Welcome to the Summer edition of the Heritage Hub e-newsletter
With schools out for the Summer and many of us heading off on our holidays, most adults will appreciate the need to keep children occupied in the car during a lengthy journey. Nowadays it is all too tempting to plug our offspring into mobile phones or tablets to play games or watch films. However, do you remember when such electronic trickery wasn’t at our disposal and we counted cars, tractors or churches instead?
We recently stumbled upon some evidence of historic car spotting in the process of transferring a document to a neighbouring archive service. Just occasionally we receive out of county material as part of incoming deposits and although we normally encourage the depositor or donor to deliver such items to the relevant record office themselves, we will try to repatriate items if we are attending meetings nearby. A few weeks ago we received a ledger dating from the 1860s relating to the payment of tithes for a parish which falls under the remit of Bristol Archives. Head of Service, Heather Forbes was visiting this service and so was happy to take this volume with her. We were just double checking the contents and found firstly that the majority of the ledger was empty but also, in the middle of the blank pages, a child had used it to make a list of cars spotted in 1965!
This was clearly a car enthusiast and one wonders where they are now and indeed, what car they might be driving as opposed to spotting. If anyone recognises this childish scribble, do get in touch with us!
This ledger gave us a glimpse into two eras of history, a real two for the price of one! It also seemed a particularly apt discovery given that we are in the middle of our Green Pledge Project and this is an example of paper recycling which I’m sure our Green Pledge Project team would approve of although as an accredited archive service, we certainly wouldn't endorse scribbling in archival ledgers!
Enjoy the Summer period ahead. Stay safe in the sunshine (hopefully) and if you get bored, you know what you can do...some car spotting or alternatively, you could visit the Heritage Hub e-newsletter events page.
