The search room at Woodhorn will be closing at 3pm between 24/6/26 and 26/6/26. This is to allow for essential building works.

General

Volunteers and Research – Berwick Record Office

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Volunteers at the Berwick Record Office are encouraged to research people or events mentioned in the records they index. This enhances the lists and is an opportunity to bring together information from a number of sources that the Archivist may not have the time to collate.

Following a thread

Helen is a volunteer at the Berwick Records Office and has been involved in a number of projects – particularly those with schoolchildren. Recently, she has been looking through the Borough Surveyor’s notebook (featured in an earlier post) for references to Berwick men who served in World War I and decided to find out more about one of them – Sidney Hill.

Sidney Hill

Sidney Hill was born in Berwick in 1900. He was drafted towards the end of the war and from 1918-1919 served on HMS Kildonan – a patrol gunboat that monitored the British coast.

In 1936 he was appointed the first Housing Officer of the Berwick-Upon-Tweed Town Council. However, in 1937 he and his wife emigrated to Salisbury in, what was then known as, Rhodesia to take up a post on the Bulawayo Railway. This followed “malicious rumours” that he was involved in financial irregularities at the Council. However, The Mayor appealed for this gossip to stop, in the Berwick Advertiser on the 29 June 1937, saying neither he nor the Surveyors Department was under investigation.

Berwick Advertiser 29 June 1937

Local newspapers are a useful source of information for this kind of research and the Archives has a collection of them dating back to the early 19th century. The Berwick Advertiser and Berwickshire News regularly carried reports about Berwick people who lived in other parts of the world. Helen also looked at national sources – such as the census of 1901 – to find out about Sidney’s family background.

Berwickshire News 7 Feb 1956

Armenia Tabor

My own curiosity was piqued last week by reading the petition of Armenia Tabor, the widow of Thomas Tabor, a Freeman of Berwick-upon-Tweed (Draft Guild Minute Book 1738-1755 B 2/4). She asked the Guild if they would pay for her to return home to Holland because, she said, she had become “burthensome ” to the Incorporation. They agreed as letting the meadows and stints to which she was entitled as a Freeman’s widow would defray the expense of sending her home.

Armenia Tabor’s petition to the Guild (B 2/4)

It is interesting that, as a Freeman’s widow, Armenia was able to bargain with the Guild to improve her lot. The Borough Archives are a rich source of information about women’s lives – though not all of them as lucky as Armenia. Guild petitions and court records, for example, illustrate what life in a Garrison town was like for ordinary women through incidental and direct references to them.

Possible baptism of Thomas Tabor, Transcripts of Berwick Holy Trinity Church Baptisms

And, it is likely there is much more to be discovered about Armenia and Thomas should someone want to look. Were they brought together by war (the War of the Spanish Succession took place around the time they might have met), did trade with the Netherlands play a part or was it something else entirely? What happened to her when she left Berwick?

Would you like to join us?

If you are interested in researching stories like this we are looking for volunteers to help us.

At 2 pm on Saturday 23rd and on Tuesday 26th March we will be holding introductory sessions for potential volunteers at the Berwick Record Office in Walkergate. Please come along if you are thinking about getting involved. We want to hear what interests you.

A French Prisoner at Berwick upon Tweed (Twixt Thistle and Rose)

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Message from the past

When checking some of the unlisted boxes that will be included in the new catalogue I found this message from myself from 1984! No excuse this time….

Transporting the prisoner to Edinburgh

The box is full of a mixture of records – mainly Quarter Sessions papers – and among them was this little note from the Town Clerk about transporting a captured French Prisoner to Edinburgh. There is no date on the document but the watermark on the paper is 1804 – that means it must have been written after that date but, intriguingly, close to the battle of Trafalgar and the events that led up to it.

Rescued by the Smack Britannia

It is a draft letter to the Provost of the City of Edinburgh which is why it is undated and unsent. It tells us that

“A short time ago Persons who had been found unboard a British Vessel which had been captured by a Privateer belonging to the Enemy and recaptured by the Smack Britannia of thes Port and some other Vessels belonging to Leith and Berwick were landed here from the Britannia. One of them appeared to be an American, having since offered to serve in His Majesties Fleet was sent forward to Leith to be put on board one of His Majesties Ships there, the other I now take the liberty to send to Edinburgh for the purpose of being lodged among the other Prisoners of War at that place and I have to request that your Lordship will be pleased to give the proper Directions for his being received on his arrival – He will go by the Edinburgh Waggon tomorrow morning and will arrive in Edinburgh on..“

The smack Britannia is listed in Fuller’s History of Berwick (1799) and belonged to the Old Shipping Company. The Berwick smacks that navigated between Berwick and London, he says, are universally admitted to exceed that of any other in the known world for “safety and expedition”.

Would you like to volunteer?

We do not intend to employ a Press Gang but if you are interesting in joining us as a volunteer we will be holding a couple of short introductory sessions at the Berwick Archives (in Berwick upon Tweed Library in Walkergate) on Saturday 23rd March and Tuesday 26th March at 2 pm. You’ll have a chance to see what we are doing and see if any of the tasks suit you. You can email us on ttar@northumberland.gov.uk if interested in attending or for more information about the project.

Building Berwick Old Bridge (Twixt Thistle and Rose)

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Old Berwick Bridge has recently re-opened after essential repairs and a further £250,000 has been allocated for maintenance during 2019/2020. It is a well-used crossing of the Tweed, popular with visitors and locals alike and it has a very well documented history – including a record of all the names of the people who built it and what it cost.

Increase in costs for tide work

The old bridge has linked both sides of the Tweed at Berwick for about 380 years. According to Fuller’s History of Berwick work ended on the 24 October 1634 having taken “twenty-four years four months and four days”. The construction was a major feat of engineering – working around tides and the powerful surges of the river. Although at times convoluted, both the King and the Guild saw the building of permanent crossing of the Tweed at Berwick as a crucial investment and symbolic too.

Supplies of building materials for Berwick Bridge, 1613

The building of a stone bridge over the Tweed at Berwick marked the end of hostilities with Scotland on the accession of James VI of Scotland to the English throne in 1603. Berwick had been, for centuries, a town at war. From 1482 to 1601 it had a Governor appointed by the Crown and was occupied by a large garrison. The crown paid for repairs to the castle, the fortifications and the old wooden bridge (which was often washed away in floods) as it was a strategic military base.

Summary bridge accounts 1612-1613 (H1/1)

The Earl of Dunbar – George Home – who held a series of royal appointments in Scotland and England under James I/VI had been granted the fortifications of Berwick when the garrison was disbanded. He was instrumental in making the case for the building of a stone bridge, proposing how it should be funded and appointing, for life, the bridge surveyor and designer, James Burrell. Home’s funding scheme gave way to other arrangements but Burrell stayed the course.

Particular payments for work beginning the 11 May 1622

The “particular accounts” for the building of the bridge from 1611-1635 (H1/1-4) survive in the borough archives – volumes that Fuller cites extensively in his History of Berwick. The other side to the story is found in records held at The National Archives (such as The Exchequer Pipe Rolls – declared accounts for the building of Berwick Bridge ref: E 351/3585) as this was a crown enterprise. Indeed, the bridge building accounts held in the Berwick Archives might not be so”particular” had they – and the works – not been routinely audited by royal inspectors. These included the Bishop of Durham and the poet Fulke Greville in his role as Chancellor of the Exchequer (Source: The History of the Kings Works Vol IV (part II), Colvin et al pp.774-775, HMSO 1982).

Payment to Foulke Reynards Master of the good ship the “Boweringe of Stavering” for freight of oak trees, coal, oakum, holly wood, rope and steel from Newcastle to Berwick, to John Wylde the pilot from Newcastle to Berwick and to Henry Scott and his “fellowes for their pains and their bote” in helping the ship up Berwick River, 1614

The accounts describe materials used at different points in the construction, the use of oak from the royal estate at Chopwell near Blaydon, the freight of coal, oyster shells and stone by sea, and the people – men, women and boys (all named) – who built the bridge.

Timber from Chopwell Woods, 1613

The accounts for subsequent repairs by Guild and the Town Council are also held by the Berwick Records Office to 1835 as Bridge Account volumes, later as part of the annual reporting of accounts.

Today the bridge is the smallest of the three that span the Tweed at Berwick but in it’s day it would have made a significant impact on the landscape. It was clearly a source of civic pride as funds were routinely levied on the burgesses for it’s upkeep – in addition to the Crown costs of around £13,000 which is the equivalent of about £1.5 million today.

Illustration depicting the bridge about 1799 from Fuller’s History of Berwick
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