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Lesley Robertson
05-09-2008, 11:35 AM
Since I've had time off for good behaviour and other assorted reasons, it seems a good idea to start a roll call and see how many OPSs we have represented here. Just tell us which place you're studying, how big your study area is (a street, a parish, a county...) and anything else you feel like sharing.

To start, I'm studying the Berwickshire parish of Whitsome and Hilton. What started as a 1-house study swiftly grew into a look at the whole (tiny) village, and thence to the surrounding farms that make up the bulk of the parish. I'm interesting in pretty much anything involving the parish, at any point in history, and am trying to put the data together into a coherent story which may one day become a book. In the mean time, I'm building databases and putting data that's less easy to find on my website, together with information contributed by others.

My current big problem is finding the records of the (now closed) parish school. They're not in the National Archvies for Scotland, Borders Archives, Borders FHS or anywhere else I can think of.

Lesley

vivdunstan
09-09-2008, 4:16 PM
Hi Lesley,

Nice to find this online forum. I miss the old mailing list version.

I've two one-place studies, though in a very informal way, not actively seeking to offer any more lookups (though I do some). I'm extremely ill long-term (can be knocked out for huge periods, leading to a backlog of up to 6 months of email), but for my own research enjoyment I've slowly gathered info about the places concerned, though it's a very low-level of activity now.

The first one is for Coldingham parish in Berwickshire. 15 years ago I indexed the mortcloth records between 1694 and 1759: about 4000 burials. This is useful because there's no conventional burial register from the period, and very few gravestones survive from back then. Fortunately the parish recorded people renting (or being given free use of) the parish mortcloths, and that's what I indexed. I published the results, and still get email about it, and do lookups. Some years later for a university project I transcribed and studied Coldingham's baptisms between 1800 and 1819, examining the relationship between witnesses (similar to godparents) and factors such as relationship to parents, occupation, and geographical location. I have the full pre-1855 parish registers plus indexes of baptisms and marriages for the parish. Might be nice to reconstitute the parish someday though, but it's much bigger than Whitsome so not easy! Oh and I've indexed testificates from the kirk session records: people moving in and out of Coldingham parish recording the date, names, and where to/from. I get occasional email enquiries about those from a GENUKI reference (I run the eastern Scottish Borders GENUKI county and parish pages so can control how much information is mentioned about my one-place studies there).

The other parish I'm interested is another Scottish Borders one: Melrose in Roxburghshire. I lived there for a while as a child, and have many ancestors there going back to the 17th century and earlier. I don't have a copy of the parish registers (though I regularly borrow them in published version from a nearby library), but for another university project 6 years ago I studied the Melrose Regality court records between 1657 and 1706, indexing 2364 court cases between 1657 and 1676, including 2684 named pursuers, 3483 named defenders, and 2471 other people (this for a population in the whole regality then of about 2500 based on hearth tax listings: yes a lot of people made multiple appearances at the court!). The detailed information recorded about individuals in these court records is often enough to piece together families or make tentative identifications. Melrose is very lucky to have these records (it had an unusual history to be at the centre of a regality jurisdiction), and I was lucky that they'd already been transcribed so studying them wasn't the vast task it would have been. I haven't added mention of this database to the Melrose GENUKI page yet, but I may well do so, if I decide I can offer lookups based on it, and in what ways. One tricky thing is that these records largely predate the surviving parish registers, so few people will have been able to trace their family trees far enough back in time. I'm also loathe to do massive surname dumps. The court records are published in book form so if people did want to get masses of references I could always refer them to there. One day if I got a copy of the parish registers (preferably in the published transcript book form: I'm trying!) it would be nice to index certain things (there's a burial roll for instance), and do a partial family reconstitution. But like Coldingham it's a vast parish and maybe that would be too big a task, especially for me now.

My husband also started two one-place studies based on small neighbouring parishes in Suffolk. We have the parish registers on microfiche and many other records. He used to offer lookups but is too busy with work now. But it's a project that could be resumed in the future. As in my one-place studies the initial prompt was hunting his own ancestors (traced back to circa 1600 in these parishes) but then he caught the family reconstitution bug and became curious about everyone! I even used one of his parishes for one of my university projects, looking at the extent of kinship within the parish at the time of the 1881 census. By researching family trees of all the people in the parish registers I found that half of the 62 households (tiny parish!) had kinship links to other households, some through married children/parents, some through cousins, and could compare this to the findings of other demographic historians elsewhere.

Best wishes all.

Viv

Lesley Robertson
31-10-2008, 11:49 AM
Nice to find this online forum. I miss the old mailing list version.

Hi Viv,

To judge by the replies here, it looks as though there's only thee and me, and now Jill, here! Strange coincidence, since I think we're the only 3 doing scottish OPSs!

I'm in a bit of a quandry. I visited RCAMS in 2007 and promised to send them the results of my burial ground photography... The trouble is that this summer I went to photograph Hilton and found it totally overgrown (brambles and nettles to my armpits), presumably because it's on a farm rather than public land like the Whitsome one. I did my best, but missed all the smaller stones, so I'm going to have to go back before everything starts growing in the spring. If I send them the pics showing how overgrown it is, will I get the farmer into trouble as it's a scheduled monument? Or should I ring the alarm that the area's not being cared for - the brambles were pushing a couple of the table stones out of alignment... Upsetting the farmer won't help the long term survival of the monument.

I don't see why the Council can't cut it when they do Whitsome, but I guess it's not their job. And i'm not doing anything until I've got my other pictures...

Lesley

vivdunstan
03-11-2008, 10:31 AM
Hi Lesley,


To judge by the replies here, it looks as though there's only thee and me, and now Jill, here! Strange coincidence, since I think we're the only 3 doing scottish OPSs!

Scottish takeover! LOL!


If I send them the pics showing how overgrown it is, will I get the farmer into trouble as it's a scheduled monument? Or should I ring the alarm that the area's not being cared for - the brambles were pushing a couple of the table stones out of alignment... Upsetting the farmer won't help the long term survival of the monument.

Tough call, but you promised to send the photos, so I'd do that with a clear conscience once you've photographed the smaller stones too. It may not raise any alarms to be perfectly honest. You haven't deliberately drawn their attention to this. If they notice and it does flag things: 'Que sera, sera'.

Viv

Chris Doran
03-11-2008, 11:11 AM
Penge, with sub-district Anerley (currently London Borough of Bromley but at various times in Kent and Surrey also), postcodes SE20 (all) & SE19. To this I add the nearer parts of Beckenham, Kent, BR3 (now also LBB) which have always had an affinity to Penge, e.g. the schools near the border took pupils from both former LAs. The Crystal Palace is included, as its grounds were almost entirely within Penge and Beckenham, despite its always being located by its postal address of Sydenham.

There will be a website with an index of newspaper articles etc. one day, but don't hold your breath.

suedent
03-11-2008, 11:33 AM
I'm not doing a OPS personally, but I am a committee member of the Polperro Family History Society. Polperro is a small fishing village in SE Cornwall & is split between the parishes of Talland & Lansallos.

Not only do we help people with researching their Polperro families but we are also compiling as much as we can on the history of the village & we work closely with Polperro Heritage Museum.

Geoffers
03-11-2008, 1:44 PM
Since I've had time off for good behavious and other assorted reasons, it seems a good idea to start a roll call and see how many OPSs we have represented here. Just tell us which place you're studying, how big your study area is (a street, a parish, a county...) and anything else you feel like sharing.

I have a one-place study for Buxton, Norfolk. It includes records for contiguous parishes (Stratton Strawless, Burgh, Brampton, Oxnead, Lamas, Hautbois Magna, Hautbois Parva, Coltishall, Horstead) - plus some records for nearby parishes (Aylsham, Scottow, Skeyton, Swanton Abbott, Westwick, Sco Ruston, Sloley, Belaugh, Frettenham, Hainford).

No web-site, but I have loads of information presently contained in spreadsheets.

The spreadsheet for Buxton presently includes just over 16,000 entries.

Total records for NE Norfolk (Mostly the Hundreds of South Erpingham and Tunstead), just over 400,000

ahcoles
04-11-2008, 7:00 AM
I'm here too, representing Buckinghamshire - specifically the parish of Wing.

It's growing, slowly but surely, and I keep tripping across new records so the backlog of things to do and ideas to pursue keeps getting longer and longer! I also have an accompanying blog to talk about what I'm up to, request help from visitors, keep track of what is in each month's update, and generally vent my frustrations so I don't go completely mad. |banghead|

It's so good to see other people's sites, and pick up ideas about what they are doing in their study and how they are approaching it, so thanks for sharing, everyone!

Alex

Lesley Robertson
04-11-2008, 8:43 AM
It's growing, slowly but surely, and I keep tripping across new records so the backlog of things to do and ideas to pursue keeps getting longer and longer!


I know the feeling! I still have a stack of testament printouts I brought back from Scotland in 2006 that I haven't transcribed!

I've found that one advantage of having an on-line presence, even though the site only shows about 10% of my data, is that it brings in offers of other material for inclusion. I've recently (well, fairly) uploaded school photos that came in from Oz, and a couple of the old postcards showing village views we donated by others. This week, someone sent me their study of one village family which links 3 of the lines in my databases, something I'd suspected but hadn't gotten around to working on.

I see the website partly as bait to bring in other Whitsome & Hilton contacts.
Lesley

Ardchattan
04-11-2008, 9:14 AM
Hi Viv,

To judge by the replies here, it looks as though there's only thee and me, and now Jill, here! Strange coincidence, since I think we're the only 3 doing scottish OPSs!

I'm in a bit of a quandry. I visited RCAMS in 2007 and promised to send them the results of my burial ground photography... The trouble is that this summer I went to photograph Hilton and found it totally overgrown (brambles and nettles to my armpits), presumably because it's on a farm rather than public land like the Whitsome one. I did my best, but missed all the smaller stones, so I'm going to have to go back before everything starts growing in the spring. If I send them the pics showing how overgrown it is, will I get the farmer into trouble as it's a scheduled monument? Or should I ring the alarm that the area's not being cared for - the brambles were pushing a couple of the table stones out of alignment... Upsetting the farmer won't help the long term survival of the monument.

I don't see why the Council can't cut it when they do Whitsome, but I guess it's not their job. And i'm not doing anything until I've got my other pictures...

Lesley


Lesley
Can you PM me with details as I have a good pal in HS whom I can ask for advice, without naming places?
To be honest, in my experience, the HS officers don't get heavy handed, they understand the problems of management and help as much as they can, unless the person is a persistant offender. The officers themselves are overstretched with the amount of work and low pay and too few hours, most are not full time. Together with the massive increase in paperworkload being so closely involved in the old and, even more, the new Rural Development Programmes. All makes it difficult to get around places as often as they want and there are usually high priority - ie, unstable and dangerous ! - situations that divert the attention. But they are rarely upset about having something flagged up.
With the state of agriculture these days and the weather this year when its been hard enough to get essential jobs done, then areas like this can easily get to the bottom of the pile each month. There may also be moneys available to the farmer now to get help with it that he is unaware of. There are more management plans I believe, and he may not have learnt about them.
Council won't touch it if its not their ground or responsibility ! heaven help they do something altruistically !! And council are far more likely to be heavy handed with owner.

Jill

Oxcomper
18-02-2015, 8:39 AM
I am doing a one place study on the village of Appleton with Eaton in Oxfordshire (Berkshire pre 1974). It started with my family tree, which blossomed so much it took in a lot of the families in the village who had all inter married. They I got into looking at the buildings etc. I am interested in pretty much everything to do with the parish (and some of the surrounding ones too as families are sometimes just over the border).

Lesley Robertson
18-02-2015, 10:32 AM
Welcome in! I hadn't realised how long it is since anyone had posted a OPS until I saw your message.

Your story is much like mine - stuck on my own tree and curious when Historic Scotland listed my Partner's house, the study rapidly spread from one house to the (small) village, and thence to the parish. And yes, I'm fighting the temptation to spread to the nearest other parishes! Fortunately, I still have a few problems to solve, and new info keeps coming available.....

thewideeyedowl
19-04-2015, 12:01 PM
Hi Lesley

Have you by any chance got any info on the - presumably large - property called Towans? In the 1911 Scotland Census, the landed proprietor was William G PEARETH(?), 49. He was the head of a household comprising 19 people - wife, four children, a cousin, a visitor (teacher of dancing), a governess, housekeeper, lady's maid, kitchen maids, and butler. So this was obviously a BIG place. Everyone except the housekeeper and lady's maid was born in England.

Of more interest, though, to me is Towans Stable Cottage, which was probably(?) on the estate. That is where I have just found my brickwall grandfather (Thomas James Astle). He is living there with his wife, Alice, and he is working as a chauffeur - quite possibly for Mr PEARETH(?). Thomas and Alice were born in England - I have details - so I suspect that Thomas may have moved with his employer at some stage(??). (NB Alice was not my grandmother.)

Sorry I have not got the Census Enumeration details from Scotland's People, but the page relates to the parish of Monkton & Prestwick - have just downloaded the page and I really am all a-flutter here to think that I finally have a breakthrough with this grandfather. Will be following up more old threads later.

Better break for lunch now...

Owl

Lesley Robertson
19-04-2015, 1:36 PM
I'm sorry, Owl, but Monkton & Prestwick was a parish in what was Ayr until the 1975 reorganisation. Whitsome is in Berwickshire...

I've had a look at the Valuation Rolls for 1905 and 1915, either side of the 1911, and there's no sign of Peareth or Astle, so it doesn't look as though they were there for long.
The 1905 and 1915 show the owner of Towans Villa as as James Robertson, wine merchant. It has stables,, outhouses and a house & stables (presumably what became the garage) occupied by the coachman in 1905. By 1915, the Villa and stables cottage have a tenant, Robert Howie, with a groom in the stables. The VR was made every year, but they're not all on line.
Of course the 1911 shows Peareth as a landed prop, not that he owned Towans..I see that in 1901, he was "living on own means".

I've checked Scotland's Places, can't find Towans... However, that nice Mr Google turned up the Towans Hotel on the listed buildings site, built bet 1888-1902. It's HERE (http://canmore.rcahms.gov.uk/en/site/208959/digital_images/prestwick+powmill+road+4+5+towans+court/) on the RCAHMS site.... Looking at the 1911 census, I think it's the same building...

There's no Scottish death cert for Thomas.

thewideeyedowl
19-04-2015, 2:51 PM
Thank you, Lesley - yes, the place would seem to fit the bill, wouldn't it? Certainly BIG. I'll search for the Peareth family another time.

My interest is really in Thomas, and I will be returning to my first-ever thread in a few mins. He lived much of his life in Long Cross, Surrey, but I now know that he was in Whitsome, Scotland at least between 1911 Census and the birth of his son in 1914; served in the ASC during WW1; seems to have been leading a double life during the '20s and '30s - there are electoral registrations for him both in London and at Long Cross (but if curious about that aspect, you must pm me); and he died in Long Cross in 1951.

Still, this census find is a little bit of a breakthrough with this baffling man. And 'every little helps', as the slogan has it.

Thanks again.

Owl

Lesley Robertson
19-04-2015, 3:37 PM
You didn't say why he was in Whitsome, just mentioned Towans on the other side of the country. I'll look and see if there's anything in my database.

Lesley Robertson
19-04-2015, 5:45 PM
To prevent duplication, and because this thread is moving away from an OPS rollcall, I have moved the last 2 messages to Brickwalls HERE (https://www.british-genealogy.com/threads/76213-Thomas-James-Astle-1878-1951/page2) where the old thread has been revived.

I am also closing this thread. If anyone wants to add to the OPS roll call, please start a new thread.