Together with information from Woodstock leases, it has been possible to trace ownership of the Close from the mid-sixteenth century and learn something of the lives these people led and the work they did.
A strikingly detailed insight into the lives of ordinary townspeople over a period of 450 years, set against the history of the town as a whole.
£9.99 paperback 9781902279398 116pp photographs and family trees Published December 2009
The Salt of the Earth
Diary of a poor family in Woodstock, 1900
by Dorothy Calcutt
This
is the story of one year in the life of a large family living on the
edge of the Blenheim estate in Woodstock, Oxfordshire in the year 1900.
The author’s mother, Dora, told her daughter many tales of her
childhood at the turn of the century, and this book is based on those
stories.
Life in a poor family at that time was a precarious
balance, weighted on one side by the pleasures of alcohol and on the
other by the influence of John Wesley and General Booth. The biggest
enemy was unemployment. But Dora’s mother found hope even at the
saddest times, which she would attribute to a gypsy and her magic good
influence on the family’s lives.
Dora’s father, George, begins
the year as a farm labourer, too fond of his whisky; but he proves
himself an adept midwife when the farm cow produces two heifer calves.
Later he answers an emergency call to the Palace when one of the
Duchess's spaniels is whelping. As the year passes Dad spends more time
at the Palace, and each time a bitch whelps successfully he is secretly
given a guinea. The puppies are sold when they are six weeks, and
George is employed to deliver them to their new owners; by the end of
October he has twenty-five guineas hidden in a cocoa tin buried in the
garden.
For this and other reasons Georgina has every reason to
believe that things are really looking up for her family. But good
fortune is tempered with bad. There are to be four deaths in the family
in this year alone. Georgina also conceals the fact that she is
pregnant. As a result, and to his great surprise, Dad’s midwifery
skills are suddenly called on again on New Year’s Eve.
But the family’s troubles are not yet over, and there are still more tragic events to follow.
The
story is true to the extremes of poverty and wealth of the period, and
all the characters described in both the family and the town were real.
Dorothy Calcutt, Dora’s daughter, was a schoolteacher in Woodstock. Now
retired, she lives in Combe.
With contemporary photographs of the people and places in the story.
£8 paperback, 120pp, 9781902279060
Where there's a Will
A study of Woodstock probate documents, 1530-1700
Edited by Patricia Crutch, Antony Smith and Royston Taylor
For
about 20 years, The Woodstock Society's local history group has been
transcribing seventeenth-century documents from Woodstock. For this
book, over 300 probate documents and more than 40 wills have also been
transcribed, providing often detailed information on the following
aspects of life in Woodstock in the 16th and 17th centuries:
• an overview of probate documents outlining the wealth of testators and their economic management. • the size, layout and contents of houses, providing a background to life in the town. • widows, their role in the family and their involvement in town affairs. • costumes and changing fashions in the town over 150 years. • personal belongings, both personal and utilitarian, found in the homes of Woodstock residents. • the occupations of local men and women.
Ten Woodstock Families of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries