
• improved computer suite for accessing digital heritage, with free public wi-fi throughout the building.

There will be an 'Archives Fun Open Day' on 2 May 'with entertainment and activities for all the family'. The programme for the day will include:

• 9am onwards Explore the new building, with a display of archives
• 10.30am Official opening ceremony
• 11am – 3pm Family activities: seal making, design your own coat of arms, dress up in historical costumes
• 11.45am onwards Tours of the new building, go behind the scenes to discover more of the changes
• 1pm Talk about historical fiction by writer Judith Alnatt 

Nottinghamshire county records of the 17th century

The latest addition to my Nottinghamshire History website is 'Nottinghamshire County Records: Notes and Extracts from the Nottinghamshire County Records of the 17th Century', compiled by H. Hampton Copnall and published in 1915.

The material is drawn from the rich archives of the Quarter Sessions and reflects the incredibly wide range of business dealt with by the Justices of the Peace: the maintenance of highways and bridges, licensing alehouses, cases of bastardy and sexual 'incontinence', the administration of prisons and 'houses of correction', taking religious oaths of allegiance and the registration of nonconformist places of worship, misbehaviour in church and mole catching!

Some examples:
On the 3rd October, 1687, it was ordered that Will Jackson of Kirkby-in-Ashfield, labourer, 'being an idle, loose, light-fingered pilfering ffellow be conveyed to the House of Correction at Southwell for one month and in ye interim to be well whipped 3 times in each week'.

In January, 1624-1625, Jacob Peary alias Pearson of North Collingham, clerk, and two gentlemen of North Collingham, named Samuel Sheppard and Benjamin Sheppard, were fined 10/- each "for riot in church."

On 3rd October, 1655, Elizabeth Banes, of Southwell, spinster, "standeth presented in this Court for a comon scold and the Court also further informed yt the sd Elizabeth by reason of her continuall brawling and extraordinary turbulent spirit doth soe dayly vex and disquiet her neighbours that they cannot follow their callings and occasions inquietness to their extreame troble and vexation." The woman was ordered "to be cuckt in the Cucking Stoole at Southwell."

All human life is here!

Events and exhibitions at Nottinghamshire Archives

A varied programme of events and exhibitions over the summer has been announced by Nottinghamshire Archives:

Wednesday Workshops

19 June: Records of Royalty
17 July: Apprenticeship
21 August: Hospital and asylum records

Each workshop starts at 2.30pm and costs £4.

Archive Skills Workshops

30 July: Reading Parish Registers (English)
6 August: Reading Parish Registers (Latin)
13 August: Interpreting Dates

Summer Talk

9 July: Local, National & International – RAF Ancestral Research
This talk starts at 6.30pm and is free.

Nottinghamshire’s People: Ancestral Stories from the Archives

7 June – 1 September 2013 at the Weston Gallery, Lakeside Arts Centre
Admission free

Lunchtime Talks (to accompany the exhibition)

(All talks are free and can be booked by contacting the Lakeside Arts Centre Box Office on 0115 846 7777)
26 June and 9 July: Students, Sinners and Surveys
3 July: Weaving My Family Tapestry
7 August: Unlocking the Parish Chest:
14 August: Kinship and Connectedness

For further information visit the Nottinghamshire Archives Events page.

Nottinghamshire Archives news

Nottinghamshire Archives programme of events and activities this autumn/winter is now available on their website. This includes:

• Behind-the-scenes tours of the archives building
• Lunchtime talks on the different architectural styles of buildings in the county, Nottingham architect T C Howitt, the development of Forest Fields in Nottingham, the history of Nottinghamshire churches
• Workshops on parish records, Southwell Minster archives, sources for the English Civil Wars in Nottinghamshire, occupations and trades of our ancestors and wills and inventories
• Archive skills workshops
• Workshops on The Old Streets of Nottingham (using photographs and maps) and Wikipedia Workshop (updating heritage content online)

Full details and booking information is available here.

A new finding aid to business records held by Nottinghamshire Archives has recently been made available. It is organised by business name and also by business category.

Documents of the month:

• August 2012 - Programme for the stone laying ceremony of the William Booth Memorial Halls of The Salvation Army, Nottingham, 1914
• September 2012 - Southwell Chapter Register recording Corrections of the Vicars Choral, 1479

News from Nottinghamshire Archives

Nottinghamshire Archives (along with the County Council, Lakeside Arts Centre, Nottingham University and  Nottinghamshire Local History Association) is running a conference called 'Make History Happen!' on Wednesday 18 July 2012, 10am - 4.30pm. The event is intended for 16-21 year-olds interested in heritage:

• 'Make History Happen!' conference flier

A new online exhibition is now available on the history of Southwell Chapter. Of particular interest are the documents relating to cases before the Chapter Court; for example, in 1683 John and Jane Beckit were summoned before the court for fornication (prior to their marriage) and excommunicated. However, they declared penance in 1684 in order that their second son could be baptised in church.

• The Southwell Chapter online exhibition

A talk on Nottinghamshire’s Sporting Heritage will take place on 10 July at 2.30pm. See the Events page for further information:

• Nottinghamshire Archives Events page

Exhibition: “The many lives of DH Lawrence - memoir, legacy and biography revealed”

A new exhibition devoted to D H Lawrence has recently been opened at The Lakeside on the Nottingham University campus. The exhibition draws on the internationally important collection held by Nottingham University and "traces the origins and development of the biographical preoccupation with Lawrence" from the widely different accounts of his life published in the 1930s by his contemporaries to recent academic research based on recent discoveries that offer new perspectives.

Admission is free and a series of talks has been arranged to accompany the exhibition. Further information is available on The Lakeside website.

Events at Nottinghamshire Archives in 2012

Nottinghamshire Archives have organised a series of workshops, each one devoted to particular classes of records:

• 18 April 2012 - Military records
• 16 May 2012  -  Police records
• 20 June 2012  -  Records of royalty
• 25 July 2012  -  Apprenticeship records
• 15 August 2012  -  Nottingham City Council and its records
• 19 September 2012  -  Electoral registers

Archives skills workshops are also being run:

• 8 June 2012   -   Reading parish registers (English)
• 15 June 2012   -   Reading parish registers (Latin)
• 24 August 2012   -   Finding Your Way Around Nottinghamshire Archives

There are also organised tours of the building on the first Thursday of every month:

• 5 April 2012
• 3 May 2012
• 7 June 2012
• 5 July 2012
• 2 August 2012

MAKE HISTORY HAPPEN! Youth Heritage Conference 2012
A conference aimed at young people aged 16-21 with an interest in heritage will take place at The Lakeside Arts Centre, University Park, Nottingham on Wednesday 18 July 2012: 10.00am – 4.30pm.

For further details on all these events see the Nottinghamshire Archives website.

New entries on the Nottinghamshire Heritage Gateway website

The latest history research guides to be added to the Nottinghamshire Heritage Gateway website over the last few months include:

• The Luddites
• Canals of Nottinghamshire
• The village of Tollerton
• Women's history in Nottingham
• Boots
• John Player & Son
• Raleigh

The latest from Nottinghamshire Archives

Two new publications from Nottinghamshire County Council's Libraries, Archives and Information department offer a bit of a contrast:

• A Grisly History of Nottinghamshire is aimed at children and "reveals the gory details of the bloody and gruesome history of Nottinghamshire" - sounds fun!
• Stone Age Nottinghamshire, written by David Budge and Chris Robinson, is a well illustrated guide to the archaeology of Stone Age Nottinghamshire and includes the recent discoveries from Creswell Crags caves 

Nottinghamshire Archives is also offering free 15-minute 'taster sessions' to introduce new users to the search room (how to use the microfiche machines, finding your way around the catalogues and indexes etc). You can also take part in one of the 'special interest' topics on offer:

• Cemetery records
• Electoral registers
• Building plans
• Maps
• Poor law records.

More information is available on the Nottinghamshire Archives website.

The Victoria County History of Nottinghamshire

There's an article in Tuesday's Nottingham Evening Post on the VCH Nottinghamshire project.

The first two volumes of the Victoria County History of Nottinghamshire were published in 1906 and 1910 and some 100 years later work is now underway to produce parish histories.

A draft of the first parish history (Plumtree with Clipston and Normanton-on-the-Wolds) is now online, with others in preparation.

A printed volume of 10-15 parish histories is planned for 2012/13.

• Nottinghamshire Evening Post article
• Victoria County History of Nottinghamshire website
• VCH Nottinghamshire volume 1
• VCH Nottinghamshire volume 2

News from Nottinghamshire Archives (July 2011)

Nottinghamshire Archives is running a talk on Sherwood Forest. The talk is part of the 'Creative Perambulations' project and will cover medieval perambulations of the Forest, the courts that administered justice and Forest Law and the various medieval inhabitants of the area. A medieval perambulation and other relevant documents will be available to view.

Archives have also recently produced a new well-illustrated book, 'Turning back the pages on Maid Marian Way', which looks at the history of this controversial road project. The architectural historian, Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, commented on the road's ugliness and many historians have deplored the way the road disrupts the medieval street pattern and led to the destruction of some fine buildings.

Further information is available on the Nottinghamshire Archives website.

The Manorial Documents Register now online

National Archives have launched an online version of their Manorial Documents Register, which identifies the nature and location of manorial archives. The Register includes "court rolls, surveys, maps, terriers, documents and all other documents relating to the boundaries, franchises, wastes, customs or courts of a manor" and Nottinghamshire is one of the counties included.

• The Manorial Documents Register

John Speed's map of Nottinghamshire available online

Cambridge University Library holds one of five known sets of proof maps prepared for John Speed's Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine, which was published in 1611/12. The University Library has digitised the atlas and full-sized prints can be purchased online.


The Nottinghamshire map depicts towns and villages in the county and includes a detailed street plan of Nottingham and information on the Battle of Stoke (1487). A zoomable image can be viewed on the website.

• Cambridge University Library

New Nottinghamshire community history website

The 'Our Nottinghamshire' website has been launched with the aim of encouraging people to add their memories, stories, photographs and comments on Nottinghamshire.
The website is available at  http://www.ournottinghamshire.org.uk/

Notttinghamshire Archives news

Nottinghamshire Archives has purchased a 12th century charter at auction in London. The charter dates from the 1180s and records a grant by Rufford Abbey of land in Eakring to Osbert de capella and his wife Emma.

• Article in the Nottingham Evening Post, 18 January 2011

A £38,000 project to catalogue the archives of Southwell Minster now held at Nottinghamshire Archives has been completed. Information on the 7,000 documents is available on the Nottinghamshire Archives Online Catalogue:

• Nottinghamshire County Council press release

BBC's Turn Back Time Flickr project

"Turn Back Time is a new BBC TV living-history series that transports four empty shops and a group of contemporary shop-keeping families back to the high street's heyday in the 1870s." The series will also cover the families through the following 100 years.

The BBC have a number of projects and activities accompanying the series, including a group on the photo-sharing website, Flickr, that allows people to upload "then and now" photos of high street shops in their area.

Nottinghamshire museums, libraries and the archives office are also running events (workshops, talks, walks and exhibitions) in association with the project.

• BBC Nottingham news article
• Turn Back Time Flickr Group

Who do you think you are? Monty Don's Retford connections.

I was interested to see my old home town of Retford make an appearance on this week's edition of "Who do you think you are?" Monty Don's great-great-grandfather, the Reverend Charles Hodge, was vicar of St Saviour's church on Welham Road in the 1840s and 1850s. Monty found several of his printed sermons at Nottingham University manuscripts department, one of which was a "fire and brimstone" tirade against the poor of his parish for not being sufficiently pious!

Intriguingly, his wife Anne emigrated to New Zealand in the early 1850s, leaving Charles and their nine children behind. A few years later she came back to Retford and most of the family emigrated to New Zealand. However, in 1859 Charles left the family and headed back to England but tragically drowned when the steam clipper Royal Charter sank off the coast of Anglesey on its way to Liverpool. Anne remained in New Zealand and died there in 1890.

The programme can be viewed on the BBC's iPlayer site:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00tfpvn/Who_Do_You_Think_You_Are_Series_7_Monty_Don/

New Nottinghamshire Heritage Gateway entry on railways in Nottinghamshire

I've added a section to the Nottinghamshire Heritage Gateway website on how to go about researching the history of railways in the county. The introduction offers an overview of railway developments, from the construction of Midland Counties Railway's line from Derby to Nottingham in 1839 to the opening of the East Midlands Parkway Station near Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station in 2009. I've also produced a series of maps of the railway network in 1880, 1922, 1946 and 2010 to demonstrate the rapid growth of the lines in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and the dramatic shrinkage of the network by the close of the last century.

• www.nottsheritagegateway.org.uk/themes/railways.htm

Online exhibition on medieval Nottingham

Nottinghamshire Archives have put together a fascinating online exhibition on medieval Nottingham. Subjects covered include:

• the town's topography
• governing the town
• churches
• guilds
• markets
• law and order
• trades

A wide range of historic documents have been included to provide insights into life in the town. I particularly enjoyed reading the complaints to the Mickeltourn Jury in 1395: it appears that Nottingham was full of traders overcharging the townsfolk for poor quality goods and the inhabitants were being reported for flinging "ordure" all over the place! Some things never change...

• Nottinghamshire Archives