The Midland Ancestor

Hot<Keys>+Hot Sources in the current edition of The Midland Ancestor, the Journal of the Birmingham and Midland Society of Genealogy and Heraldry, has this to say about www.rushtonspener.info

“… valuable information (constantly being added to) for anyone with ancestors from these parts it is also an example for those of us who have done nothing, or very little, to make the fruits of our research available to a wider audience”.

And while things have been quite on the update front over the last few weeks I can promise that I am hard at work behind the scenes and that a major update to the parish registers will be arriving in the next few weeks.

BBC Four’s Medieval Season (part 5)

This week sees the last programme in BBC Four’s Medieval Series on Thursday 15 May, 19:30-20:00  in which Dr Alixe Bovey reaches the West Country, investigating some of the myths and legends depicted on the Gough Map and discovers how these were used to legitimise wars and empires.

Site update

The outstanding marriage records have been put online this week to complete the records for the years 1750 – 1849. That means that the project to transcribe the parish registers is now at the halfway stage, and work is now underway on the third phase of this project, but I think that progress may be slow due to the age of the documents and the difficulty in reading the writing.

After I field trip to Rushton Spencer St Lawrence last Wednesday, luckily one of the sunniest days of the year so far,  the project to record the memorial inscriptions has again taken a small step forward with the addition of another 49 MIs to the sight.

As the memorial inscription project is dependant on fieldwork and so reliant on suitable weather conditions, it is something only gets worked on in the summer months so over the next 3 – 4 months I hope to move this project forward and hope to add 100 – 200 more inscriptions.

Avoncroft

On Tuesday we visited Avoncroft museum of historic buildings, partly as an afternoon out and partly as a research trip to see what style of buildings may have been seen around Rushton at different times.

The Avoncroft museum is an open air exhibition of historic buildings including traditional agricultural buildings, industrial workshops and furnished houses all of which have been rescued and rebuilt on site. The museum opened to the public in 1967 and now exhibits 25 historic buildings and structures from an 18th century Cock Pitt, through to a 19th century Victorian Mission Church and Windmill.

The buildings which are of particular interest to me are the Toll House, which was built in 1822 at Little Malvern, Worcestershire and was part of the Upton-upon –Severn Turnpike Trust. The two story brick building has a living room and a scullery on the ground floor and two bed rooms on the first floor. The angled facets of the buildings front ensured the best possible view of the road in both directions. The earth closet in the garden was used to serve to toll house on its original site.

The Nailshop especially as the Mitchell family were nail makers for many years. This nailshop came to the museum from Sidemoor in Bromsgrove and comprises of a family workshop including two forges and a central ‘brewus’ or wash house.

The timber framed Tudor Merchant’s House was built in 1558 by the Lylley family of dyers. The building has been reconstructed to look much as it might when first built. The timber frames is of oak jointed and pegged together and infilled with wattle and daub. Externally the infill panels are coated with limewash. The plan follows that of the traditional Medieval Hall House with both front and back doors opening into the cross or screens passage. The hall, which is open to the rafters, would have originally have had a hearth in the middle of the floor. However this was moved probably in the 16th century and the great timber smoke stack inserted into the floor of the chamber over the screens passage. The stairs leading to the upper floor of the cross wing were also inserted at a later date. Originally, access was from one of the two smaller downstairs rooms, which would if the owner were a merchant have served as his shop and office. The upper chamber often referred to as a solar would have served as a private retiring place in the daytime and a bed chamber at night for the owner’s family. The foundation stones visible at the lower end of the house indicate the possible location of a service wing that did not survive. In 1962 the house was demolished, and a local group saved the timbers, leading to the first exhibit at Avoncroft in 1967.

The Granary from Temple Broughton, Worcestershire is a late 18th century grain store with the elm frame supported on brick piers, the space underneath would have been used as a cart shed.

The Cruck-frame Barn which was built during the 16th century at Cholstrey Court Farm, near Leominster in Herefordshire. The crucks are made of black poplar whilst the rest of the frame is of oak infilled with split oak pales. At harvest time wagon-loads of corn were brought back to the barn and stored in one of the bays. During autumn and winter months, corn was threshed on the hard paved floor. The grain was separated from the chaff by being tossed in the draught between the two doors (a process known as winnowing). The threshed straw was stored in the remaining bay.

The pond in the foreground of the picture was constructed in the 1970s and is typical of a Worcestershire farm pond. In the mid 1990s it began to loose water and in the summer months would often be dry. During 1997 the pond was deepened and puddled with clay to form a watertight seal which allowed the pond to rapidly refill with water.

Anyone wanting to visit the museum should visit their website for more details and opening times, if you enter the postcode B60 4JR into a satnav it will get you close enough to the museum to follow the signs to the entrance.

BBC Four’s Medieval Season (part 4)

The medieval season is drawing to an end as we enter May, the bulk of the viewing this week is made up of repeat viewings of earlier programmes. However it looks as though there is still going to be some interesting viewing this week if you are interested in food and history then Wednesday should be the highlight of your week with both Clarissa and the King’s Cookbook & A Tudor Feast at Christmas, some ideas for the Christmas dinner already then.

Christina: A Medieval Life 9.00pm tonight looks as though it could be a very interesting programme just so long as they give some depth to the information given and not just skim across the surface as has happened with some of the programmes.

Anyway here is this week’s viewing:-

Monday 5 May,

Christina: A Medieval Life 21:00-22:00
Michael Wood traces the life of a real-life peasant of 14th century Hertfordshire, looking at what life was like for a poor villager during the time of war, famine, floods, climate change and the Black Death, and reveals the connections with modern-day Britons.

Wednesday 7 May,

Clarissa and the King’s Cookbook 21:00-21:30
Clarissa Dickson Wright tracks down and cooks some of the recipes from Britain’s oldest known cookbook,The Forme of Cury, a 700 year old scroll written during the reign of King Richard II from recipes created by the King’s master chefs. She wonders if this manuscript may have influenced the way we eat today.

A Tudor Feast at Christmas 23:00-00:00
Historians and archaeologists cook a Tudor feast as it would have been prepared 400 years ago, sourcing food from the land and using recipes from the era. Without the use of modern conveniences, a group of historians and archaeologists cook a Tudor feast as it would have been prepared over 400 years ago.

Turning the clock back to rediscover a way of life from an age gone by, they wear clothes from the period, source food from the land, and use recipes from the era.

Thursday 8 May,

In Search of Medieval Britain 5/6 19:30-20:00  30mins
Dr Alixe Bovey uses the oldest surviving route map of Britain to make a series of journeys through Britain in the Middle Ages. In this episode she explores the most mysterious region on the whole map: medieval Scotland. A nation so young it still had no capital, where wolves reigned over its highland wilderness, and gangsters terrorised its border lands.

Inside the Medieval Mind 4/4 21:00-22:00
Professor Robert Bartlett lays bare the brutal framework of the medieval class system. Inequality was part of the natural order, the life of serfs little better than those of animals, the knight’s code of chivalry more one of caste solidarity than morality. Yet a social revolution would transform relations between those with absolute power and those with none.

Crusades 4/4 22:00-22:50
Terry Jones looks at Richard the Lionheart’s battle with the legendary Saladin, following in his footsteps to see whether it would have been physically possible for Richard to jump overboard and wade ashore to Tel Aviv without drowning.