Come into the Virtual Bucks History Festival potion lab to see ink being made and find out how to make your own invisible ink!
Join heritage conservator Victoria Stevens to learn the magic of iron gall ink, used to write important documents throughout history such as Charles II death certificate and Magna Carta! You’ll also find out how to make your own secret ink, making the invisible magically appear before your very eyes!
You’ll need:
Baking powder
A jug with 100ml water in it
Lemon/lime or orange juice, vinegar and milk: you’ll need about half a cupful of each
A soft pencil and sharpener
A hairdryer
Some plain A4 paper
A thin paint brush
Don’t worry if you don’t have some of these, you’ll still be able to join in.
Join us if you dare!
Victoria is a library and archive conservator, and spends her days sticking things back together. She runs Take 5 Engagement Ltd, which is an excuse for her to get messy and show how heritage materials are made and can be understood using all 5 senses – and more!
The town of Soulbury is located within a well preserved medieval landscape, with large swathes of extant ridge and furrow earthworks showing the rural hinterland of the village. The urban area of the surviving village covers a smaller area than it did during the medieval and post medieval periods, as evidenced by numerous surviving earthworks of house platforms and plot boundaries surrounding the village. One such plot of earthworks, located at the southern end of the village, was subject to archaeological investigation during 2019 in advance of a new housing development. The scope and focus of the archaeological works was informed greatly by the cartographic evidence held by the Buckinghamshire Archives, in particular an Estate Map of the village of Soulbury dating to 1769.
Using the Soulbury excavations as a case study, this talk will look at how archaeological assessments draw on historical documents to both inform archaeological investigations, and to aid in the interpretation of the results.
Lucy is part of the Council’s Archaeology team, providing advice and guidance to our planning colleagues on the impacts of development on the archaeological resource. The team also monitor ongoing fieldwork, provide outreach to disseminate exciting new discoveries, and work alongside external partners such as the Chiltern Conservation Board and Discover Bucks Museum to ensure the heritage of the county is looked after.
Chris Low is part of the team at Buckinghamshire Archives.
Professional archaeologist Stephen Wass has been working at Stowe to the support the current programme of repair and restoration of the gardens and has examined over a dozen separate locations within the park to clarify a number of important questions about layout and development. In this talk he gives an account of work associated with sites such as the Rotunda, the Doric Arch and statues and most importantly the new discoveries around the site of the Temple of Modern Virtue.
As a freelance archaeologist with thirty years of experience Stephen’s primary research interests are in landscape archaeology especially as applied to historic gardens and parks. He is currently working on a programme of doctoral research with the University of Oxford entitled, ‘Voyages to the House of Diversion: Seventeenth-Century Water Gardens and the Birth of Modern Science’ centred on the little known Jacobean gardens of Hanwell Castle, Oxfordshire. He is also working with the Oxfordshire Gardens Trust to develop a new project entitled ‘Oxfordshire’s Forgotten Gardens’ focussing on other early gardens within the county.
The Second World War has entered popular memory as the ‘people’s war’. Whereas just 1,570 British civilians died as a result of direct enemy action in the First World War, British civilian war dead in the Second World War totalled 66,375.
One constantly recurring wartime theme was of the English countryside as visual shorthand for all that was at risk. On 24 August 1940, H. V. Morton, the journalist and travel writer, encapsulated much of the rural vision in Country Life: ‘It came to me that one of the most remarkable things about this war is the quiet way England has, for many of us, ceased to be a country, or even a county, and has now become a parish.’ It is perhaps appropriate then to look at one particular wartime parish.
The talk will examine the sources available for studying the local history of the Second World War from servicemen and women to the Home Guard, other emergency services, agriculture, fund raising, the impact of national events, and two unique aspects of wartime experience – ‘Winston Churchill’s Toyshop’, and the connection to Mrs Miniver.
Professor Ian Beckett retired as Professor of Military History from the University of Kent in 2015. He has been secretary to the trustees of the Buckinghamshire Military Museum since its inception in 1985, and is also a long-serving member of the Executive Council of the Bucks Record Society. The Society published his edition of the county papers of the 3rd Duke of Buckingham and Chandos in 2016.
You might be familiar with history of the Paralympics, but what about the equipment? How did wheelchairs first begin to be used for sport, how have they changed over time, what do these changes mean? Based on my PhD research, this talk explores the technical and socio-political history of sporting wheelchairs, focusing on the athlete-led development of this technology. This establishes how sports innovation became a site of activism and agency for disabled athletes, as new technology allowed for the advancement of these sports. This talk will reflect the current state of my research, and will draw on oral history interviews with wheelchair athletes to bring their unique perspective into this under-researched topic.
Sam Brady is an PhD student at the University of Glasgow and the National Paralympic Heritage Trust. His research, which began in October 2019, explores the social, political and technological history of sporting wheelchairs. Sam’s primary research interests lie in disability history, adaptive sport, and technology, alongside other interests in the historical intersection of disability in marginalised racial or ethnic communities.
During the last four years Buckinghamshire Gardens Trust have been running a small project alongside their more extensive work to record parks and gardens of local historic importance.
The aim of ‘Artists and their Gardens’ was firstly to identify artists that had lived in the historic county and then by researching them establish; were they gardeners, did they create a garden, did they take inspiration from their garden and if their garden survived. We already knew that there were some well known residents which included Paul and John Nash, Eric Gill, and John Piper, but how many others were there? The answer soon became clear, and we compiled a list of over thirty primarily from the 20th century.
Claire de Carle MA is a garden historian, with a keen interest in horticulture, art and social history. She was instrumental in the establishment of the Buckinghamshire Gardens Trust Research & Recording project in 2013 which has produced reports on around 100 locally important historic gardens, her work for the project includes mentoring and training the volunteers. She now advises other county garden trusts on setting up similar projects. For the last two years she has been the vice chair of the trust and she will shortly take over as chair.
She enjoys writing articles about her research into little known historic landscape gardens and more recently she has set up two other projects: Artists and their Gardens and Public Parks in Buckinghamshire. She also lectures to local groups about Buckinghamshire gardens and Maud Grieve, the herbalist who was the subject of her dissertation.
William Lowndes left Winslow at the age of 15 when his father went bankrupt and the bailiffs were knocking at the door. He returned to pay his father’s debts, build Winslow Hall and change the town forever. David Noy has mined the documentary record to tell this story of one extraordinary man – and paints a picture of how Winslow’s people, from the well-to-do to the poor, gained and lost from this transformation.
David Noy has lived (on and off) all his life in Winslow, where his great-grandfather Arthur Midgley arrived in 1867. He is an Honorary Research Associate of the Open University (in Classics), Honorary General Editor of the Buckinghamshire Record Society and Honorary Archivist of the Buckinghamshire Archaeological Society. He has published many books and articles on Roman history and on the history of Winslow.
When the First World War broke out in 1914 dozens of women doctors offered their services – but they were told by the British Army to “Go home and sit still”. Flora Murray and Louisa Garrett Anderson refused to sit still. Both qualified doctors and suffragettes – and also life partners – they took a unit of women doctors and nurses to Paris. They ran a hospital there so successfully that the army invited them to open a second hospital in Boulogne and then – in May 1915 – to run a major military hospital in the heart of London.
Wendy Moore is a freelance journalist and author of five books on medical and social history. ENDELL STREET was a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week. It is published in the US as NO MAN’S LAND.
On 1 September 1939, the same day that Hitler’s forces marched into Poland, it wasn’t just children who were being evacuated to the countryside. At the height of the late summer heatwave the hour had finally come for the men and women of London’s museums and galleries to roll up their sleeves and save their priceless collections from bombing, invasion or worse. Requisitioning stately homes, Tube tunnels, castles, quarries, prisons and caves as ingenious hiding places, a remarkable bunch of dedicated resisters packed up the nation’s most precious objects and, in a race against time, dispatched them throughout England and Wales on a series of top-secret wartime adventures…including Buckinghamshire. What happened to them next is a remarkable moment from our history when an unlikely coalition of mild-mannered civil servants, social oddballs, and metropolitan aesthetes became nothing less than the heritage front in our fight against the Nazis.
Dr Caroline Shenton is a writer, archivist and historian. She was formerly Director of the Parliamentary Archives in London, and before that was a senior archivist at the National Archives. Her first book The Day Parliament Burned Down won the Political Book of the Year Award in 2013 and its highly-acclaimed sequel, Mr Barry’s War, was a Book of the Year for The Daily Telegraph and BBC History Magazine. In 2017 she was Political Writer in Residence at Gladstone’s Library. Her third book, National Treasures: Saving the Nation’s Art in WWII, will be published on 11 November.
The creation of Milton Keynes began in March 1967 with the founding of the Milton Keynes Development Corporation, tasked with delivering an ambitious project; the largest ‘new town’ development in the country. However, what is less spoken about today, more than 50 years on, is the futuristic Buckinghamshire town that never was – the North Bucks New City. Informally known as ‘Pooleyville’, the 1966 plans for the new town were the brainchild of County Architect, Fred Pooley, born from the County Council’s ambition to build a city of their own.
An article in praise of the plans for North Bucks New City, 1964
New County Offices under construction, c.1960s,designed by county architect Fred Pooley
By the early 1960s, the need for an overspill town to relieve development pressure on the south of the county was becoming glaringly apparent. In 1962, Planning Officer Bill Berrett first came up with the proposal for a ‘North Bucks New City’, and Fred Pooley drafted a town plan.
These days, Pooley is perhaps best known locally for his divisive Brutalist tower block on Walton Street in Aylesbury, which opened in 1967 complete with the county council’s first computer. It’s somewhat disparagingly still known as ‘Pooley’s Folly’ today. Had his plans for the North Bucks New City come to fruition, Milton Keynes might look a little like a series of Pooley’s follies!
His vision was an artful, dragonfly-wing-shaped city between Bletchley and Wolverton, comprised of a series of townships each home to 5000 people. Rather than built round a network of roads, the townships would be linked together, and to the centre of the city, by the very epitome of 1960s modernity; a rate-payer funded, free-to-ride monorail.
The Observer’s architecture critic described Pooley’s plans as ‘the most adventurous and imaginative scheme in Britain’ in 1964, when the plans were up for approval by the county council, and even went as far as to decry that if this ‘city of the future’ wasn’t approved, the chance for something so bold, so modern, would never come again.
An contemporary impression of how Pooleyville would look
Plans for North Bucks New City, ‘Pooleyville’
But was the plan for the monorail so modern?
Despite often being characterised as futuristic, the monorail was invented in the nineteenth century, in Germany. Often elevated, and operating on a single track, mid-20th century Britain viewed it as a brilliant alternative to the existing railway network, avoiding many of its traditional counterpart’s pitfalls: unsightly cables, space consumption and competition with pedestrians and drivers, pollution.
An impression of Pooleyville’s monorail by planning officer Bill Berrett
However, the rise of the motorcar meant that monorail systems never really got off the ground, as it were, outside of the odd example in the United States. In a climate that was seeing the shrinking of the UK’s railway network, it was impossible to justify new rail infrastructure, regardless of how innovative.
Ultimately, the County Council couldn’t fund the construction of Pooleyville anyway, and central government appointed Sir Jock Campbell to chair the new Milton Keynes Development Corporation (MKDC) in 1967. Pooley was appointed a local representative to advise MKDC, and still hoped to integrate some of his ideas into the plans. However, the corporation preferred a layout which put the car at the heart of city planning. Pooley didn’t give up easily, but was eventually forced to accept the failure of his plans, and the grid square layout the city has today is the result of the victory of MKDC’s vision over that of Pooley.
‘One of nature’s gentlemen’
In his long tenure at the county council between 1953 and 1974 Fred Pooley oversaw a number of important projects in Buckinghamshire, including several libraries, and was praised by critic Ian Nairn as ‘a remarkable man, completely free from pretension or arrogance…’.
Fred Pooley, county architect for Buckinghamshire, 1953-1974
He left the council in 1974 to work for the Greater London Council, where he was involved in the development of London Docklands and Thameslink. He was President of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) between 1973 and 1975, and, on his death at the age of 81, was remembered by the Architects’ Journal in 1998 as being ‘Liked by almost everyone who worked with him, [and] a quiet-voiced pragmatist – but one whose leaps of imagination could surprise’ – perhaps they still do.
Contemporary model design for New County Offices, Walton St, opened 1967
Light and airy interiors of the new library complex on the tower block, c.1967
Jo Lester is a Customer Service Officer with Buckinghamshire Libraries. She has a life-long fascination with the past, and is particularly interested in social history, both of her own family’s, and more generally.
When we went into Lockdown back in March, Jo made the most of the extra time by picking up the threads of her family history. As part of the team at Buckinghamshire Libraries she knew that her library card gave her access to lots of different online resources: Ancestry, British Library Newspapers courtesy of Gale Publishing, and the Encyclopaedia Britannica. In this podcast she tells the tale of how she was able to learn more about a Suffolk-based branch of her family, using these tools. Warning: Suffolk Punch horses may feature heavily.
Access to the resources discussed, and more, for Buckinghamshire Library holders, here
Details of how to order birth, marriage and death certificates, via the General Register Office, here
As a local site of historical interest, Buckinghamshire Council has opened the doors to the Judges Lodgings for public tours every September, to showcase its Victorian architecture, furniture, and art. With many public buildings still closed or with limited access, the Virtual History Festival is proud to present a virtual gallery of the paintings depicting local dignitaries and Buckinghamshire scenes, all held at the Judges Lodgings.
From the first female chairman of the County Council, to the impressionist works of ‘Manchester’s Monet’, enjoy this virtual tour from the comfort of your own home!
Gillian Miscampbell OBE (b.1935), by James Orr, first female chairman of Buckinghamshire County Council (1989-1993). Her portrait hangs above the doorway to the Members’ Lounge.
Aylesbury from Court Farm Fields by N. Whittock, c1840. The County Hall is the red brick building on the upper right hand side.
Sir Henry Aubrey-Fletcher, 6th Baronet (1889-1969) Lord Lieutenant of Buckinghamshire (1954-1961) by Norman Hepple. Sir Henry may have been better known at the time by his pen name, Henry Wade, as a leading crime fiction author and founding member of the Detection Club. His portrait hangs in the Small Dining Room.
Heath Pond, Leighton Buzzard, by Wynford Dewhurst (1864-1941). While he was known as ‘Manhester’s Monet’, Dewhurst lived in Buckinghamshire for a time in the early 20th Century, and was a Member of the County Council from 1907 to 1910. He gifted this painting to the council, it now hangs in the Small Dining Room.
An impressive reproduction of Thomas Gainsborough’s The Blue Boy (1770) from the late 19th century, by R.C. Saunders. It hangs over one of the fireplaces in the Large Dining Room.
Hunting Party Attacked by Wolves, reproduction after the studio of Rubens. This large artwork is hung on the staircase to the first floor.
James T. Ireland (1915-2006), by Romeo di Girolamo (b.1939). Ireland was chairman of Buckinghamshire County Council between 1973-1981 – this extraordinary painting is influenced by his role in the founding of Milton Keynes, and parts of Buckinghamshire are identifiable in the painting. It hangs in the landing on the first floor, along with many other former chairman portraits.
An exciting addition to the portrait collection in 2014 was this oil on copper of John Egerton, 3rd Earl of Bridgwater (1646-1701), Member of Parliament for Buckinghamshire in the 1680s, and Lord Lieutenant for the county between 1686-1687 and 1689-1701. This diminutive portrait, thought to be after Sir Godfrey Kneller (1646-1723), is only a few inches tall, and hangs by the doorway to the Large Dining Room, in the Members’ Lounge.
Cattle Scene, by Johann Heinrich Roos (1631-1685). This painting hangs on the staircase to the first floor.
George Grenville Nugent Temple (1753-1813) 1st Marquess of Buckingham, of Stowe House, after Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792). Also 2nd Earl Temple, he was Lord Lieutenant of Buckinghamshire between 1782-1813. His portrait sits adjacent to that of his great-grandson, 3nd Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, on the wall of the Large Dining Room.
Richard Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville, 3rd Duke of Buckingham and Chandos (1823-1889), Lord Lieutenant for Buckinghamshire 1868-1889 and alderman for the new County Council, though he died prematurely before the first council meeting. The 3rd Duke saved Stowe from ruin after the exploits of his father, the 2nd Duke, and was well respected by his peers. His death was sadly noted in the minute book for the first council meeting in April 1889.
Henry William Cripps, Esq. (1815–1899), QC, JP by William Carter (1863–1939). Cripps was the first chairman of the County Council from 1889-1897. One of two portraits of Cripps to be found on the first floor landing, this was the first of a long series of formal portraits of council chairmen. There were only 13 chairmen in the first 112 years of the council, then in 2001 the role became a one year tenure.
