Bigamy, black sheep and blindness

We have catalogued the records of various clients of a local solicitor (D/ECD). Perhaps of most interest are the deeds and family and estate papers of the Breedon family of Bere Court, Pangbourne, 1685-1931. Highlights include the will of John Breedon, 1685, which established a charity school in parish; and the glebe terrier of the rectory of Pangbourne, 1783. Family difficulties occasionally arose: one Breedon widow remarried a married man bigamously in 1786; and a century later Eliza Breedon fell out with her black sheep son Thomas, paying him off with an allowance of £50 per year as an inducement to return to the wife and children he had abandoned in New South Wales, on condition that he never returned to England or approached family members. There are also records for the Greek-British Petrocokino family of Reading, later owners of part of the Bere Court estate, including deeds of their business Clark’s Lead and Colour Works, Queen’s Road, Reading, 1894-1947. We have also added some additional material relating to the Monck family of Coley Park, 1809-1921.

Also in this collection are the fascinating records of the Reading Blind Aid Society, 1893-1930s. The charity supported local blind people both directly and indirectly by providing training in skills such as braille and basket making, and advertising the services of blind piano tuners. They were proud to note that almost immediately the town had seen a diminution in the numbers of blind beggars to just one man, who was ‘well-known at the railway approach’.

The violet is a banished flower: a Berkshire child in the shadow of Waterloo

A curiosity we have recently acquired is a manuscript poem addressed to a child (probably John Bligh Monck (1811-1906), heir of Coley Park, Reading) on his birthday (D/EZ220).  It is undated, on paper watermarked 1811, but the internal textual evidence is that the poem cannot be earlier than 1814 and is probably from 1815 when little John turned four and the Battle of Waterloo was fought.

The lines 'Four centuries scarce have cleansed from gore; The battered Lily, stain'd and torn, Hangs withering in the Gallic thorn' may well refer specifically to the 400th anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, the lily being the old French royal symbol of the fleur-de-lys. The following lines, 'The pink still feels the blight of power, The violet is a banished flower', are noted in a contemporary footnote to refer to Napoleon Bonaparte (identified here as 'Buonaparte'), violets having been a symbol used by the exiled Napoleon and his followers following his first exile to Elba in 1814.

The previous owner believed this poem was written by the child's father John Berkeley Monck (1769-1834), but the closing lines, 'Love would ask but this - May he be all his Father is', suggest another author. It may have been a family friend rather than a relative, as suggested by the lines 'Fair Blossoms! to that boy more fair, The ardent wish of friendship bear'. John Berkeley Monck was a barrister who purchased the Coley Park Estate in Reading in 1810, and later served as MP for Reading, 1820-1830.

Thames Valley antiquities

A misunderstanding was belied when we catalogued the notes for an unidentified (and possibly never published) book on the Thames Valley (D/EX2397). The donor had believed them to be notes of Fred Thacker for the revision of his celebrated books on the River Thames in 1968. However, Thacker was born in London in 1868 and died in c.1955, before the books were republished. He was the author of several well known books on the River Thames. The text of these manuscripts does not correlate to any of his publications, and it does not in any case appear that Thacker ever revised them; Thacker is in fact occasionally cited as a source. We think now that the notes may have been compiled by an employee of the Thames Conservancy in c.1950-1951, but they do remain a mystery.

International Baptists

We were delighted to receive the records of Windsor Baptist Church, 1838-2005 (D/N64). These included the fascinating life story of church member Regina Wragg.  She was born in Russian-occupied Poland in 1914, spent most of her childhood in Germany, and came to the United Kingdom as a refugee in 1939. Her Polish mother and German stepfather spent the war in hiding and a concentration camp respectively before joining Regina, became a British citizen, and married a Baptist minister in 1948. The minutes include a pen and ink sketch of a ship a church member sailed on when emigrating.

Catholic history

Finally, we were pleased to receive the research papers of local historian Tony Hadland, relating to his books on recusants (persecuted Catholics) in 16th and 17th century Berkshire (D/EX3006). Tony Hadland was born in Reading in 1949 and grew up in Tilehurst. He was educated at Norcot Primary School, Tilehurst; Presentation College, Reading; Oxford Polytechnic, where he studied architecture; and Reading Technical College, where he studied surveying. His book on the recusants of Berkshire was first published in 1992.

You can discover more about these records by searching our online catalogue. Simply enter the collection references, given in the blog above, into the Catalogue Reference field.