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Inventories and Wills

FAIRFORD WILLS
Old wills can often reveal historical information not found anywhere else. This is especially true with regard to family relationships, property ownership and the testator’s character and occupation although it should be remembered that wills are often written to a standard legalistic formula and that testators may have left legacies not included in the will. Some wills are very brief and provide very little useful information but others can be very lengthy and very revealing. Many wills of the 17th and 18th centuries were accompanied by inventories which listed the household goods, money and credits of the deceased. These often include a lengthy list of the goods (furniture, clothes, bedding, utensils, etc) together with their estimated value. Some inventories list the goods room by room thereby suggesting the size and sometimes even the layout of the deceased’s house.
This series will consist of selected details from some of the almost 600 wills and inventories of Fairford residents dating from the 16th to the 19th centuries that have been collected and transcribed. These wills can be found in the collections of the National Archives and the Gloucestershire Archives. Those in the National Archives are of people whose wills were proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury in London and date from 1384 to 1858. They are the wills of the wealthier people, often those who owned property in more than one county. The collection of wills in Gloucestershire Archives are of those of less wealthy people and date from 1541 to 1858. In 1858 the probate of wills was transferred from the ecclesiastical courts to the civil courts. The wills from the Prerogative Court of Canterbury are copies of the original but most of the Gloucestershire Archive wills are originals. The handwriting can sometimes be very difficult to read but with enough practice most, if not all, of the content can be transcribed. Unfortunately some people died without making a will but the Gloucestershire Archives collection includes printed forms which give basic details of the execution of intestate wills. Until education became compulsory in the 19th Century many of the early testators were unable to read or write so signed their names with an ‘X’ or some other mark. Even those who could write rarely wrote out their own will, usually a friend or a solicitor or his clerk would do the writing. A small number of wills relating to Fairford residents or former residents have also been collected from the online collections from other counties, particularly Oxfordshire and Wiltshire.
Many of these wills provide valuable information that adds to our knowledge of Fairford history while others are interesting for a variety of reasons including: language and terminology; examples of great wealth or great poverty; details of property (both real, i.e. buildings and land, and personal, i.e. goods and chattels); and evidence of religious beliefs. Up until the 19th Century Fairford life was predominantly based on agriculture and the wills reflect this. However, the Fairford wills represent a wide range of occupations and trades.
They are also useful in determining family relationships, especially when, as with the Betterton family for example, there were several people of the same forename and surname living in Fairford at the same time. Various themes can be detected in the wills of Fairford residents. For example, in the earliest period (16th and 17th centuries) it was common for livestock, particularly sheep, to be bequeathed to family and friends. In the 17th to the 19th centuries furniture, particularly beds and bedding, were common bequests. Craftsmen often bequeathed their tools to sons – and occasionally daughters – in the hope that they would carry on their business. Those who were in trade, such as shop keepers, often bequeathed their ‘stock in trade’ to their relatives. These and other themes will be featured in this series of Fairford Wills.
Click here for
BROWNE, Henry (died 1714)
ADAMS, Thomas (1769-1845)

INVENTORIES
From 1530 to 1782 it was an obligation for every executor of a will to provide the probate court with an inventory of the deceased’s goods, together with their value. In the Diocese of Gloucester, Gloucestershire Archives have surviving inventories from 1587. However, not all inventories have survived as they were kept separately from the wills. They provide a huge amount of family and social information.
Towards the end of the 18th century they were very brief just listing ‘lumber and other goods’ and their value. Many of them accompanied administrations where the deceased had died intestate. Information from Fairford Wills was also transcribed, although not word by word.All the Gloucestershire inventories and wills are on line at www.ancestry.co.uk and FHS has transcribed copies of most of them.
See below for examples of an inventories, if you don’t know what the word is say it (in a Gloucestershire accent) and all will be come clear.

Click here Inventory William Early 1755
HURST, Walter (1702) Inventory

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The Thames and Severn Canal

On 17th of March 2010,Bruce Hall, of the Cotswold Canals Trust gave a talk to the Society about the 36-mile journey from the Severn to the Thames through the industrial area of the Stroudwater Navigation to the rural Thames and Severn Canal. The canal passed within a few miles of Fairford and traces of it can still be found at Kempsford and Dudgrove today. The most important cargo was coal especially from the Forest of Dean which was needed to supply power to the mills of the Stroud Valley.

The Stroudwater Navigation opened in July 1779; construction of the Thames and Severn Canal started at the western end in 1783 and the first barge entered the canal at Wallbridge in 1785 by which time the canal had probably reached Chalford. The Sapperton Tunnel, the third longest canal tunnel ever constructed in Britain, took five years to complete. In July 1788 much of the tunnel structure was complete when King George III and family visited the site; the stretch from the Coates portal eastwards is called King’s Reach in his honour. The first barge passed through the tunnel in April 1789.

On 19th November 1789 the first barge reached Lechlade, an occasion which was celebrated by a ball, a bonfire and a 12-cannon salute from nearby Buscot Park. However, competition from the railways in the 19th Century was too much for the Thames and Severn and this, along with continuing problems of excessive leakage, caused its closure in 1933.

In 2009 the Cotswold Canals Trust acquired Inglesham Lock and the Inland Waterways Association raised funds to completely renovate the old lock. The Waterway Recovery Group cleared much of the overgrown vegetation from the disused cana

The Round House, Lechlade from an old postcard

The restoration of the Stroudwater Navigation is well under way. Pictures of abandoned industrial sites show how the site has been transformed into the more modern use of housing and leisure. Bridges have been replaced by Gloucestershire County Council, towpaths reinstated and what were barriers of new roads and motorways have been turned into surmountable challenges. In some places the course of the River Frome has been a useful diversion.

Interesting facts

  • The bottom of locks were built concave to withstand water pressure from the vertical walls
  • The Canal was originally 7 feet deep but has not been dredged so deeply. Leisure-craft do not need that depth and it was necessary to avoid disturbing the pollution of the sediment from the industrial era
  • The flat-bottomed Trow had a removable mast that was used on the tidal reaches of the River Severn up to Worcester. It was 16 feet wide and 68 feet long and built to carry coal and goods only as far as Brimscombe Port. Here the loads were transformed to Thames barges. Later narrow boats 7 feet wide and 70 feet long were more commonly used and as a result the locks were shortened about 1841-42 – this was also a water-economy measure
  • The Lengthsmen and their families who lived in the five Roundhouses along the Thames & Severn were responsible for keeping their stretch of water clear and also looked after the lock if there was one
  • The new bridge opened at Stonehouse in 1994 was the first ever plastic bridge. The building there was used by Sperry’s Gyroscope during World War II and had a gun emplacement on top
  • The Severn-Thames link is 36 miles long with 56 locks, the Thames and Severn from Wallbridge to Inglesham is 28.5 miles long with 42 locks

Sapperton Tunnel entrance

More can be learnt at the Cotswold Canal Visitor Centre a & Canal Shop, Bell House, Wallbridge Lock, Stroud, GL5 3JS
Open 10am — 1pm Monday — Saturday throughout the year and at any other time that the green flag is flying!
Telephone 07582 286 636 or visit www.cotswoldcanals.com.

Further reading
The Thames and Severn Canal through time by David Viner, 2013
The Stroudwater and Thames and Severn Canals from old photographs. Vols 1-3 by Edwin Cuss and Mike Mills, 2010-3

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What lies beneath

During the replacement of the nave floor in St Mary’s during 2009 the workmen discovered several fragments of stone that carried parts of an inscription. The fragments were found beneath the existing surface and had been used as part of the foundations for the floor. Four of the pieces (the largest measuring about 14 inches (35 cm) by 7 inches (18 cm) and about one and a half inches (4 cm) thick were cleaned up to clearly reveal several words and two dates. The surface of the stone had been finished to a very smooth surface with fine lettering but the reverse side was very rough and uneven indicating that it had probably been a grave slab rather than a vertical freestanding headstone. A study of Bigland’s ‘Account of the Parish of Fairford’ of 1791 which lists all the major tombs in the church and the churchyard visible at that date solved the riddle.

The surviving lettering matched perfectly the inscription on the grave of William and Ann Haynes and their daughter Mary who died in 1758, 1723 and 1754 respectively. Bigland records this as “On a flat stone in the South Aisle” of the church. It would appear that the Haynes stone was removed and broken up to be used as rubble during the reflooring of the church, possibly in 1854 when the church seating was replaced. Unfortunately this is by no means an isolated example of the length to which the Victorians would go to ‘beautify’ our churches. William Haynes had been a churchwarden for many years but even this didn’t stop his memorial being smashed up after less than 100 years.

The surviving pieces of the Haynes family gravestone can now be seen in the Archive Room in the Community Centre.

One wonders what else lies beneath the pavement in St Mary’s!

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Fairford Mill

The Mill Buildings
There has been a mill in Fairford since Medieval times. The mill even gets a mention in the Domesday book.
In 1086, there were actually three mills belonging to the Fairford Manor, one of which was on the site of the current mill.
In 1296 Fairford had a fulling mill, but by 1307 there were only corn mills. One corn mill was connected with Milton End farm and the other 2 mills were in demesne (that is, land retained by the lord of the manor for his own use).
In the 17th Century a mill was recorded where Mill Lane crossed the Coln. This is the main part of the mill that we see today. The left wing was added in 1827 and further alterations were made in 1841 and 1857.
The Mill was used as a store between the First and Second World Wars and was derelict until it was converted to residential property in the 1950s. At that time, the machinery that had become dangerous was removed, but some of the machinery remained to minimise the impact on the environment around the mill. Consequently, there are still five mill sluices in place – three of them under the buildings.
The Fairford estate was acquired by Ernest Cook in the 1920s and the Mill later came under the care of the Ernest Cook Trust. The Mill house and adjacent Mill cottage were renovated and the Mill is back in service – this time as holiday lets.
It is likely that the early mill was operated on the lord of the manor’s behalf by villeins or by serfs in fulfilment of their feudal obligations.
In 1791, William Carter was a Miller in Fairford, but it’s not clear if this was at Fairford Mill. More definite news of this mill’s occupants comes from Pigot’s Directory of the 1830s. There are two entries for millers in Fairford. The first is Robert Bosberry of Fairford Mill, whose occupation was as a miller, and the second entry is for Henry and Robert Tovey of Fairford who were also millers by occupation. Between 1839 and 1847 Messrs Tovey were the millers at Fairford Mill. From 1889 until 1906 the Fairford Mill resident was Mr Richard Cole; a farmer, coal merchant and miller.
The last millers were the Bartletts, who moved here from Arlington Mill in 1910. They ran the mill until the First World War, but from 1919 there is no record of any millers working in Fairford.

Lesley Pincombe

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St Mary’s Church, Fairford

Although there has been a church at Fairford since at least 1125, only fragments of an early building now remain, having been incorporated into the magnificent Late Perpendicular church of St Mary the Virgin that we see today. The rebuilding of the church was started by John Tame in the early 1490s after been given permission by the Bishop of Worcester to dismantle the existing church. As Tame’s fortune was acquired through the wool and cloth industry, St Mary’s can be counted as among a number of so-called ‘wool’ churches built in the Cotswolds in the medieval period. The new church at Fairford was consecrated in a ceremony presided over by the Bishop on 20 June 1497, an event marked by a painted Consecration Cross on the wall of the chancel near the vestry door. Although structurally complete, the church was still far from finished at this point and at the death of John Tame in 1500 his son Edmund Tame undertook to complete the work. At about this time work commenced on the production of 28 painted glass windows that would make up a stunning visual account of the Bible story from Adam and Eve through to the Last Judgement and would provide instruction as well as illumination, in both senses of the word. The story that these windows tell also reveals the central role of the Virgin Mary to pre-Reformation English liturgy. Fairford’s windows remain the most complete set of medieval church windows in the country and are therefore of national importance.

St Mary’s church, as rebuilt by the Tames, consists of a central nave flanked by two aisles that each originally terminated in a side chapel. On the north side the Lady Chapel contains the tomb of John Tame and his wife Alice. A monumental brass depicts the pair and the tomb is now surmounted by a beautifully carved wooden screen added in about 1520 and which serves to separate the chapel from the chancel.Also in the Lady Chapel is a chest tomb tomb with life-size stone effigies of Roger Lygon and his wife Katherine, widow of the grandson of John Tame. Beneath the floor of the chapel is a vault containing the remains of Sir Edmund Tame and his wives, Agnes and Elizabeth, all commemorated by a brass on the chapel’s north wall.

The Corpus Christi Chapel on the south side of the church is of less interest but it does have a fine marble monument to Sarah Ready who died in 1731. The almost complete set of wooden screens in the choir is particularly fine and date from around 1520. The wooden stalls are thought to date from around 1300 and may possibly have come from Cirencester Abbey following its dismantling during the Dissolution of the Monasteries in about 1540. The choir also contains a set of 14 misericord seats that incorporate carvings showing various forms of sin or strife, obviously done with a moral intent. The almost perfect symmetry of the Church building plan was spoiled at a later date by the addition of a sacristy or vestry beyond the Lady Chapel, however this does little to mar the visual effect of what is one of the most beautiful churches in the Cotswolds.

Now situated in the middle of Tame’s rebuilt church, the lower portion of the tower is the oldest part of the building. The later work to increase the height of the tower is apparent from the exterior where a change in the stonework and shape of the corner buttresses indicate the newer building. On the interior columns that form the base of the tower can still be seen traces of late medieval wall paintings including several figures (one of which may be St Christopher) and simple patterns. The roof of the church is supported by a total of 69 stone angels that adorn the corbels of the wooden roof beams. There are a number of wall-mounted monuments to past Fairford citizens including three to the Oldisworth family.

The exterior of the building contains a wealth of decoration and sculpture of great interest. Some of the decoration reflects the patronage of Fairford’s church and includes the gryphon and bear and ragged staff of the Earl of Warwick, an early lord of the manor. The coat of arms of John Tame, consisting of a Wyvern and a lion, can be seen above the door into the church from the porch. A series of curious figures adorn the stringcourse below the embattled parapet that runs all around the outside of the church. These sculptures include a dragon, a lion, a dog, a sheep and, most charming of all, a boy in the act of climbing down from the parapet (right). In addition to these sculptures are figures of a more serious nature including the Christ of Pity at the west end of the church and four fierce guardians standing sentry at the four corners of the tower.

The graveyard of St Mary’s contains some fine examples of Cotswold tombs including several that have Listed Building status as being of historical and architectural importance. There are several examples of large chest tombs, some of them surmounted by semi-circular spiralled slabs once thought to represent bales of wool. One of the earliest monuments in the graveyard is that of Valentine Strong who died in 1662 and was a well-known Cotswold stonemason and architect who built Fairford Park and Lower Slaughter Manor among other buildings. There is also a fine set of three listed tombs of the Morgan family situated outside the end of the Corpus Christi Chapel. Among the grand and ancient tombs in the churchyard is a delightful stone sculpture of ‘Tiddles’, a much-loved Church cat who ‘guarded’ the church and its precincts from 1963 to 1980.

Chris Hobson

 

Further reading:
The Great Storm of 1703 https://dev.fairfordhistory.org.uk/the-great-storm-1703/
The buildings of England. Gloucestershire 1: The Cotswolds by David Verey and Alan Brooks. London: Yale University Press, 2002
Fairford Church and its stained glass windows by Oscar G Farmer. Various editions, 1928-1968
The medieval stained glass of Fairford parish church by Sarah Brown and Lindsay MacDonald. Revised pbk edition. Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 2007

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Fairford Branch Railway

The East Gloucestershire Railway Company was formed in 1861 to link Witney to Cheltenham, via Fairford. This original proposal had to be restricted to the 14-mile stretch between Witney and Fairford which was opened on 15th January 1863. In 1890 the East Gloucestershire Railway and Witney Railway (to Oxford) was absorbed into the Great Western Railway, the link to Cheltenham never being completed.

The initial timetable consisted of four passenger trains and two goods trains working each way on weekdays and by 1912 there were six daily passenger trains. At first there were seven intermediate stops between Oxford and Fairford; Kelmscott and Langford were added in December 1907, Cassington Halt in March 1936 and Carterton in October 1944. The branch became very important during the Second World War carrying munitions and troops with the proximity of seven major airfields; the railway actually crosses two of RAF Brize Norton’s taxiways.

After the war and throughout the 1950s there was a gradual decline in traffic on the branch back to four trains each weekday and which eventually culminated in the closure of the railway on 18th June 1962. The last public train running having run two days earlier. Today there is an industrial estate on the site of Fairford railway station now but there are still remains of the line marked by trackways and bridges.

Loco 2236 at Fairford Station

 

 

 

 


The train was so slow building up steam to Lechlade that mushrooms could be gathered in this field on the other side of Fairford Bridge and the train reboarded.
Photographs courtesy of Jean Bennett

Bryworth Bridge near Fairford, 2006

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Railway Bed at Fairford, 2006

Photographs Chris Hobson
Further reading:
Branch Line to Fairford by Vic Mitchell and Keith Smith in association with Richard Lingard. Middleton Press, 1988 ISBN 0 906520 52 5

http://www.disused-stations.org.uk
http://www.fairfordbranch.co.uk

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Farmor’s School and Fairford Community Centre

Farmor’s School opened as Fairford Free School on 24th November 1738. The school’s first schoolmaster was Jacob Kuffeler, a descendant of an ancient and prominent Dutch family. The building cost £543.8s, and consisted of a schoolmaster’s house and 2 classrooms with cellar and outbuildings including a brewhouse and a well in the rear yard. There had previously been several legacies to provide education in Fairford. In 1670 Lady Jane Mico founded a charity to provide apprenticeships for ” 4 poore Boys”, and in 1701 Mary Barker, daughter of Andrew Barker, Lord of the Manor of Fairford, left money for investment to raise funds for teaching poor boys to read and write. Later Elizabeth Farmor, Andrew Barker’s granddaughter, left £1000 in her will, specifically to build a school and pay a schoolmaster. The school originally had accommodation for 60 boys, aged between 5 and 12, and if Fairford children did not fill all the places, numbers could be made up from the surrounding villages. Boys could be “turned away” for bad behaviour, and left school to start work at the age of 12.

From the beginning there were close ties with St. Mary’s Church, the schoolmaster being required to conduct what we would now call a Sunday school and the Vicar giving scripture lessons at the school. The Vicar was usually one of the Governors of the school. The building was also used for Church meetings out of school hours.

The school was so successful that in the early 1800’s it was suggested that Fairford’s girls should also receive an education. At that time it was considered unnecessary to educate girls, and there was considerable opposition to the idea. Eventually the matter went to litigation. The Court made the enlightened decision that the original foundation did not specifically exclude females, and girls could be admitted. The school buildings were extended and a Girls School opened in 1815. It was totally segregated and run separately by a schoolmistress. The boys’ accommodation was upstairs and approached by an outside staircase, and the yard was divided by a stone wall to separate the boys and girls.

In 1871, having been sanctioned by Parliament and approved by the Charity Commissioners, the funds from Lady Jane Mico’s apprenticeship charity were amalgamated with those from Mary Barker and Elizabeth Farmor, to form a new educational charity, administered by trustees, which still continues today.
Co-education came to Fairford in 1922, when the boys and girls schools were combined under one Headmaster, Mr. Herbert Hedges, and the school changed its name to Farmors Free School to honour its major benefactoress. A plaque on the school wall pays tribute to the remarkable service of Herbert Hedges who served as Headmaster of the school for 25 years and Churchwarden for St Mary’s church for 38 years. A second plaque commemorates an earlier Headmaster, Richard Green, who died in 1767, recording “the uncommon assiduity and abilities with which he discharged the duties of his profession”.

From Victorian times, the school was the centre of education in the community, and there are records of the Vicar giving lectures on advanced subjects such as “Electricity”. Adult education classes started officially in the building in 1925, when the Fairford Evening Institute was formed. Initially, only vocational subjects were studied, but later the range was extended to include arts and recreational subjects.
In the post-war period of educational growth, after the Secondary Education Act, the building became the Secondary School for the whole area, including Lechlade and surrounding villages, and became very overcrowded. Gloucestershire County Council, the statutory education authority, built a new secondary school, Farmor’s School, in Fairford Park and in 1961 the pupils moved out of the old school buildings. In return for the new school, the old building passed into the ownership of GCC, and became the centre for all sorts of community activities, meetings, playgroups, old peoples clubs, but particularly the Youth Club. By the mid-1960s, there was a large and thriving Youth Club with a full time Youth Leader living in the building and dividing his time between the Centre and the new school. The Council had an office and the County Library also used part of the building. Unfortunately, GCC was not in a position to spend money on maintenance and modernisation, and, though reports were made on work which needed doing, it was not forthcoming.
In 1977 the people of Fairford decided to make the refurbishment of the Community Centre its official Silver Jubilee project. Money was collected by public appeal, and the old building was redecorated, re-fitted and adapted, and reopened in February 1979. For some time there was a period of greatly increased community activity and enjoyment, new clubs and societies were started to take advantage of the improved facilities, and the usage was high. However, as the years passed, the building once again began to deteriorate. New health and safety regulations meant that the kitchen was deemed inadequate and the heating and electric wiring were unsatisfactory. By the year 2000, the GCC had decided that it would be uneconomical to maintain the building to the standard required, and it was put on the market.

St’ Mary’s PCC and Fairford Town Council were both interested in acquiring the building for largely the same purposes, and it quickly became apparent that co-operation would be more productive than competition. A joint committee was formed to investigate the state of the building and consider its future possibilities, and in November 2002 the building was bought for the town. The PCC and Town Council each purchased part of the building with the intention of raising money for restoration and refurbishment and then managing the building as a whole for the benefit of Fairford and to meet the changing needs of its people for the foreseeable future. After serving the town for almost three centuries the building was completely renovated and extended in a one and a quarter million pound renewal project which brought it up to 21st century standards and gave it yet another new role in the community.

In 2018 Fairford Community Centre celebrated its tenth Anniversary and Farmor’s School celebrated its 280th anniversary.

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19th Century population dynamics of Fairford

Statistics compiled from the national census taken every 10 years from 1801 to 1901, as reported in Volume 2 of the Victoria History of Gloucestershire, show that the total population of the county increased steadily throughout the 19th Century. In 1801 the population of Gloucestershire was 250,723 but by 1901 the figure had increased to 664,843. During the same period the population of Fairford showed a steady rise until the 1850s when it started to decline. The rate of decline was gradual but sustained over the next 50 years so that by 1901 Fairford’s population of 1,403 was only marginally above its 1801 population of 1,326. The reason for this decline is thought to lie in the general decrease in the number of people working in agriculture over the 18th and 19th centuries and the growing number of people moving to towns to work in industry. According to the census figures, Fairford’s peak year in the 19th Century was 1851 with a total of 1,859, a figure not matched again until 1971 when the population was 1,832. By comparison Fairford’s population at the last census in 2011 was recorded as 4,021 and with the recent building of houses on greenfield sites this will have increased, possibly by another 500 or more.

Comparative population graphs for Gloucestershire and Fairford

 

Another aspect of population dynamics is the mortality rate. The National Burial Index for England and Wales produced by the Federation of Family History Societies records a total of 1,419 burials in the churchyard of St Mary the Virgin in Fairford between the years 1813 and 1858. This gives an average of 31 burials each year for an average population during this period of around 1,625. However, the National Burial Index does not record those buried in other churchyards in Fairford nor does it identify people who died in Fairford but were buried elsewhere. The peak year for burials in St Marys was 1845 with 55 burials; the lowest figure was achieved in 1824 with just 14 burials listed.


The burials recorded in the National Burial Index can be sorted by age of the deceased to show the distribution of deaths in particular age groups. This indicates that infant mortality was very high with 333 of the 1,419 total burials being those of infants aged 5 and under. This represents 23% of the total deaths for the period and was significantly higher in the earlier part of the 19th Century than in later years. However, the statistics also show that people lived to a good old age in 19th Century Fairford with a significant number of people living well into their 70s, 80s and 90s.


These notes and graphs were produced by Chris Hobson for a talk given to Fairford History Society on Victorian Fairford on 21 September 2006.

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The Polish Hostel, Fairford, 1947-1959

Many people in Central and Eastern Europe were displaced from their homes during and after World War II. According to some estimates, around 1.2 million Polish people were displaced, many taken at gunpoint from their homes and transported to camps in Germany or Siberia, many thousands ending up in transit camps in India and Africa. Some eventually came to England by boat: through ports such as Tilbury or Liverpool, and were taken to transit camps such as at Daglingworth and from there onto other camps including the one at Fairford.
The camp on land owned by the Ernest Cook Trust, was formerly the American Army’s 32nd Field Hospital. Initially, several families sometimes found themselves in one room, with blankets hung up to give each family a little privacy. They were relieved to later have half a barrack block per family, and in the case of larger families, a whole one.
There was very basic utility furniture and usually a solid-fuel burner which warmed the barracks and on which one-pot cooking could be carried out. Some people also acquired primus stoves for cooking. There were no washing or toilet facilities in the family barracks, only communal ones.
People made the barracks as homely as they could. Without much money to spare, but with a little ingenuity and handiwork, they embroidered and crocheted tablecloths, cushions and net curtains and gradually turned the corrugated iron barracks into more cosy homes. Most of the residents in this camp later moved to Swindon where housing and work was to be found.
By the grotto site at Northwick Camp near Blockley there is a monument to celebrate this and all the former Polish Camps in Gloucestershire. Many of the barracks still exist at Northwick Camp, though the area is now used for light industry.
Alicja Swiatek Christofides, 2009.
All photographs copyright Alicja Swiatek Christofides

If you are interested in finding out about life in other camps, there is a growing number of Internet websites that you can visit. One particular site includes Fairford Camp as well as details of ships and passenger lists. www.northwickparkpolishdpcamp.co.uk

Useful books
‘Fairford Polish Hostel 1947-59: the collected photographs & reminiscences of the former residents of the Polish Hostel in Fairford’ is out of print but available to be consulted in the FHS Archive Room
‘Polish Resettlement Camps in England and Wales’: Written by Zosia Biegus, 2013 available from www.amazon.co.uk and also to be consulted in the FHS Archive Room

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Horcott Quarry

Horcott Quarry – Oxford Archaeology Open Day (15/3/08)
A detailed report of the excavations at Horcott was published by Oxford Archaeology in 2017 titled ‘Horcott Quarry, Fairford and Arkell’s Land, Kempsford’ and can be viewed in the FHS Archive Room in the Community Centre.
On 15 March 2008, FHS members made a second visit to Horcott Quarry to view progress during Oxford Archaeology’s Open Day. Iron Age, Roman and Saxon evidence suggests that the site was occupied from 400 BC to 800 AD. In 2006 FHS members had been able to see the excavation of a large Roman Cemetery but the 2008 tour of the site allowed us to see the imprint of Iron Age, Roman and Saxon settlement on the environment as well as some of the artefacts that had been found.
Sand and gravel has been quarried at Horcott since the 1960s. The gravel seam is about 3 metres deep and mixed with clay. The nature of the soil and sub-soil and agricultural activity from the end of occupation and the beginning of quarrying means that there is very little of any ancient settlement remaining.
Iron Age
There is evidence of 30-40 early Iron Age roundhouses at the Horcott Quarry site. It is thought that approximately 20 existed at the same time which suggests a community of about 100 people. The remains of these roundhouses consist of a circle of post holes. Evidence of fence posts and enclosures also exist. Within the settlement were the vestiges of a large number of four-post structures. These are thought to have been small grain stores as Spelt and Emmer wheat seeds where found in the post holes. Analysis of the Iron Age evidence continues.
Roman:
In addition to one of the largest Roman rural cemeteries in the Upper Thames Valley having been found at Horcott, there is evidence of a Roman farming settlement focused around a small masonry building. This ‘proto-villa’ is thought to predate the cemetery and masonry found in some of the graves is thought to have come from the building suggesting that it was in ruins when the cemetery was in use. The building consisted of a large central room and two wings, with a structure that suggested the back of the house had been extended.
Saxon:
The Saxon settlement at Horcott is one of the largest discovered in the region. There were two types of buildings; rectangular post-built halls and sunken-featured buildings or Grubenhausen (‘Grub Huts’). The sunken-featured buildings, consisting of a building raised on four large posts at each corner of a rectangular hole in the ground, may have been workshops or simple dwellings. The rectangular halls were thought to be houses.
Simple handmade pottery, animal bone and clay spindle whorls for weaving associated with the Saxon period have been found within these buildings. The pattern of the buildings suggests that the settlement moved away from the nearby watercourse upslope over time. The remains of two parallel ditches indicate the site of a track alongside the settlement. A series of pits in amongst the building remains are thought to have been wells.
The Horcott Iron Age settlement is thought to have started as a small community of arable and pastoral farmers who were also producing pottery, metalwork and textiles. The site was originally on a spur of slightly higher land bounded by a watercourse the remains of which can still be traced.
During the Roman period the inhabitants of Horcott were thought to be a prosperous farmer and his family.

Artist’s impressions courtesy of Oxford Archaeology.