Heritage News 19 - South Derbyshire District Council

UNUSUAL HISTORIC DIARY
PUBLISHED
Victorian life in a South Derbyshire village seen through the eyes
of a gentleman farmer, poet, natural and local historian is revealed
in a new book published by the Melbourne Historical Research
Group, in conjunction with Derbyshire County Council and South
Derbyshire District Council. Priced at £10.99, the book is good
value with more than 240 pages including a sixteen-page colour
section.
John Joseph Briggs from King’s Newton in the parish of Melbourne
kept a diary from 1845 to 1875 covering all aspects of life from
national events to ‘everyday tales of village folk’. A few
retrospective entries record events back to 1820. Now his
thoughtful and unusual memoir spanning 55 years has been
transcribed from the original manuscript into a glossy paperback,
which was launched at Melbourne on Friday 22 April.
Nominally a farmer, Briggs himself confessed that “To employment
of an agricultural nature I had from infancy a great aversion”.
Moreover, Briggs never enjoyed good health and was the only
one of his parents eight children to achieve the age of 25. So after
his father ceased to be active on the farm, he managed the office
side of the business and left the heavy work to employees. The
farm was a prosperous one on the Melbourne Estate, and was
profitable enough to support Briggs while he did much as he liked.
He wrote extensive notes on natural and local history, composed
poetry and published three histories of Melbourne in 1839, 1852
and 1870.
As an amateur historian, it’s not surprising that Briggs wrote his
diary with posterity in mind. He probably never dreamt that it would
ever be published, but he certainly wanted future generations to
read it.
“Many of the notes I am fully aware may seem uninteresting and
unworthy of record and yet I cannot but imagine that even the
most trivial in distant years must be found useful - for oftentimes a
small well authenticated fact tends most materially to forward a
great end. Improvements are in progress and we like to see the
state of objects before such were effected. Times & manners change
and man loves to contemplate how men lived & acted before him.
We live in a changing age and I conceive that half a century hence
we shall view the present time with as much amusement as we
now look back upon that which is past.”
The content of the diary is wide-ranging. Briggs describes events
of national significance like the
Crimean War down to the latest
fashions of home life, such as the
introduction of Christmas trees or
the new trend for growing a
beard. One of the diary entries
describes how plans for a new
railway line linking Rugby and
Manchester were opposed at
Swarkestone by Sir John Harpur
Crewe of Calke who hired fifty
people to prevent surveyors
entering his land. Briggs
•J.J. Briggs as a young man.
By courtesy of Mr G.R. Heath.
describes how “The company
procured about eighty others
from Melbourne and
Heritage News - 4
elsewhere…when Sir John’s men saw the opposite party were not
to be lightly frustrated they quietly and very prudently withdrew.”
The diary also reveals that the Victorians experienced some of the
same problems that we encounter today such as erratic, unseasonal
weather and “cattle plague”, which swept the country in 1866.
“Melbourne 1820 – 1875: A Diary by John Joseph Briggs”, edited
by Philip Heath, is available from local bookshops. It is also
available to order at £13.00 (to cover postage and packing), from
Derbyshire Libraries Service, County Hall, Matlock, DE4 3AG.
Cheques should be made payable to Derbyshire County Council.
LISTENING AND LEARNING
Roger Kitchen, who has recently been working for the National Forest’s
LANDshapes project, tells us what he’s been up to:
For the last 3 months I’ve had a dream job. I’ve been recording the
memories of 36 people who live within the National Forest area, as
part of the National Forest Company’s “LANDshapes Heritage in the
Making” Project.
The idea behind LANDshapes is to work with local people to capture,
record and celebrate the landscape and cultural heritage of The National
Forest by creating an on-line archive that can hold a variety of types of
historical information - written documents, photographs, maps and oral
histories. (Visit the website at www.landshapes.org)
The site already included historic maps, documents and photos, but
was lacking that very important historical source - the evidence of local
eyewitnesses. My work has done a little to rectify that and the first
extracts from my interviews are now starting to appear on the website
(they can be found by going into the “archive” section and typing “roger
kitchen” into the simple text search box, Ed.)
“The recordings do not just capture the stories, they
also capture a dialect which is fast disappearing.”
There was no science in the choice of the interviewees; they were just
people whose lives had interacted in different ways with the landscape
and who also had a good story to tell. They included miners, farmers
and farmworkers, brewers, an archaeologist, a tree surgeon, a drystone
waller, a female railway platelayer, and a bird watcher. All of them
gave me wonderful, unique insights into life in this area in the last 80
years or so.
The recordings do not just capture the stories, they also capture a dialect
which is fast disappearing. Although I’m sure that if these recordings
had been made twenty or thirty years ago many more of the interviewees
would have spoken in a broad dialect, I have still been lucky enough to
hear and capture some examples of this. As a stranger to the area
sometimes the answers seemed mystifying and confusing. A miner
talked about a ‘tile box’, which threw me until he went on to say that it
contained a pick and shovel and I realised he was talking about a
‘toolbox’. Likewise I realised that the ‘kills’ at the pottery were the
kilns!
I have been only able to scratch the surface in collecting the oral history
of the area. I hope that more local people who are interested in
discovering the history of their place will become enthused to collect
memories as well as documents. The technology is there to capture
and preserve the memories to a high standard and the funding is there
through such schemes as the Local Heritage Initiative to get training
and support and pay for equipment. I firmly believe that everybody
has a story to tell. If we listen to people we’ll not only get unique
insights into our local past but we will make new friends and, as a
bonus, we’ll hear stories that will amuse us, astound us and even move
us to tears.
Roger Kitchen