Friends of Gloucestershire Archives Past Projects

• A Leafcasting machine - this machine is used to repair a variety of paper documents. It is a wet process that in-fills the missing area of a damaged page or document. The technique uses water to draw paper pulp through the missing areas of the document, creating a uniform repair like the original sheet. The process takes a fraction of the time taken by the more usual methods of repair, and the final document not only looks good, it is also a strong and stable repair.

• Gloucester Port Books Database - this contains details of trade on the River Severn between 1575 and 1763.  It has a searchable database giving the names of merchants and masters involved in voyages between Gloucester, Bristol and some other ports between 1575 and 1765.

• The Bellows family archive - this archive is a mixture of business and personal records belonging to John Bellows (1831-1902), founder of the well-known Gloucester printing firm, and his immediate family.  John's most famous publication was the first English/|French pocket sized dictionary which took 7 years to complete.  When he arrived in Gloucester from Cornwall, he became a Quaker and undertook much philanthropic work, both here and on the Continent.

• The Gloucestershire Domesday - this publication deals with the Gloucestershire part of the great survey of England in 1806 known as the 'Domesday Book' but the first of its three volumes provides an introduction covering the kingdom as a whole.  The other two volumes contain a facsimile of the survey for the county, accounts by Ann Williams of various aspects of the shire in the late 11th century, maps, bibliography and indices.

• Digital camera and IT equipment - the record office purchased a top quality digital camera so that images of documents up to A0 size, including quite large maps, could be made available to researchers and also copied in a form suitable for display on the Internet.

• Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources - this project has been under way for 25 years and was threatened with closure in 2004 due to funding problems.  The Friends contribution purchased the volumes covering words beginning M and N which have now been added to the Archives' book collection.

• Venn's Alumni Cantabrigienses - this ten volume collection giving details of all Cambridge graduates from 'earliest times to 1900', has filled a gap in the Archives reference section and now sits alongside the similar compilation for Oxford graduates.  The Cambridge lists are considerably more detailed than those for Oxford.  Needless to say, Gloucestershire is well represented in the Cambridge volumes and the genealogist or local historian will find herein useful information concerning some of the early inhabitants of our county which is not easily found elsewhere.

• Sudeley Archive - this contains over 1100 original manuscripts relating to the Hanbury and Tracy family estates belonging to Charles Hanbury Tracy (1778-1858), first Baron Sudeley, who built the present Toddington Manor in Gloucestershire as his family home.   The majority of the documents are property deeds written on parchment, some dating back to the 14th century.  Thanks to generous support from the Friends of Gloucestershire Archives, the public and grants from the MLA/V&A Purchase Fund and The Friends of the National Libraries, Gloucestershire Archives have been able to purchase the Sudeley Archive.  (GA Reference D2153).

Last updated 27th February 2010