In September 2014, I heard that Northumberland Archives needed volunteers to delve into the experience of the First World War. As an amateur archaeologist I am interested in history and thought this would be a fascinating project to get involved in, and as I do freelance work, I would be able to do it when I was not working.
I went along to the training days which were very interesting. I was already familiar with the family history section of the archives at Woodhorn as we have been researching my husband’s family, the Lindsays of Alnwick. On completion of the training days we were each given a project to undertake and mine was to transcribe the diary of an ‘unknown’ First World War soldier which had been handed in to the Archives.
I found this to be utterly fascinating. The diary is very well written, full of humorous stories, heart breaking and vivid accounts of the writer’s experience of death and war, drawings, and even a theatrical programme! I actually found it a privilege to be one of very few people to read this diary since it was written. Some of his accounts moved me to tears and brought the whole experience of the war very close to me, and as a mother, I couldn’t help but be mindful that each account of a soldier dying such an awful and lonely death was somebody’s son. I was privilege to details of their deaths that their mothers probably never knew. The author reveals a loyalty to his country, respect for superiors and acceptance of ‘doing one’s duty’ which is rare today.
I became so interested in this man’s stories that I really wanted to find out who he was. He gave some clues along the way, such as the fact that he knew a lot about sheep and farming. A German steamer had run aground near Cheswick Burn ‘to the south of our land’, and his brother had been in command of the coastguard at Berwick. From this it was clear that he had some connection with farming in an area I am very familiar with in Northumberland, and I thought that it would be easy using the internet to find out the name of his brother. I had no luck and emailed the RNLI and other organisations such as the website of the London Scottish, his regiment, but had no replies. I took my husband along to have a look at the diary and we read on further. The words jumped out from the page when we read that his ‘dear brother Cecil’ was killed whilst in command of the cruiser H.M.S. Bayano on 12th March 1915. This was an enormous clue. We went home and spent the evening in pursuit of our soldier and found him.
Using Google we found that his brother was called Henry Cecil Carr who was 43 when he went down with his ship. From this, I had his birth year so I then looked at census records and found Cecil in the 1881 census when he was 8, along with his father John Carr who was a Merchant and Justice of the Peace, five sisters and 4 brothers, Reginald E, George, Hubert and John E. Which one was our soldier? The census showed that they had all been born in Gosforth and were living at Roseworth Cottage, Coxlodge. I then found Cecil in the 1911 census living in Rochester, Kent, with his occupation as ‘Royal Navy Commander’ so I knew we had the right family.
With these clues, I googled and found that Reginald E was the coastguard, so that narrowed our unknown soldier down to George, Hubert or John E. Remembering that our soldier had mentioned ‘our land’, I decided to look at Kelly’s Trade Directory for 1914 for Berwick, and found one John Evelyn Carr on page 21 as Manager of Scremerston Coal Company, coal owners and merchants, brick and tile manufacturers and farmers. I strongly suspected we had our man! (It was midnight by this time).
I was about to do some double checking to make sure this was our soldier and decided just to put his name into Google to see if there was any more information on the net about him. I got a shock! Up popped an entry for Northumberland Archives about one John Evelyn Carr who had written 4 war diaries, and who had had a special study on him done by Emily Meritt in 2014. I read her work about the soldier and recognised from the information about him that my soldier and hers were one and the same person! There was even a photo of him, which I found fascinating I could now put a face to the person behind the diary. His words had also featured in a book called ‘Tommy at War 1914-18, the Soldiers’ own Stories’ by John Sadler, and I found another photograph and information that he had been a sheep breeder on ‘Historypin’. The mystery was solved but I was a tiny bit disappointed that my soldier had already been known about, and his diary wasn’t unique. He seems to have been a prolific writer! We have still to find out if my diary is part of the four already known about, or separate.
I found out that he had been married in 1900 at St Andrew’s, Newcastle to one Gertrude Isabella Moncriff Blair (obviously not a scullery maid). He had worked after the war as Managing Director of the Scremerston Coal Company and lived at Heathery Tops Scremerston and Spittal, where he died in 1958. I have recently found out that there is a farmer whose surname is Carr who farms at Scremerston today and am minded to get in touch with him to see if he is a relative. It would be interesting to know how the diary came to be in the Archives and not cherished by John Carr’s family as a precious heirloom.
I feel that I know this man. I think he descends from The Carrs of Etal who once owned Barmoor Castle where our family have a holiday home today. It is odd that he was born and brought up about half a mile from where I live, and that he lived and worked in an area I know well and love. I even know the road where he lived in Spittal. It was meant to be that I got to transcribe his diary, and I hope I can do justice to his bravery and brilliant storytelling, so that other people can experience the immediacy, humour and sorrow that I have felt while transcribing it.
We would like to express our sincere appreciation to Carole McKenzie for supplying this article for our Northumberland At War Project.
Northumberland Archives
Beyond the court rolls – other manorial documents
In our first post we looked at some of the court rolls, and in the second how the courts worked. We will now explore some of the other documents that we commonly use to determine whether a place is a manor, and what else we can find out from them. From the documents we can learn more about agriculture and diet of the period, crime and the way criminals were treated, urban growth and industrial development, and land, house or property ownership. There is excellent scope for local history studies from these documents and the detail they give of land boundaries and the individuals who held them. There is also huge potential for genealogists – though you may think they would only provide information about the landed classes, some court rolls and other documents list the names of those renting or holding land by service. Here we have divided up the documents we use thematically.
Geographical documents
Surveys – as you would expect, these are descriptions of the manor and its boundaries. This can be very useful when trying to identify what land was owned by whom. They often also detail the customs of the manor, which often differed from place to place.
ZCR/M/2: Survey of demesne of Manor of Craster, Northumberland
Terriers – a survey arranged topographically, showing you the manor field by field or where open fields existed, strip by strip.
Maps – from the sixteenth century this survey information is commonly laid out in the form of maps. These marked out the boundaries, adjoining manors or parishes, and topographical features. Unlike the terriers these would be done to scale, and became increasingly accurate as time went on.
Boundary roll – Description of the manorial boundary, though not a full perambulation.
NRO 00452/E/3/3/1/2: Blanchland Bounder Roll, Northumberland.
Perambulation – A long description of walk around the boundary, detailing local landmarks.
Land holding and ownership
Rentals – the names of all the tenants of the manor, however they held it, with a description of what they held and how much they paid, and what form their payment took. Payments could be in the form of money or produce. If they were expected to provide services it would say what these were. These weren’t as frequent as accounts or court rolls and sadly don’t always survive.
Custumals – The survey of rents, services owed by the tenants to the lord of the manor, the rights of the lord, the obligations he owed, and the customs of the manor. These would need to be examined occasionally, and everyone reminded of what these were to avoid confusion. Often the customs or rents changed, for example if services or produce were exchanged for payments of money.
Extents – An often earlier form of rental, a valuation and description of everything on the manor, such as the manor house, mills, demesne land (much like a ‘home farm’, the land near the manor house farmed for the lord), tenant’s rents and services.
Surrenders and admissions – The transferral of copyhold land from one owner to the next was done by one owner ‘surrendering’ his or her claim to the lord, who then ‘admitted’ the next tenant. This would be written down in the court roll, and the new tenant would be given a copy of what was written, hence this being called ‘copyhold’.
ZCO IX/5/1: Enclosure Act for Ovingham, Bywell St Peter and Bywell St Andrew.
Enclosure Awards – Enclosure was the practice of taking areas of unused land, strip fields or common and dividing them into privately owned fields. This would be done through private act of parliament up until about 1800, after which public acts were made possible, and from 1845 Commissioners were appointed to oversee the process of enclosure and issue enclosure awards. The awards detail how the land was divided and who the owners were.
Court papers
Presentments – lists of the matters to be dealt with by the court, such as disagreements between tenants or disobeying the manor customs, often drawn up beforehand by the jury. They might often be included in the court roll. ZBL 2/13/21 has some interesting examples including those brought before the court for offences such as ‘speaking scandalous words’ of someone or ‘wrongful mowing’ of someone else’s meadow.
ZBL 2/13/21: Presentments at Melkridge
Suit rolls or Call books – like an attendance register of everyone who owed suit to the court or attended the court. In some places these could be resident books, not only of the tenants but of everyone who lived in the manor. They might be kept within the court books.
Customs of the manor – a list of the individual customs of the manor, such as how many animals an individual could feed on the common
Stewards’ papers
Accounts – These would be kept by the steward or bailiff of the manor, usually annually at Michaelmas (the 29th September), and marked the income and outgoings of the manor. For example ‘charges’ or income from the rents, money from sale of produce or fines; and ‘discharges’ or expenditure from purchasing livestock, repairs or labour.
Appointment of bailiff – a bailiff was a manager for the day-to-day running of the manor appointed by the lord. In some cases the role would be unpaid, with one of the tenants being elected annually to serve as ‘Reeve’ or ‘Greave’. This document would detail the bailiff’s appointment in the role.
Notice of court – letter to the lord notifying him of holding the court, or a notice often posted on the church door, giving the date, time and location of the court.
Correspondence – between the lord and the steward over various court matters.
The new Stannington Project assistants
As highlighted in our previous blog posts the second phase of the Stannington Sanatorium project is now underway. Using a second tranche of funding from the Wellcome Trust this phase will make digitised copies of the patient files covering the period 1946-1966 and re-package them in conservation grade materials. Our new Project Assistant began in early November. Her part-time role will involve determining which are the most important or ‘core’ documents, separating them from the rest by means of an archival standard brass paper clip. They are then enveloped in a four-flapped folder, made from acid-free card, tied and labelled with its own reference number. This way we can help to preserve the original documents for years to come.
The Project Digitisation Assistant, will then make Jpeg and Tiff image files of each document. Digital copies of the core documents will be redacted, removing the names and personal information of the patients and attached to our online catalogue. This will mean that although they will be accessible from anywhere in the world, that patient confidentiality will still be maintained. They will provide an excellent resource for those studying the treatment of Tuberculosis, and the lives of children in hospitals in the mid-twentieth century. We will be posting in the coming months about our progress, so please look out for how we are getting on. We will also be creating a Flickr set of a typical case file including all contents. This too will be redacted to protect patient confidentiality. Please remember to look at our new online exhibition about Stannington Sanatorium, available here.