Just Catalogued October 2026

Parish Council records 

We were pleased to receive the records of Uffington Parish Council, 1894-2019 (CPC134). The Parish Council was for the civil parish, dealing with secular matters at the lowest level of local government. Interesting comments in the minutes include objections to the proposals of the Wilts & Berks Canal Company to abandon the canal, 1897-1900. Then in 1941 (during the Second World War) an application for the use of the village hall ‘for Communal Feeding for school children from Woolstone & Baulking attending the Village school’ was refused ‘because the Council felt the children were well cared for and the scheme wasn’t necessary in the village’. In November that year ‘children Damageing [sic] things in the Hall’ led to a threat that either all the children were to be banned from the hall after school, or ‘the Hall be closed to the London Women’ [i.e. the evacuees’ mothers]. Perhaps the threat alone was enough to stop the bad behaviour. Other discussion involved new housing developments.

We have also added minutes for 2012-2023 to the records of Cold Ash Parish Council (CPC130D).

A frivolous proposal

Correspondence and papers relating to the provision of a burial ground includes a letter from the vicar in 1951, stating that the Parochial Church Council (representing the church) did not wish to pay for an extension to the churchyard and asking the Parish Council to provide a civil burial ground instead. He objected, however, to the proposed sale of his own (glebe) land for the purpose, calling it ‘an entirely frivolous proposal’ as the land was too close to dwelling houses. He admonished the civil Parish Councillors: ‘Whoever is responsible for the delay is guilty of playing … with the deepest feelings of human suffering and bereavement’, pointing out that there were then only four grave spaces free and an average of ten burials per year, so that the churchyard might well be completely full within weeks. By November 1953 ‘the burial space available in Uffington Churchyard is now one grave site and the rubbish heap’, and the vicar threatened to call on the Minister of Health for an official enquiry.

Separate lives

We got a rare glimpse into a disastrous marriage with the private deed of separation of Henry Bonham Acton of 5 Queens Terrace, Windsor, esquire, and his wife Sarah Ann Acton, dated 1885 (D/EX2404). The couple married on 28 July 1883 and the marriage failed within not much more than a year; unsurprisingly there were no children. They agreed to live separately, with neither party to press for any renewal of cohabitation or conjugal rights, and as long as Sarah lived a chaste life, i.e. did not take up with another man, Henry was to pay her £200 a year, backdated to September 1884. They were of fairly equal means, his annual income amounting to £700 and hers to £600, and no marriage settlement had been entered into. Sarah had to hand over a gold watch and chain, certain articles of plate and china, and other property belonging to Henry. Additional research undertaken by staff elicited the added details that Henry was a childless 69 year old widower residing in Bath when he married Sarah Ann Crawley (nee Gurney), a 44 year old widow, at St Luke’s Church, Islington, London. He died in 1892 and she died in 1895.

Moving with your cows 

An interesting small collection of records relates to the Bone family of Holme Knowe (formerly Culham) Farm, Aston, Remenham, 1949-1965 (D/EX2428). David Ramsay Bone and his parents had moved to Essex in 1930 with their famous Sheepcotes Herd of pedigree Ayrshire cattle, which they had established in Scotland in 1907. The cows were moved by road to be milked en route at pre-arranged farms, while the family, furniture and other livestock travelled by a privately chartered train. During the Second World War they became tenants of Viscount Hambleden at Aston Farm, Remenham, as it was close to Reading Cattle Market, the main market for the sale of Ayrshire cattle in England. David Bone also took on the tenancy of Culham Dairy Farm, on the same estate, and Park Place Farm, Remenham Hill, on the Park Place Estate. David married one of the Land Girls who helped out during the war, and in 1949 he bought Culham Farm from their landlord. Holme Knowe was a new farmhouse built for the younger family to live in at Culham, using bricks from the old Middlesex County Council Gasworks which had once been in the grounds of Park Place. The Bones sold the property to the owner of Culham Court in 1965, and moved to a farm in Somerset, taking their herd of cattle with them once again.

You can find out more about all these records by searching our online catalogue. Enter the collection reference given above in the Catalogue Reference field.