Articles tagged with: schools

Virtual WEX

on Wednesday, 03 February 2021. Posted in Archaeology, Archives, Conservation, History Centre, Museums, Schools

It’s that time of year when the first emails land in my inbox requesting placements on the History Centre’s popular work experience (WEX) programme.

This year it is a little different – those early requests are arriving, but students are now looking for Virtual WEX!

In my blog from March 2020 – Celebrating Archives – I was eagerly anticipating a year of anniversaries, the highlights of which were to be Salisbury’s 800th birthday and the 200th anniversary of Florence Nightingale’s birth. Events were planned, projects finalised, and we had an excuse, though none is ever really needed, to dig out some of our archival treasures that show just how connected Wiltshire is to key moments of national commemoration. And letters from Florence Nightingale would have featured in the work experience programme.

Letter from Florence Nightingale written while she was at Scutari Barracks Hospital (2057/F4/64)

 And then… the World Health Organisation declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic. All certainty about future events rapidly disappeared as History Centre staff joined colleagues from across Wiltshire Council in responding to the crisis. While statutory services at the History Centre had to be maintained our usual talks and courses were cancelled; we had to close during lockdowns; our regular jaunts around the county to speak to community groups and history societies ended; and as education officer there were no school visits to plan or deliver, and no work placements to organise.

It was clear we needed to transfer what we could online, and I found myself working with colleagues from Libraries and Leisure to create resources that gave Wiltshire residents virtual opportunities to enjoy heritage, arts, literature and physical activities. The result was the Active Communities page on the Wiltshire Council website – a great resource which will hopefully have a legacy post-pandemic.

I also found myself co-ordinating the History Centre’s online presence. Colleagues, missing out on the daily rhythm of dealing with enquiries and customers, turned their energies to our website and social media platforms. They kept regular users updated and entertained, and engaged with new followers. And the hard work has paid off as we see more users, followers, likes and engagements with our various social media accounts.

Necessity drove us online in 2020 providing many challenges, but now there are opportunities in 2021, opportunities the History Centre wants to exploit. Virtual Work Experience is one of those. There will always be a need for real world, physical engagement with archives and books, photographs, painting and sculpture, artefacts and objects, not to mention being in the audience for a live theatre or musical performance. But while we wait for the time when we can return to in-person talks, courses and classroom sessions we need to make the most of the technology available.

Choose your classroom...

I am working on developing a virtual work experience programme for GCSE and A-level students. Our work placements are always popular and each year we are fully booked, but we are limited in how many students we can take – normally two GCSE students in any given week and a couple of Year 12 A-level students. Geography and public transport also play a part and, while I provide a county-wide heritage education service, WEX students tend to come from Chippenham and the surrounding area.

The plan is to use an online classroom platform to deliver Virtual WEX. This has the potential to significantly increase the number of students the History Centre can reach, extending coverage to the whole of Wiltshire and Swindon, and beyond. I will always champion in-person placements and visits to the History Centre to really get hands-on with historical documents – there is a thrill to seeing and touching a document signed by Charles I or Oliver Cromwell or, having learned about Henry VIII in school, holding the marriage contract between Henry and Jane Seymour. But as an advocate for cultural education, online sessions are a valuable tool in reaching and inspiring young minds. And while students will not be able to handle the documents in a virtual session they will still be able to see them and work with them.

Death warrant signed by Oliver Cromwell. (332/265)

A key aspect of our work placement programme is the breadth of experience students enjoy, not only working with archives and local studies collections, but also learning about the work of the conservators and archaeologists based at the History Centre. It is also satisfying to see the students grow in confidence over the course of their week with us and to hear back from schools about the positive impact the placement has had on the youngsters.

We hope that those who see what we do via an online taster day will be in-person users of our services in the months and years to come. This opening up of access also supports the History Centre’s commitment to inclusion and diversity, not only as part of Wiltshire Council but also within the Archives sector.

WEX 2021 won’t be the same as previous years but we hope a virtual experience will give young people an opportunity to see what enjoyable and rewarding careers can be had in the heritage sector.

Teachers and students wanting to find out more about our plans for Virtual WEX should contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

Ruth Butler, Heritage Education Officer

History Without A History Centre: what we've been up to while you were away (Part 2)

on Monday, 31 August 2020. Posted in Archives, Conservation, History Centre, Museums, Schools

During lockdown our teams, like everyone, have had to adapt to new ways of working and think creatively about how we continued to support our heritage community and maintain our statutory services. In Part 1 Neil and Dorothy shared some of the work done by the Archaeology team and Wiltshire Buildings Record.  In Part 2 we turn the spotlight on our Archives and Local Studies team, the Conservation and Museums Advisory Service and the Heritage Education Service.

Archives and Local Studies

While lockdown forced the cancellation of our 2020 events programme, we were able to reinvent some of the activities in new formats. County Librarian Julie Davis had planned a talk on The Home Front in Wiltshire, as part of the celebrations for the 75th anniversary of VE Day in May. Instead she turned her slides into an online film show with a recorded narration. Julie also recorded readings from her recent publication From Blackout to Bungalows which explores the effects of World War Two on Wiltshire. These are available on our VE Day page on the website.

Pre-lockdown we were delighted to host a display of artworks by students from Wiltshire College in the History Centre foyer. Community history advisor Joy Bloomfield, who worked with the college on this project, redisplayed the pieces in our search room and created a more widely-accessible online exhibition available via our Facebook page

Julie's Memory Box sessions also went online. Before lockdown the group would use written sources as a springboard for discussion and reminiscence. Unable to meet physically Julie recorded several readings themed on local fairs and industries which are now online to be enjoyed at home. Similarly, Ian Hicks has replicated his popular Introduction to Ancestry.com sessions as online videos. All videos can be found on our youtube channel including four short Welcome Back films featuring members of our team. Creating video content is new for most of us at the History Centre and, we’re not afraid to say, it was a bit daunting to begin with, but we have learnt new skills, gained confidence and seen the benefits of developing online content for the History Centre. Watch this space for more online material over the coming months.

Community history advisor Ian made a video version of his Ancestry workshop.

We have also used lockdown to add more content to the Know Your Place website. Scanned copies of our tithe awards have been added to this already brimming resource. The tithe awards give details of landowners and occupiers plus land use for parishes across the county. In addition, more content has been added to pages of the Wiltshire Community History website, most notably on the subject of Wiltshire schools. Julie has also continued her engagement work with the team of Wiltshire Libraries Local Studies’ Champions to create digital material for the library service's YouTube channel.

Lockdown resulted in the disruption to many arts, heritage and cultural projects but as restrictions eased organisations looked to restart their programmes. The History Centre is delighted to be working with our new partners at Celebrating Age Wiltshire on their lottery-funded project to improve health and wellbeing of older people living in isolation. We are also feeding into the Swindon Heritage Action Zone, which is part of a wider Historic England heritage project and the project officer is working with local people in and around Swindon’s Railway Village to post old photographs onto the community layer of Know Your Place website. 

Visitors to the History Centre usually come to consult documents, but the Local Studies Library is also an important research tool. It contains over 50,000 volumes and is the largest collection in the world of books about Wiltshire. We are always on the lookout for new titles and actively collect any published work that is about Wiltshire or is written by someone with a strong Wiltshire connection.

New titles have been added to the extensive Local Studies collection.

The last few months have been an opportunity to catch up with the backlog of cataloguing, making over 100 new books available to users of the service. They include biographies; newly published research on the two world wars and a beautifully illustrated book of the plants found in the gardens of Salisbury Cathedral Close. Perhaps these books may inspire you to write something and be part of Wiltshire’s written history. New lists of our latest catalogued books can be found in our Local Studies newsletters.

We have also used this time to update our staff toolkit which contains key guides on various collection themes in the hope we have the answers to all your questions at our fingertips. Quite an undertaking, we’re sure you’ll agree. Colleagues have also conducted research on topics such as militia records, the architecture of Salisbury and the Kennet and Avon Canal, plus we have been putting the finishing touches to a major new catalogue for the archive of Westinghouse Rail. This has involved formatting data collected by our volunteer Mike and uploading onto our electronic catalogue.

Like most archives and museums, we have launched a new collection that will record the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our lives. The History Centre’s Living in Lockdown project aims to collect personal reflections from people in Wiltshire and Swindon on their experiences of Covid-19 and how it has affected daily lives. We are also looking for printed material such as posters and leaflets, or newsletters from local groups, plus photographs recording lockdown, such as public displays of art and craft, and how local shops, services and events have been affected. Read more about the collecting project (including how to get in touch) on our archives pages

Meticulous work by one of our object conservators.

Conservation and Museums Advisory Service

The Conservation and Museums Advisory Service (CMAS) aims to promote excellence in the care and use of collections by providing conservation advice and practical treatments to heritage organisations and the public. We also support museums in Wiltshire to meet professional standards and become sustainable, resilient organisations.

Based at the History Centre, we can normally be found working in our two conservation laboratories, or out and about giving advice to museums, archives and historic houses. Lockdown meant that, like many others, we were confined to working at home and had to find a whole new way of doing things.

Without access to the specialist equipment and chemicals in the laboratory, we had to stop carrying out practical conservation treatments such as x-raying archaeological finds, cleaning coins, reconstructing ceramics and repairing documents. Instead the conservators have taken the time to carry out a number of other tasks.

We have been developing new training and support packages for both staff at the History Centre, and other museums and archives looking to gain Accreditation or better care for their collections. This includes topics like pest management, environmental monitoring and control, collection care planning, and preventative conservation of archives and historical collections. We’ve been looking at services aimed at those involved with archaeology, such as archaeological contractors and metal detectorists. There has also been the opportunity to develop our environmental sustainability plans, becoming greener to help the Council meet its pledge to become carbon neutral by 2030.

Even though the building has been closed, the archives have still required some care and attention, so we’ve been carrying out regular environmental monitoring checks to make sure the temperature and humidity levels in the strong rooms is suitable for their long-term preservation.

Our Paper Conservator tensioning distorted parchment.

We have been exploring the digital world and finding alternative ways of working. A redesign of the CMAS web pages has begun including a simplified web address - www.wshc.org.uk/cmas - and we took part in a twitter conference organised by the Institute of Conservation (#IconArchTC) talking about our treatment of a Roman coin hoard owned by Athelstan Museum, Malmesbury. You can also watch our new video about the conservation treatment of a pair of Pele’s football boots.

Meetings have gone online, and we have been getting to grips with the technicalities and etiquette of virtual meetings, including Wiltshire Museum Group get-togethers. The team has also been available by telephone and email to answer questions and give advice to organisations and the public about all things conservation and museums.

Wiltshire’s museums have been hit hard by the lockdown, with the cancellation of events, loss of income, and other challenges that come from having to close their doors overnight.  Working with South West Museum Development, we have supported them throughout the last few months, answering enquiries to help them look after staff, volunteers and collections, providing information about the latest government guidance, and encouraging applications for the grant funding available. This has continued as museums have started to re-open. Museums in the county have been working hard to address the issues and several have now welcomed back visitors, with special measures put in place to keep everyone safe: Wiltshire Museum, Chippenham MuseumBoscombe Down Aviation Collection, REME Museum, Salisbury Museum, The Rifles Museum, Crofton Beam Engines www.croftonbeamengines.org. More will follow in the not too distant future.

Although the CMAS team is now back in the building and the laboratories, we’re not quite back to normal! It’s likely to be a little while before we’re able to make visits to organisations or carry out face to face training. So, in the meantime, we’ll carry on developing our digital delivery and because we love showing off the work we do we’re planning to add more case studies, videos and a virtual tour of the laboratories to our web pages soon.

If you have a conservation query, want a quotation to carry out some work, or would like to book a free online appointment for one of our conservation surgeries, we’d love to hear from you! You can contact the team by email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Heritage Education Service

As heritage education officer I work with schools and community groups providing facilitated sessions in schools, community settings and at the History Centre. All those face-to-face sessions ended with lockdown. The other aspect of my work involves creating classroom and online resources – and this has very much continued.

In anticipation of the lockdown the History Centre could see that digital resources – our website, blog and social media platforms – would be our way of keeping some of our services operational and allow us to stay in touch with our community of users and volunteers. With that in my mind my role morphed into coordinating the History Centre’s digital services and joining with colleagues in Libraries and Leisure to develop and deliver online services to replace, as best we could, the wide range of physical services provided by our teams. This resulted in the Active Communities webpages and a host of downloadable resources on the Wiltshire Council website.

Screenshot of the Active Communities web page on the Wiltshire Council website.

As our services resume, with new policies and procedures in place, my work on the History Centre’s digital strategy will continue alongside creating classroom resources for teachers. I am also delighted that many of the projects we support are getting back on track, including the Salisbury Soroptimist’s Her Salisbury Story project (funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund) celebrating the women of Salisbury past and present. I will be providing support and training to the group and their volunteers as they work on this wonderful project.

For schools and teachers looking for new curriculum resources please contact me on This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. I am currently updating the education web pages but please do visit  the education home page for links to online resources.

What Next?

After meticulous planning and much hard work we are delighted to have welcomed out first visitors back into the search rooms on 25th August. Making sure the History Centre is COVID-secure for staff and visitors does mean we have had to put in new procedures for accessing our services and these follow national guidelines and regulations. We are now operating an appointments-only system for accessing our services and face coverings are mandatory for all visitors. To book your archives and local studies visit go to our website.  http://wshc.org.uk/visiting-the-centre.html For other teams please telephone ahead to make an appointment.  

We look forward to welcoming you back.

 

David Plant, Archivist

Heather Perry, Conservation and Museum Manager

Ruth Butler, Heritage Education Officer

Neil Adam, Assistant County Archaeologist

Dorothy Treasure, Buildings Recorder

Happy Memories of the Royal School at Longleat

on Friday, 19 June 2020. Posted in Schools, Wiltshire Places

Since 1994 I have organised an annual village reunion in Horningsham, attended by residents past and present. Each year has a theme and an accompanying display, using material lent to me by the people who attend. In 2008 I was lucky enough to be given a photograph taken in 1947 showing all the pupils, teachers and those employed to look after the school. I was also fortunate enough to be put in touch with a lady living in Warminster who was a pupil there. Along with seven friends, she was able to give me a lot of help and they all came to the reunion. Here are some memories of Elizabeth Fosbroke-Hobbes and Vivienne Bateman-Champain (maiden names).

The Royal School for daughters of officers of the army was founded in 1864 at Lansdown on the outskirts of Bath. The school's mission was to provide practical and religious education for the daughters of army officers who might otherwise be unable to afford it. In 1939 the school was warned that it might be requisitioned, and in early September the Admiralty's Hydrographic Department took over the Lansdown premises. Fortunately, Lord Bath had heard that the school was looking for a temporary home and offered them Longleat. On 29th September, the pupils boarded a train to Frome, not knowing that it would be eight years before they returned to Bath.

Royal School pupils at Longleat

Elizabeth takes up the story: “The new girls arrived at Frome station. Those of us who were aged 14 or over had to walk to Longleat. I remember it was a very wet night and we were faced with a five-mile walk! The younger girls and the ‘first night’ suitcases went to Longleat in a bus.”

Many of the girls in the bus did not know what Longleat looked like. As they passed through the stone archway and between the double avenue of trees they fell silent for a moment. There before them stood Longleat, rectangular, symmetrical and immensely dignified, looming up in the dusk. When they trooped into the hall and up the front stairs they were abashed by the imposing portraits; they found themselves whispering. They followed large cardboard arrows painted in House colours and sorted themselves out into dormitories. Every available room upstairs was filled with beds, from the thirty ranged under the painted ceiling of the Salon to the six or seven in the smaller bedrooms. 1

Elizabeth’s bed was underneath the enormous Adam fireplace in the Salon, overshadowed by a very large statue of Hercules in marble. It was very scary in the moonlight! She remembers that in the beginning, Longleat was not on the main electricity grid, and had its own generator. The supply became weak in the afternoons and evenings. When the girls had lessons and prep the candles were lit down the dining room table. They sat round the table and the teachers read from text books as the pupils tried to write in semi-darkness.

Elizabeth was one of a team of girls who were fire fighters. “Sixteen girls were chosen for this task (I was one of them), who it was considered were not likely to become hysterical. When the ‘Green Alert’ went up in Bath, the two ARP wardens on the roof of the House rang a bell. The school all went down to the cellars except us, who had to stand at our fire stations in the various corridors in the House. We were in pairs and had a water cart and a stirrup pump, waiting for the bombs and the incendiary bombs! Although we had several ‘dog fights’ over the House and grounds fortunately there were no bombs.

“We had training sessions with the stirrup pumps and one day I hit the PE mistress (who was in charge of the firefighting gang) with the hose water. She was not amused and allocated me the spookiest area as my station. This was the south corridor at the top of the House, which was supposedly haunted. This was my punishment!”

Food was of course very important to growing girls and Vivienne vividly remembers what they were given! “Our main cooked meal was at lunch time and was eaten in one of the three dining rooms. I still remember the menu, which never changed! Sunday was a roast, Monday grated vegetables. On Tuesday we had shepherd’s pie and Wednesday was stew. I don’t remember Thursday, but Friday was fish and Saturday cold meat.

“Every day we had a pudding, usually treacle or currant. Each dining room also had an extra rice pudding. Unfortunately, there was only enough for one table, so your turn didn’t come around very often! Saturday tea was eaten in the cellars and we were served by the senior girls. We had bread and margarine with pilchards, followed by bread and treacle – all on the same plate!”

The arrival of the School also brought change for the village of Horningsham, as there were opportunities for employment, particularly women. Lionel Marsh and his mother both found work at the school. “I can remember singing in the church choir when the Royal School girls used to attend the church morning service in Horningsham. The church always seemed to be full of them. From what I can remember, they used to walk to and from church along the footpath from just above the Longleat Lodge gates, past the front of Mill Farm, and joined the main road above the almshouses.

“My mother used to work for the School. Most of the time she rode her bicycle, but sometimes she would walk there and back, along White St and across the Park. Sometimes she would carry home a fire wood limb on her head.

“I also worked at the School in the evenings. My job was to load the dirty crockery on to a four-wheeled trolley and to take it in the lift down to the washing up room. Here the women from the village used to load the crockery into metal containers which were then passed through a washing machine. Six school girls did the drying up. I then took the crockery back upstairs to the maids, who returned it to the dining rooms. I was paid 2s 6d for around two hours work each evening. I did this job until I was called up for National Service in August 1946.”

Lord Bath enjoyed sharing his home. Only a couple of months after the School’s arrival he wrote to the headmistress: “I am quite honest that I am enjoying every moment. It is twenty-five years since I had children running about the house. I have enjoyed my life even when alone, but I never realised how lonely I have been, and I love hearing the children all over the place – in fact I keep my door open on purpose.”  When a girl celebrated her birthday, a slice of cake was always given to Lord Bath. It was therefore a huge shock when he died suddenly on 9th June 1946. For two days he lay in state in the Great Hall. The day of his funeral the girls in their blue capes with red-lined hoods formed a guard of honour on the steps while men from the Estate carried the cedar coffin down between their ranks.2

The Royal School remained at Longleat for another year, finally leaving on 30th July 1947. It was time to return home to Bath, leaving the 6th Marquess of Bath able to take full possession of his home.

Helen Taylor, Senior Community History Advisor

1 and 2. H Osborne,  A History of the Royal School for Daughters of Officers of the Army 1864-1965.

Working in Partnership: bringing archives alive

on Friday, 03 March 2017. Posted in Archives, Events, Schools

Students like a word search, a little bit of light relief from the rigours of normal lessons, and teachers like them as a sneaky way to revise subject specific vocabulary. We decided on a word search with a difference to introduce secondary school students to archives and working with primary sources. It was part of a new schools’ session developed by Salisbury Cathedral in partnership with the Wiltshire & Swindon History Centre. While the History Centre is open to the public, and has extensive experience using its archives in educational settings, the Salisbury Cathedral archive has not been so accessible. This is changing thanks to the hard work of Cathedral archivist Emily Naish and her band of volunteers, and the willingness of the Dean and Chapter to open up this amazing resource. Members of the public have already enjoyed behind-the-scenes tours of the library, located above the cloisters, and now it is the turn of school children to work with documents from the archive and enjoy the benefits of this cultural education.

Official copy of Honorious III papal bull, written in 1219
Cathedral archivist Emily Naish shows students the original 1219 document

Archivist Emily joined forces with the Cathedral’s teaching & community officer Sally Stewart-Davis and the History Centre to develop the school session which we ran in the cathedral on 27 February.

The 13th century Papal Bull that gave permission for the building of a new cathedral on the water meadows by the River Avon, so moving the settlement of Old Sarum to New Sarum. Students from Stanchester Academy near Yeovil are shown the original cartulary, or register, which contains the 1219 Papal Bull from Pope Honorious III.

Emily chose a document in abbreviated Medieval Latin to introduce the difficulties that can arise when working with primary sources. Written in 1219, the document is an official copy of the Papal Bull from Pope Honorious III giving permission for the church authorities to build a new Salisbury Cathedral on the water meadows by the River Avon. As a starter activity we asked the students – aged 11-14 – to identify a list of words that they might find familiar, even though they were in Latin. Among the words they were looking for were Sarum, benedictionem, aquam, castellani and hominum (Salisbury, benediction, water, castle and men/people).

It was a challenge, but a challenge that was well met. The students realised that even when faced with a document in a foreign language, with abbreviations and in a difficult script, there was information they could extract.

While a Papal Bull in Medieval Latin does not immediately spring to mind as the most accessible archive for school children or adults, the youngsters from Bishop Wordsworth School in Salisbury and Stanchester Academy, near Yeovil, really engaged with the document and the activity. This was real and relevant – and they were working in the building that ultimately resulted from this Papal document.

Students from Wiltshire and Somerset in the north transept of Salisbury Cathedral, getting to grips with archives and primary sources.

The second document the students worked on was a 1599 letter from Elizabeth I to the dean and chapter at Salisbury Cathedral and relates to Sir Walter Raleigh’s request that he be given the estate of Sherborne Castle which had belonged to the Church. Although in English, the students still faced the challenge of deciphering the handwriting and getting to grips with Elizabethan grammar and spellings. This they did with amazing success.

The Lydiard School Mystery

on Monday, 16 February 2015. Posted in Archives, Schools

I was editing some articles on Lydiard Tregoze for Wiltshire Community History(http://history.wiltshire.gov.uk/community/getcom.php?id=147) and after reading a good piece on the school, with interesting material from the log books, it struck me that it didn’t seem quite right. The school was Lydiard Park Junior and Infants but investigation showed that the logs books were for Bassett Down School; had there been two schools in this small parish? Wiltshire & Swindon Archives hold the log books for one, but nothing else, while the original deeds and two admission registers are held for Lydiard Park.

The Victoria County History for Wiltshire mentions Lydiard Park but has nothing to say about Bassett Down, where even the big house was demolished in 1958. Further research showed me that were indeed two schools in this parish for 100 years and this may have been brought about by the two main landowners founding and supporting their own schools. The original Lydiard Park School was attached to the Gate House on Lord Bolingbroke’s Lydiard Park estate and in 1860 he gave land for the building of a new school, a little further away, and continued to support it. In the south of the parish, on the edge of the grounds of Basset Down House a school was built in 1864; perhaps the Storey-Maskelyne family there felt, quite rightly, that their local children would not be able to walk the four miles each way to the Lydiard Park School.

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