Monday, August 01, 2011

August update

The page about the Adams murder first appeared on the website in 2005 - after 6 years of occasional updates it now feels like this case is concluded. Further information about the fate of alleged murderer and convicted thief William Francis ADAMS has been unearthed and can be found on the Adams murder page, along with a new newspaper report of the murder trial, this time from the Brighton Patriot. This contains additional names and testimony of Wing folk. It also contains different forenames for a number of people when compared to the initial report I had from The Times, and one case (Edgar OLLEY/Walter RALEIGH) demonstrates how easily names can be misheard and misrecorded.

There's another important new page on the website this month - the first of the farming series. This first page covers the farms and farmers of Ascott. Over the coming months Burcott, Cottesloe, Crafton and the remainder of Wing will be added, along with a page about the farming industry in Wing in general. This is one of those big projects that can never really be concluded, so I have decided to upload the information as it is collated. If you are connected to any of these farming families and have further information to add, or have access to other maps that may help pinpoint the exact boundaries of a farm at any given point, please please get in touch.

5 comments:

Purple Heather said...

I would be interested to find out who the neighbouring farmers were when the Rothschild family bought farmland in this area.

I have an oral history about the Rothschilds wanting to buy the family farm. When the owners didn't sell up they blocked off all access to the road. There is a story that to survive the family built either a tunnel or bridge to get to the main road. That seems quite far fetched but so odd it may have a grain of truth in it.

Like all oral histories I expect this to be full of fabricated elements but the fact that this story was told before I discovered that the family came from Wing makes the neighbouring farm to the Rothchilds bit a little credible.

Not sure exactly which farmer/family it was so will be interested to find out what you can discover.

Heather

Purple Heather said...

Perhaps I should read all the pages more clearly in the future.

You may have already answered my query in part - was the Gates' farm next to the Rothschild one?

Alex Coles said...

That is an intriguing story. Yes, the GATES farm was the one I immediately thought of in terms of location of the land and roads. The Gates family also appeared to actually own the land which was somewhat unusual as most of the farms were leased.

The Rothschilds did own plenty of other estates in the Bucks area though, so the story may relate to one of those properties instead.

Purple Heather said...

My guess is it is the Gates farm. The story came from the Windmill of Wing side of my family (but we didn't know where they came from till 4 years ago).

Do you have maps from the time showing farm boundaries?

Alex Coles said...

At the moment I don't have any maps showing the farm boundaries or ownership - the various OS maps only show the individual fields. I will be trying to get hold of some maps that do show the boundaries and incorporate those onto the Google Map.

 
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