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The Essex Record Office holds records about the county, its people and buildings and provides a useful resource for individuals interested in family, house and local history.

Recreating the Record

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Over the course of the UK lockdowns the music collective, Resonance have been working with the ERO to incorporate recordings preserved by us into their work, culminating in an Album which has been launched today!

Chris Adam, co-founder of Resonance takes us through the journey below together with some details about how you can purchase your own copy.

Strangely enough for a project so grounded in history, this album started from a meeting about the future. Sometime in January (I forget the actual date!), Martin [Martin Astell – the Essex Record Office Manager] and I were included in a meeting to discuss ideas incorporating digital technology into art and heritage projects in Essex. It was in this meeting I discovered the amazing resource that was essexsounds.org.uk and realised there was an opportunity for Resonance to collaborate with the Essex Record Office.

The Record Office has an extensive archive of recorded audio material from around Essex. Many of these archives are fragile and at-risk – having been initially captured decades ago on ageing formats such as reel-to-reel tapes, early records or even wax cylinders. These are continuously in the process of being digitised, in order to preserve the audio history of Essex.

All of this is probably old news to fans of the Record Office, but it struck me as a fantastic opportunity to involve the members of Resonance in an interesting project: using the archives of sound to create music that embodies the spirit of revival and restoration. Combining the old with the new.

Resonance was created with the aim of embracing an alternative side to electronic music. Many of our artists embrace the use of analogue and digital equipment, combining 1970s-inspired synthesizers with modern, digital recording methods and technology. The process isn’t all that different to the Record Office’s approach: trying to capture ephemeral one-of-a-kind sounds in a way that preserves their emotional impact.

We therefore arranged for 12 of our musicians to choose samples from the Essex Sounds website that they could use for our own compositions. Once we had cleared the sounds for licensing purposes, we were free to manipulate them however we chose. This could be cutting the samples into pieces so tiny they are perceived by the human ear as a single tone, or changing the pitch and timbre using modular synthesis (think giant electronic switchboards, and you’re not far off what this looks like!). Some of us used guitar effects pedals to change everything into unrecognisable sounds. Throughout this, computers and digital recording processes allow us to capture all these experiments and save them for arrangement and use later.

The result of these experiments is a journey that moves between dark, minimal compositions and uplifting passages that highlight the mixed history of Essex. Nostalgic sounds merge with machinery noises reminiscing of Chelmsford’s scientific and industrial heritage. Field recordings capture the Essex countryside and Southend Seafront, combined with introspective electronic melodies. The ambience of Colchester and its famous Zoo blend with trains and sampled orchestral TV programmes, inviting memories of days out around Essex and the journeys these archives capture.



A few of the initial iterations of the artwork. Due to the stochastic nature of the process around 100 different variations were made and the best selected for the final design (top left).

The artwork for the album was created from the location data of around 400 sounds from the Essex Sounds website. It is essentially a top-down map, where each of the coloured pathways start at a location one of the archived sounds is recorded. From the initial coordinates, lines (or waves) are traced through a “flow field” – a simulation of physical field that assigns a force to every pixel in the image. As the lines move through the space they flow in the direction of the underlying field. This parallels the way that sounds move from a location, following the currents of the air outward until they are heard far away from their original source.

The name of the record was a sticking point for quite some time within the collective. We knew that we wanted to use the word “record” due to its double meaning – both in the archival sense and the musical sense – but the rest of the title eluded us until we finally settled on “recreating”. This summed up the attitude we had of turning the past into something new for the future, the iterative process of recording and preserving the sounds led us into new creative directions.

That’s probably enough of my ramblings for now. Hopefully that’s given you some insight into the thought processes and background to the project, and why it was so interesting for us to work on. Please listen with an open mind and we really hope you enjoy the experience!


The album is available on the 15th July 2021, and released for download on Resonance’s bandcamp page at resonancehq.bandcamp.com.

All proceeds are going to the Friends of Historic Essex charity, who work closely with many heritage organisations to preserve Essex’s history.

For more information on the archives, visit www.essexrecordoffice.co.uk. For a closer look at the archive of sounds then the Essex Record Office have a site at www.essexsounds.org.uk with an interactive map where each sound was recorded.

Updates on Resonance events and work can be found on the Resonance Instagram (@resonancehq) and website at www.resonancehq.co.uk .

Chris Adam

A Distracted Researcher

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Visiting the Searchroom can be a dangerous business – you can be looking for one thing and find yourself fully distracted by something else. Such as finding a full farm inventory when you were only trying to research crop rotations and the incidence of the growth of turnips…

A Wethersfield farm inventory of 1803

The culprit for this particular distraction was an impressively detailed entry in a 19th century valuer’s notebook for Wethersfield Farm (D/DF 35/1/4). Friend and user of Essex Record Office, Dr Michael Leach, discusses this interesting entry.

Inventories (usually prepared for probate purposes) give a unique room-by-room view of how the interiors of houses in the early modern period were arranged and furnished, as well as clues to the affluence and style of living of their occupants. By the end of the eighteenth century, they are much fewer in number and rarely adopt the useful room-by-room listing which provides so much insight. So it is particularly illuminating to find one which provides the full details, dating from 1803. This particular one was prepared for estate, rather than probate valuation, purposes.

Arrangement of Rooms

The standard medieval house comprised a hall, with a parlour at high end and a buttery at the opposite end, with chambers over the parlour and buttery. Later additional chambers were provided when a floor was inserted into the double height hall. The extra rooms so created were used for storage, as well as for sleeping. At farmhouse level, kitchens were unusual and, though they increasingly appeared over the seventeenth century, cooking was often still carried out over the open fire in the hall. However, it is perhaps surprising to see this pattern continuing into the early nineteenth century in an obviously affluent household.

Hall: In this Wethersfield farm, the medieval arrangement persisted as late as 1803, though the hall was renamed the ‘keeping’ room; a term that I have not met elsewhere. The Wethersfield farm was still doing all of its cooking in the hall which was the only room provided with the essential cobirons to support the spits, and the ‘nocked trammel’, an adjustable chain in the chimney for suspending cooking vessels over the open fire. However most of the cooking utensils (spit, saucepans, skillets, frying pan, dripping pans, ladles and so on), as well as the tableware and drinking vessels, were kept in the two butteries. As is usual with inventories, it is not possible to deduce where the food preparation took place. The Wethersfield hall, with its square ‘dining table’, pewter mugs and at least ten chairs, was used for eating meals, as well as cooking them.

Parlour: This room was also used for meals with a large oval dining table and six chairs. It also had a number of smaller tables, and a ‘tea chest’ and was perhaps used for more ‘polite’ entertainment. It was also furnished with two large pictures and seven small prints and included a fireplace with cobirons (but no other cooking equipment). The two linen horses suggest it was also used for drying clothes. The level of sophistication of this household is shown by the ownership of an ‘iron footman’, a device used to keep plates warm before serving food.

Butteries: Provision of separate butteries for strong and small beer was common by the seventeenth century and is still found at Wethersfield. Only the strong beer buttery served its named purpose, albeit on a substantial scale (five hogsheads, four half hogsheads and two 20 gallon barrels – a total capacity of nearly 400 gallons, though some, of course, must have been empty).

This buttery was also storing cutlery, dishes and mugs, and was equipped with a sideboard and shelving. The small beer buttery had a sink, shelving, a few more barrels and most of the cooking equipment – and an ironing board. It also had a meat safe, so may have used for food storage as well. Neither room appears to have been heated, or to have had a table which would have been necessary for food preparation.

Chambers: None appear to have been heated by fireplaces. It is assumed that these chambers were either upstairs (a staircase is mentioned) or over some of the subsidiary offices outside the main core of the house. There were five in total, one of which (the cheese chamber) was used exclusively for storing and maturing cheese (10 old and 24 new cheeses were listed). The other four chambers were furnished as bedrooms, one of which (the menservants’ chamber) slept two in stump beds. These were probably for the annually hired farm servants, rather than for domestic ones. Two other chambers (‘best’ and ‘small’) had four poster beds, mahogany or walnut furniture, and curtained windows. The ‘spare’ chamber had a sacking bottom bedstead but was furnished with chairs, a dresser and various chests and boxes – but no curtains.

Domestic offices: These consisted of brewhouse, dairy, cream house, mealhouse, granary and cornchamber, all appropriately equipped for their named function. Only the brewhouse had evidence of a fireplace, equipped with a nocked trammel.

Wealth and Status of the Occupants

Compared to typical farm inventories of a century earlier, the number and quality of possessions is striking, including a 30 hour clock and barometer (which would have been mercury, as the aneroid was yet to be invented) in the hall, as well as walnut and mahogany furniture elsewhere. Oak is now limited to more utilitarian purposes.

There is a plethora of table ware including ‘Queensware’, a cream-coloured earthenware which had been developed by Josiah Wedgewood in the 1760s. Pewter plates have entirely replaced wooden ones, and there is a surprising amount of tinware, presumably manufactured in the industrial Midlands.

The spare chamber contained ‘a Lot of Books’, so the household was a literate one. Two large pictures hung in the parlour, and some other rooms had prints on the walls.

Two of the bedrooms were curtained but no carpets or rugs were listed, so the floors were probably bare. Most striking, though, is the very large quantity of ‘stuff’ which had been bought or acquired. But, in spite of this level of sophistication, food was still being cooked and eaten in the hall over the open fire; exactly as it would have been several centuries earlier.

Farming methods and its products

It is surprising that no animals are listed, though it is clear that this was principally a dairy farm. Also there is none of the normal farm equipment such as carts, and ploughs with their necessary tackle, though the listing of two scythes and five sickles suggests that a crop, or hay, was harvested. There was only one sack of wheat in the granary at the end of July – this may have been bought in for domestic use.

Cheese making seems to have been the main activity, with 10 old and 24 new cheeses in the cheese chamber. The cheese making indicates the need for quantities of milk, but where were the cows, and where were they being milked? Was the necessary milk being bought in, or were the animals excluded from this inventory for some reason?

Bee-keeping was a subsidiary, but not insubstantial, activity with at least 14 skeps listed. These were made of straw and were destroyed at each harvest, so this total might represent the number of colonies that were being used for honey production.

The other significant activity on this farm was brewing which seems to have been on a much larger scale (and a level of equipment, including an ‘iron furnace’) than normal household consumption would justify.

Conclusion

For the historian inventories provide a unique opportunity for a virtual tour of houses at various periods, as well as offering much information on the level of wealth and sophistication of the occupants. It is much to be regretted that most Essex probate inventories were destroyed but fortunately those of Writtle, a peculiar of New College, Oxford, have survived in the college archives and were published in full (with an invaluable commentary and glossary of archaic terms) by F W Steer as Essex Record Office Publications No. 8 in 1950, Farm and Cottage Inventories of Mid-Essex, 1635-1749.

What’s in a Window

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Christopher Parkinson, researcher for the CVMA, project introduces us to project and some of the important resources held at the Essex Record Office.

Essex is fortunate that during the 17th and 18th centuries two antiquaries wrote manuscripts which, amongst other things, described any heraldry then present in parish churches. Richard Symonds (1617-1660), an English Royalist, produced three volumes of genealogical collections which included descriptions of heraldry in different mediums to be seen in some Essex churches. While these three volumes are now with the Royal College of Arms in London, volumes 1 (covering the Hundreds of Witham, Thurstable, Winstree, Lexden and Tendring) and volume 2 (covering the Hundreds of Clavering, Uttlesford, Freshwell, Dunmow and Hinckford) are available on microfilm at the Essex Records Office (T/B 73). William Holman (1669-1730) was a congregational minister at Stepney, Middlesex before being transferred to Halstead. He visited every town and village in Essex in order to compile a history of Essex. His manuscript is now held by the Essex Records Office in just over 500 parts (T/P 195/-/-).

St Mary Magdalene, North Ockendon, 14th century panel showing a coat of arms of the Bohun family.

My particular interest in these documents is for research in stained glass heraldry that is now lost from the county. This will be included in an appendix for a forthcoming Catalogue of the Medieval Stained Glass of Essex to be published for the Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi, CVMA. Although the term Medii Aevi implies the ‘middle ages’, my co-author Dr Penny Hebgin-Barnes and myself will include glass up to 1800 in the catalogue within the old (pre-Greater London) county boundary. Surviving medieval including heraldic stained glass can bee seen on the CVMA website in the picture archive section;

http://www.cvma.ac.uk/jsp/locationIndex.do?countyCode=EX,

click on the dedication of the church and the stained glass from all periods will be displayed. While there are about 162 pre-1800 stained glass shields of arms currently surviving within the county, the Symonds and Holman manuscripts show that there was a substantially larger number of such shields in churches and secular buildings during the first half of the 18th century. Obviously their loss cannot be due to the actions of iconoclasts, but presumably caused by general decay and later ‘restorations’ where such damaged glass was removed.

St Mary and St Clement, Clavering. Arms of William Barlee.

Communicating Connections: The History and Legacy of the Marconi Company

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Communicating Connections, Essex Record Office’s project exploring the history and legacy of the Marconi Company is finally underway after being delayed due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Here, Project Co-ordinator and Oral Historian, Laura Owen, talks us through how the project is developing and how the project team have adapted to local and national restrictions.

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Anyone who has ever been involved with oral history will tell you that the beauty of a community based oral history project is the joy of meeting new people and learning about their lives for the few hours you’re interviewing someone. They’ll usually offer you a warm invitation into their home, make you a (sometimes) lovely cup of tea and be willing to talk about their lives, memories and no doubt, opinions. However, all this came crashing to a halt when the Covid-19 pandemic hit. For me, I was looking forward to recruiting volunteers and getting on with collecting the stories of people who worked at the Marconi Company and who were involved in the company in other ways. We decided to postpone the start of the project until, we hoped, we could safely begin interviewing in-person. When a second national lockdown began to look likely and was eventually announced I conceded to the fact that our interviews for the project would have to be done remotely.

Our search for volunteers in October brought in so much interest, and I had amazing conversations with everyone who applied which I thoroughly enjoyed. In the end, we recruited 10 wonderful volunteers to conduct our oral history interviews – an increase from our planned 6 – and we underwent training in oral history interviewing delivered by Rib Davis, an accredited trainer from the Oral History Society which was thoroughly enjoyed by everyone.

The online training via Zoom was enjoyed as much as we would have enjoyed in-person training – and it meant that we could do it from the comfort of our own homes as the weather started to turn chillier!

The shift to remote, online interviewing brought us new challenges; we had to look into how we could actually record our interviews and still keep archive quality, and of course there are now more logistical challenges relating to the passing of equipment between both volunteer interviewers and our interviewees. But some positives have come out of these changes: we are now able to interview people all over the country (and potentially around the world) which wouldn’t have been possible if we were conducting all of our interviews in-person.

After numerous changes and Zoom meetings, our interviews are now underway! As I’m writing this, we’ve currently interviewed 2 ex-Marconi employees about their time at the Company and their memories of their work and colleagues. As things stand, we’ll be interviewing into the New Year so please do get in touch if you or someone you know was involved with Marconi’s.

We are currently looking for:

  • Women who worked for Marconi or had an involvement in the company in any capacity
  • People of colour and/or migrants who worked for or had an involvement in the company 
  • People who may not have worked directly for Marconi, but their company dealt with Marconi in some way 
  • People who did not have Management responsibilities or worked in lower ranks of the company 
  • People who may not have had an entirely positive experience with the company and/or were affected by mass redundancies 
  • People who met their husband/wife at the company 
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You can find out more about the project by following us on social media:

On Twitter @MarconiHeritage

On Facebook at www.facebook.com/CommunicatingConnections.

You can also get in touch with us via email, communicatingconnections@gmail.com

A History of the County of Essex Vol XII St Osyth to the Naze:

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North-East Essex Coastal Parishes. Part 1: St Osyth, Great and Little Clacton, Frinton, Great Holland and Little Holland

The latest volume of the Victoria County History of the County of Essex has been presented to Martin Astell the Essex Record Office Manager. This is the first of two volumes covering the North East Essex coastal parishes, from St Osyth to Walton on the Naze. Boydell and Brewer are also offering a spectacular 35% off for a limited period only. More details on that can be found below. All of the Victoria County History volumes draw heavily on the documents which are held at the Essex Record Office.

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The nine Essex parishes lying in a coastal district between St Osyth and the Naze headland at Walton encompass a number of distinct landscapes, from sandy cliffs to saltmarshes, recognised as environmentally significant. The landscape has constantly changed in response to changing sea levels, flooding, draining and investment in sea defences. Inland, there was an agriculturally fertile plateau based on London Clay, but with large areas of Kesgrave sands and gravels, loams and brickearths. Parts were once heavily wooded, especially at St Osyth.

The district was strongly influenced by the pattern of estate ownership, largely held by St Paul’s Cathedral from the mid-10th century. About 1118-19 a bishop of London founded a house of Augustinian canons at St Osyth, which became one of the wealthiest abbeys in Essex. Most other manors and their demesnes in the district were small and their demesne tenants were of little more than local significance.

Martin Astell, the Essex Record Office Manager adds the ERO’s copy of volume XII to the Searchroom shelves.

The area’s economy was strongly affected by the coast and its many valuable natural resources, including the extraction or manufacture of sand, gravel, septaria, copperas and salt, and activities such as fishing, tide milling, wrecking and smuggling. However, it remained a largely rural district and its wealth ultimately depended upon the state of farming. Until the eighteenth century it specialised in dairying from both sheep and cattle, but afterwards production shifted towards grain.

The coastal area has produced significant evidence of early man and was heavily exploited and settled in prehistory. The medieval settlement pattern largely conformed to a typical Essex model, with a complex pattern of small villages, hamlets and dispersed farms, many located around greens or commons.

Contents

Introduction: The North East Essex Coast; St Osyth; Great and Little Clacton; Frinton; Great Holland; Little Holland; Glossary; Note on Sources; and, Bibliography.

Offer Price £61.75 / $107.25

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Memories of the Second World War

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Frequently over the last several months commentators have compared living through the COVID-19 pandemic to life on the Home Front in the Second World War. Is that a valid comparison? What was it really like to live through that major event? Thankfully, there are still some people who remember those years and can share their stories with us.

Southend Achievement Through Football (ATF) is an organisation dedicated to changing lives through football, especially the lives of young people at risk of exclusion. By participation in sports and other recreational activities, young people develop skills and capacities to mature into individuals and members of society. But they do not just stop at sport. ATF also helps young people develop their sense of self by finding out about their heritage.

Building on the successful Heroes and Villains project, which allowed young people to explore the stories of individuals from Southend’s past, further funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund has allowed Southend ATF to encourage young people to hear the stories of residents in local sheltered accommodation. After training provided by ERO, Southend ATF interviewed 18 people specifically about their memories of the Second World War.

The participants ranged in age, from those who were still children in the 1940s, to those who were old enough to fight or serve the war effort in some other way. Thus the collection contains multiple perspectives, with different levels of understanding about current events, and different levels of impact experienced. Many of the participants grew up in London and were therefore prey to the Blitz and the stresses and strains that caused. Some were evacuated, some stayed at home. Some had family members who served in the military, some lost loved ones either at home or abroad, and some came through the ordeal relatively unscathed. Therefore there is no one common experience of what living through the War was like: it depended on personal circumstances.

For instance, the extent to which people’s lives were disrupted by air raids depended on where they were living. Robbie spent much of the War as a Land Army girl, posted to a farm outside Witham to help keep the country’s agriculture growing and fill the gaps of men sent overseas to fight.

Advertising poster for Land Army, with the title integrated and positioned in the lower quarter, in red and in dark blue. The text is integrated and placed in the upper right, in black, and across the bottom edge, in light blue. All set against a white background. image: a shoulder-length depiction of a member of the Women's Land Army, smiling and looking directly at the viewer. The text reads: "Keep the farms going while the men are fighting. Join the Womens Land Army. A vital war job... a healthy open-air life"
Copyright: © IWM Art.IWM PST 16608. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/33506


While all the rural residents had air raid shelters, she found them unnecessary overkill in those quieter areas.

‘We [the Land Army girls] never used it, only the country people used it – they thought they were in the thick of the war, you know, and nothing ever happened.’

The difference between life in London and life outside hit home on a day trip she took to the capital early in the War, when she first saw the scale of the devastation caused by intense enemy bombing.

Robbie describes her shock on her first visit to Liverpool Street, London, after the War had started.

This heavy fire seriously affected Johnnie, who was living near the docks in East London, with repercussions lasting into his adulthood, anxieties that resurrect during fire alarms. He recalled 68 nights of constant bombing in 1940. The mental and emotional strains could be as grave as physical injuries.

‘Each night… you just wondered, is this gonna be your last night? And you never knew…. You never get over what you went through, even though all those years ago…. In fact I still have, now and again, flashbacks as to, you know, what was going on.’

The experience of evacuation varied widely too. Some people used family connections to send their children to places of safety, and these generally resulted in happier experiences. For example, Norman stayed with his grandmother in South Wales, and found life in that peaceful village so idyllic that he initially refused to return to London when his father came to collect him.

Suddenly being sent to live with strangers was a very different matter. Even for those who stayed with their siblings, it was difficult: getting used to the rural way of life, feeling conscious of imposing on the family’s space and resources, and experiencing animosity from local children. But sometimes even being evacuated with strangers could turn into a happy occasion. Joan enjoyed her experiences living on the edges of the Longleat Estate so much that she frequently returned to the area for holidays in adulthood. As she was only six or seven years old when she was sent away, she came to see her evacuee family as her adopted parents, and didn’t even recognise her mother when she finally returned to her birth family five years later. ‘Home’ was a word of shifting meanings, and it could be difficult to adjust.

Joan describes the upsetting experience of coming ‘home’ to a family she barely knew after so long spent with another family as an evacuee.

However, there are common trends evident among the interviews. While the impact of rationing varied from family to family, largely dependant on how much families could grow for themselves, all participants recalled the need to ‘make do and mend’ to some extent. There was no waste, and parents had to be resourceful to acquire sufficient food and clothing for their families. While treats were limited, this made them more treasured, as some interviewees presented very vivid, detailed memories of eating their weekly sweets ration.

John and Violet share their memories of their weekly sweets rations, precious treasures to be guarded and savoured.

Another common theme is that children still found ways to play. Sometimes their normal play spaces were converted to fields of war, such as the parts of the beaches around Southend, which were fenced off both due to defences against potential invaders and to protect residents from possible mines dropped by enemy aircraft. Instead, children turned scenes of devastation into playgrounds, exploring bomb sites and collecting shrapnel to trade like marbles or Top Trumps cards. The interviewees’ experiences prove that even in the midst of great upheaval, children have a knack for play, a facet of their lives so important that the right to play is one of the rights for all children enshrined in the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Finally, most participants commented on the sense of relief when celebrating VE Day, Victory in Europe Day, on 8 May 1945.

VE-DAY CELEBRATIONS IN LONDON. (HU 92607) Women and children at a VE-Day street party in Stanhope Street, London NW1. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205090481

Although the War was not yet over, with fighting continuing against Japan until August, VE Day marked the start of the end: no more fear of bombs, no more disrupted nights of dashing into air raid shelters. But life did not return to normality straight away. Rationing continued into the 1950s. Servicemen returned home only gradually – Fred, who served in the Army, describes long periods of time spent in Germany and Italy after VE Day, just waiting to be sent home. He was not demobilised until 1947. And the war changed people irreversibly, meaning life could never again be the same.

Johnnie describes the immense sense of relief he felt on VE Day, and acknowledges that he was very lucky to have survived the War, living by the docks in East London.

Four of the interviews took place after lockdown (recorded outside, observing safe distances). These presented an opportunity to ask for comparisons directly from survivors of the Second World War, seeking reflection on how that ordeal compared to living through the COVID-19 pandemic. We will let their observations stand for themselves, without further comment or interpretation:

Essex Record Office · Comparing the Second World War to the COVID-19 Pandemic

Many thanks go to the participants who shared their remarkable stories for future generations to learn from, and to Southend ATF for taking the time to record these precious, unique stories and then share them with ERO for others to listen and enjoy.

You can listen to themed compilations of clips from all the interviews on our SoundCloud channel.

Or you can find out more about accessing the whole collection on Essex Archives Online (Acc. SA892).

Communicating Connections

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Are you interested in local history? Maybe you know someone who worked for the Marconi Company? Communicating Connections have a unique opportunity for you to get directly involved in the collection of some of Chelmsford’s most well-known history. Find out more about how to get involved in this exciting project as a Volunteer Oral History Interviewer below.

An early mobile broadcasting tower

‘Communicating Connections’ is an oral history-based community heritage project funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, with contributions from Essex 2020 and the Friends of Historic Essex. It will explore the heritage of the Marconi Company, one of the most famous telecommunications and engineering companies in the world, based in Chelmsford. We will collect and archive oral history interviews with past employees of the company which will then inform an exhibition and a heritage trail app. Chelmsford is known locally as the ‘birthplace of radio’, so we want to share this heritage with the local and wider community.

We’re looking for 6 volunteer oral history interviewers to conduct 30 interviews in total with veterans of the Marconi Company. Full training in oral history interviewing will be provided by the Oral History Society and further support will be available throughout the project so there’s no need for prior oral history or interviewing experience.

The winding shop

We anticipate that interviewing will begin in November 2020, but please note this may change due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and government guidelines. All activities and interviews will be risk assessed and Covid-19 procedures will be in place.

More information can be found in the volunteer recruitment pack here.

Please direct any questions to the Project Co-ordinator, Laura Owen at communicatingconnections@gmail.com 

The Association of New Town Archives and Museums

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Dr Alina Congreve introduces this exciting new network of Archives and Museums across the country. With Essex being the home to three major new towns, all falling into different stages of the movement (Harlow, Basildon and South Woodham Ferrers), it promises to be of particular relevance to this county.

Essex Record Office are excited to be the lead partner for a new national network for post-war new towns. This new network brings together the archives and museums that hold significant collections of post-war new town material. It involves 19 archives and museums from across England. The purpose of the network is to share knowledge between members about activities relating to new town archives. This includes sharing good practice in cataloguing; engaging with families and young people; working with local history and heritage societies; and making links with researchers and universities. The members of the new network are at very different stages of engagement with their new town collections, and there is significant potential for peer learning. Secondly, the network provides time and space to develop larger scale collaborative funding bids. The network is open to new members in England and we welcome interest from from museums, local history centres and academics researching new towns.

New towns mark an important turning point in British history and are a unique contribution to urban development.  British new towns have relevance today for new towns being rapidly developed in Asia, Africa, South America and ‘new’ new towns being planned here in Britain. Many British new towns are facing a period of rapid change, with the developments of the post-war period being replaced with little thought given to the original intentions in their design, or architectural significance of the buildings that are removed. These post-war new towns are paradoxically popular with their long-term residents while having a poor external perception. Greater engagement with new town archives can help make connections between long-term New Town residents and recent arrivals, helping to build community and aid social integration. The archive collection of some new towns have drawn the attention of international scholars and generated books, journal articles and symposia. Others have had relatively little attention, in part due to the lack of cataloguing and also a low profile of the collections.  A better understanding of our post-war new towns can be valuable in positively shaping their future, and this understanding can be achieved through greater access to and engagement with post-war archives.

To find out more about the network please contact Richard Anderson at Essex Record Office on Richard.anderson@essex.gov.uk or Dr Alina Congreve the network co-ordinator on alina@congrevemail.co.uk

Right of Way: A historically contentious issue

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During our closure due to the Covid-19 pandemic we have been working hard adding new entries to our catalogue “Essex Archives Online“. Archivist Katharine Schofield takes a look at one of these documents which reveals that rights of way disputes aren’t a modern invention.

Among the entries added to our online catalogue during ‘lockdown’ are calendars of medieval deeds, dating from the early 13th century onwards, relate to various small properties mostly in Hatfield Broad Oak.  The deeds are part of the Barrington collection (D/DBa).

Not all of the calendared deeds related to the Barrington family’s possessions at the time, although they may have subsequently acquired the land.  They include the ratification of an agreement (D/DBa T4/253) between William le Cook of Broad Street and Hatfield Priory, dated at Hatfield Broad Oak on the Monday after Epiphany in the 18th year of the reign of Edward III (10 January 1345) and it concerns a dispute over access.  John de Barynton’ is listed as the first of the witnesses.

The access in contention is described as a footpath 6 feet wide leading through Bykmereslane beyond William’s property Bykmerescroft towards Munkmelnes where the Priory’s mill was located.  Canon Francis Galpin identified Bykemere Street or Lane as the present-day Dunmow Road (B183) past the junction of the High Street and Broad Street (Essex Review volume 44, page 88).  He described the name as a corruption of Byg (or big) mere, probably derived from the nearby ponds.  The ponds still visible on maps today presumably provided the water power needed for the Priory’s mill.

The agreement recites that there had been ‘contention’ between William and the Priory over the footpath.  The Priory produced deeds from their archives (ostensionem munimentorum), made by William’s predecessors, tenants of Bykmerescroft.  The archives had demonstrated that the Priory and all others were accustomed to use the footpath to the mill and had the right to do so.  Consequently, William agreed to make rectification.

Mills were a vital part of the medieval economy.  At the beginning of the 13th century, it has been estimated that there were between 10 and 15,000 mills in England.  They were also a key part of the income of a manorial lord.  Lords were able to compel their tenants to use their mills, paying for the right to do so.  It has been estimated that payments from mills made up 5% of manorial income at the beginning of the 14th century (John Langdon ‘Lordship and Peasant Consumerism in the milling Industry of Early Fourteenth Century England’ Past and Present 145, pages 3-46, November 1994).  The Priory was anxious not to have access to their mill disrupted and their record keeping ensured that they were able to prove their rights and request remedy.

Even today, among the many people visiting the Record Office and using the archives, it is not unusual for people to try to solve access problems, although mostly by using Ordnance Survey maps, rather than medieval deeds.

Final reflections on an ERO placement

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University of Essex MA student Grace Benham reflects on her placement spent working on a collection of oral history interviews tracing the history of women’s refuges in Essex. You can read her previous blog posts here.

Uncovering the hidden history of Women’s Refuges in Essex has been as rewarding as it has been difficult. The struggle of the women, and men, who fought to recognise the importance of protecting women from abusive histories, though tragic in its need, is incredibly inspiring.

In my academic history background, I have rarely delved into feminist history, and especially British feminist history, which surprises most as I have also been an outspoken advocate for women. This choice is rooted in two fundamental reasons: firstly, it is difficult to see the hatred and vile attitudes towards women that existed not so long ago which the matriarchs of my family would have grown up with, and it is hard to reconcile that with the privileges we hold today. But, more than this, I had never seen myself as a very ‘good’ feminist; in my younger years I failed to recognise nuance and my own privileges. But an important lesson from those who have dedicated decades of their lives for others is that, despite differences, unity for the common good is absolutely more important.

Tackling this collection was daunting to say the least. My own personal experience with abuse in a romantic relationship which had motivated the selection of this collection also made going through this material hard. However, the hidden histories of Women’s Refuges also provides a wealth of hope in the selfless willingness to help those who need it and to fight for everything they’ve got.

The oral history collection, ‘You Can’t Beat a Woman’, comprises stories from Colchester, Chelmsford, Ipswich, Grays, and Basildon and the women who worked, lived, and fought for refuges from domestic abuse (the interviews pertaining to London were beyond the remit of this placement). All stories which, although containing some collaboration and inspiration, tell of formidable and dedicated women who, born from the Women’s Liberation Movement of the 1970s, took it upon themselves to fight for Women’s Refuges in a time when domestic abuse was not taken seriously at all, let alone seriously enough.

For an example of such strength and sacrifice, one should only look to Moyna Barnham MBE, who in her interview tells of how she would go alone in the middle of the night to collect ‘battered women’, having to go up against the abusers, such a dangerous role that one night her husband even followed her to ensure her safety. Such bravery is to of course be commended, but it is also unfortunate that the police and local welfare workers were not there for these women, and it was up to independent volunteers to provide such a service.

I also believe that such a study has come at an unfortunately poignant time as the tragic rise of people, particularly women, seeking help with domestic abuse during the lockdown period of COVID-19 paints a painful picture of the persistence of the problem. It is also important in such discourse to recognise nuance. In Alison Inman’s interview, a key figure at both Basildon and Colchester Refuges, she describes how society expects a ‘perfect victim’ of domestic abuse, i.e. an innocent and naïve woman. However the reality is that domestic abuse occurs in every gender, every sexuality, every class, and every age; it is a universal problem. I feel that the current COVID-19 domestic abuse discourse highlights this problem and its nuances. A recent BBC Panorama investigation revealed not only the scale:

‘Panorama has found in the first seven weeks of UK lockdown someone called police for help about domestic abuse every 30 seconds – that’s both female and male victims.’

BBC PANORAMA PROGRAMME BROADCAST 17 AUGUST 2020

But this investigation also showed a lacklustre government response that should not belong to a society that has, apparently, been acknowledging this problem since the 1970s.

‘It took the Westminster government 19 days after imposing restrictions to announce a social media campaign to encourage people to report domestic abuse, as well as an extra £2m for domestic abuse helplines.’

BBC PANORAMA, 17 AUGUST 2020

Of course the lockdown was an unprecedented event that, hopefully, exists in isolation, but surely such a demonstration of the terror in some people’s homes shows in undeniable terms that domestic abuse and violence remain problems, and the services and education addressing the problem are underfunded and underrepresented. Therefore, what we can glean from this oral history collection is an invaluable educational resource on how to combat domestic abuse, and to be inspired by those who came before us.

This truly has been a transformative experience, both personally and as a historian, and I would like to extend my warmest thanks to the Friends of Historic Essex for their funding of the project.

Blue circular logo for Friends of Historic Essex

Sources:

‘You Can’t Beat a Woman’ collection of oral history interviews in the Essex Record Office (Acc. SA853)

BBC Panorama report on domestic abuse during lockdown, published 17 August 2020

If you need support to deal with Domestic Abuse, please call the helpline below or check out the following guidance.

National Domestic Abuse Helpline: 0808 2000 247

Local support: https://www.essex.gov.uk/report-abuse-or-neglect/domestic-abuse

COVID-19 Domestic Violence Guidance: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-and-domestic-abuse