He's a rebel

I'm currently following the adventures of one William NEWLAND junior, who appears to be the son of the bailiff for the Cottesloe hundred - now there's something to rebel against! I've known about him for a little while but I'm going through the calendars of the quarter session records for Buckinghamshire for the 1678 to 1694 period (published by the Buckinghamshire Record Society) and slowly pulling together more information about his misdeeds.

Obviously I'll also need to research what became of him later - will he never ever be any good?

Wing War Memorial

Excellent news from modern-day Wing this week. The repair work to the War Memorial is about to begin! If you are in the area, do pop in to All Saints Church - Vic Sirett has put together a display about the men on the memorial.

LMA poor law records database update

Ancestry.co.uk has been digitizing the poor law records held by the London Metropolitan Archives. Since their first release (which I wrote about back in March), they have added some records for two more unions to the database entitled "London England Poor Law Records 1834-1940). The new unions are Greenwich and Haringey. They may also have added some individual record collections for the existing unions into the database but Ancestry aren't telling us exactly what the update consists of, so who knows.....

While tidying up my Ancestry homepage, I discovered you could use the new Quick Links feature to "rename" databases. You have the option to alter the default database name as you add it to the Quick Links area, so I have added the three databases from the LMA and renamed them to, for example "LMA Poor Law Records" *rant mode on* rather than their current generic names that don't acknowledge the source of those records at all or help you pick out the right database from the crowd.*rant mode off*

*no, rant mode on again* I've also deleted all the existing default Quick Links - rather stupidly, these all point to ancestry.com rather than ancestry.co.uk so are as good as useless if your subscription is to the UK site!*rant mode off, over and out*

July update

A while ago I posted about JK Fowler's "Echoes of Old County Life", and mentioned that his sequel to that book, "Recollections of Old Country Life", was of particular relevance to Wing. This month, excerpts from that book have been added to the webpage detailing the murder of Thomas Adams in 1837.

I won't give you any clues here but will say that I gasped out loud while reading that particular chapter in Fowler's book, and that anyone with an interest in the case (or an eye for scandal) will definitely want to read these revelations.

Here's the Adams family in question (click to enlarge):

A Walk Home - postscript

My blog entry "A walk home along High Street" was chosen as the featured article in A Festival of Postcards' 2nd edition "Main Street". Thanks Evelyn! Thanks also to the other entrants, plenty of interesting postcards were contributed so do check it out.

As an postscript to that entry I'd like to post a back view of one of the postcards I used as it's quite interesting on its own.


"The Cross" postcard was published by Ernest Cleaver, the postmaster of Wing. My own copy of this postcard is unposted, but another posted copy has previously been up for auction on Ebay and I saved their scan of the back. That copy was postmarked Leighton Buzzard J[ul]Y 16 [19]12 11.15 am with a King George V halfpenny stamp (apparently His Majesty was a keen philatelist so I bet seeing himself on a stamp was a personal thrill), and is addressed to:

Mr Heather
Gas Works
Carshalton
Surrey

The text reads:
"Dear Dad
We are coming by that 6.42 train from Leighton arrive Euston 7.40. Frank is going to meet us at Euston so you might see him. We are going up Wing Tower at 11.15am, and then going to see the Hounds at 12. Yesterday went to Ascot [sic]. All the men rushed out to see us. Ethel had her camera in her hand. They all wanted there [sic] photos taken. Love Dorothy."

I'm not entirely sure what Dorothy means by Wing Tower - presumably the bell tower at All Saints Church. By "Ascot" she is of course referring to Ascott House, the home of Leopold and Marie de Rothschild on the outskirts of Wing. Foxhunting was a frequent pasttime here.

My favourite bit is the description of the impact Ethel's camera had on the workers of the Ascott estate - evidence that cameras were quite a rare sight around Wing back then!

Are there any descendents out there of these visitors to Wing? Looking at the 1901 census I can find two sisters Dorothy and Ethel HEATHER (both born Lambeth), with a gas fitter father, living in Brighton, which sounds like a likely match.

1911 census enumerators books

The summary pages from the census enumerators books are now available for the 1911 census. If you have previously purchased the page for your family in 1911 you should now be able to see at no additional cost the cover and address pages for your family (not that informative), and a number of more general pages about the enumeration district. The most interesting of these are "District Description", which detail the route travelled by the enumerator (see 1891 example) and the "List" which lists your household and up to 49 of their nearest neighbours. Each household line includes the primary surname of the household along with the number of males and females, so it is quite useful.

In one of my district description pages I spotted a familiar street name - it turns out the flat my brother first lived in when he moved to London in 2002 is the next road over from where our grandmother appears as a 5-year-old in the 1911 census!

If you have purchased the pages for your own Wing households I'd love to hear what you found in the individual household page and the List page. I'll be shaking the piggybank this weekend to see how many of my own households I can purchase!

Mapping the LATHWELLs

View LATHWELL in a larger map

I've started tinkering with Google Maps customisation features, using the LATHWELL family as an example. The map above shows an assortment of randomly selected locations of Lathwell families, some of whom originated from Wing, and some who did not.

I don't have the time right now to do a comprehensive job on this particular map, but I like the overall concept. A long-term goal for the Wing One Place Study is to be able to map the immigration and emigration of each Wing family and this will be a great tool to complement that particular project.