From hunting to safari: changing approaches to wildlife

We were pleased to be given a copy of a guidebook for Windsor Safari Park dating between 1988 and the early 1990s (D/EX3023). The site is still a popular tourist attraction in the form of Legoland, but was for several decades the place to go to see lions and tigers roaming free (or almost) in the Berkshire countryside. We have also acquired a 1 inch : 1 mile map of west Berkshire marked up to show the area hunted by the Craven Hunt, c.1889-1895 (D/EZ225). This item is in too fragile a state to be handled but is now in our care. We have also received the papers of naturalist Brian Baker of Caversham, an expert on local moths and butterflies, 1938-1994 (D/EX3005). 

Animal research

The papers of Daphne Austen, 1937-1974, cast new light on the Agricultural Research Council Field Station in Compton, where she was a typist in the late 1940s. She kept in touch with former colleagues after leaving to care for family members (D/EX3057). The site carried out animal experimentation, testing and breeding.

Berkshire families

We are pleased to have completed cataloguing of the papers of the Wise family, farmers in Wokefield and elsewhere, c.1800s-2022 (D/EX2811). They include farming diaries for much of the 20th century. More information on the family can be found in the January 2024 Highlight on our website. Another interesting small collection comes from the Page family of Yew Tree cottage, Ashampstead, 1911-1972 (D/EX3020). It includes a number of photograph albums of the area, Ashampstead Cricket Club fixture lists and Home Guard receipt and record cards of clothing.  

We received a small and mysterious collection of photographs which we managed to establish related to the Eveson family of Reading and Tilehurst, c.19C-1960s (D/EX2932). A small group of photographs of the Moody, Thorp and Girdler families of Swallowfield dates from the mid 19th century (D/EX2958). We have also catalogued a marriage settlement for the Revd William Hulme of Shinfield and Maria West of Monkton, Somerset, 1842 (D/EX3024).  

A lovely photograph album of Tidmarsh Manor shows the life of the upper classes in the 1880s-90s (D/EZ226). The house was built in 1881 on the site of an older house by and the surviving part of the old house was renamed Tidmarsh Grange and let to tenants. Both were demolished in 2007. Unfortunately we are not quite sure who created the album. Robert John Hopkins (1829-1899), who built the house in 1881 on the site of an older one he had inherited, married Elizabeth Clara Murray in 1853, and they had six children between 1856 and 1871. One of their daughters, Lilian, married Colonel Sir James Richardson Anderson Clark in 1893, and this couple, who had one son, born in London in 1898, appear to have been living at Tidmarsh Manor in 1901. A few photographs show two children, a girl and boy, who have not been securely identified as their age does not fit that of any of the grandchildren. 

An interesting inclusion in the papers of George Richard Jackson (1846-1937), scrap metal merchant and mayor of Reading, is a charming little book entitled 'The Ghosts of My Friends', containing signatures of friends and family members. Names were signed in ink and then folded. The transferred ink revealed an image resembling a ghost (D/EX2461). 

Babies in hospital  

We have received a register of baptisms performed in Heatherwood Hospital, Ascot, 1982-1995 (D/H17). It was kept in the Special Care Baby Unit to allow for urgent baptisms of very sick babies. The baptisms could be performed by lay members of staff if there was no time for the chaplain to get there, and staff also sometimes acted as godparents. It contains baptisms from all Christian denominations. Most baptisms were for newborn or very young babies, but there is an occasional older sibling as well, and one for the child of a doctor and medical student couple in the hospital chapel. Families came from across the local area and further afield, both in the UK and overseas. Sadly, there are also books of remembrance for babies who died in the hospital’s Maternity Unit 1976-2000 (D/H17), and at Wexham Park Hospital, Slough, 1987-2014 (D/H18).  

Happier stories involve the midwifery registers kept by Mrs D E Jackson of Wokingham, in which she kept details of every birth she attended, 1939-1966 (D/EX2511). Due to the personal data included for the mothers and babies, these must be restricted for 100 years after the end of each volume.  

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.