Notice Board
We have received two pieces of Information on the Newspaper Library and some memorial inscription work in the village of Loose near Maidsone Kent which may interest you. They are from:
Roger Lewry
FFHS Archives Liaison
archives.liaison@ffhs.org.uk
They will be displayed until 1st July 2010 ...
The British Library has announced further developments in the project to digitise part of the newspaper library collection currently housed at Colindale. More information can be seen on the British Library website at: http://tinyurl.com/28aulo9
I have written to Ben Sanderson at the Press Office for clarification on some points and will issue a further update in due course.
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We have received the following information from the Kent Archaeological Society:
Stories of ‘THE LOST MEMORIALS OF LOOSE’ are now on the Internet
Records of hundreds of people who lived in Loose, near Maidstone, and adjacent parishes over a period of many centuries are now featured on the Kent Archaeological Society’s website, www.kentarchaeology.org.uk.
The records, in the form of 340 memorial inscriptions (‘MIs’) on gravestones, tablets, tombs and monuments at All Saints’ parish church and Loose Cemetery, were transcribed by Roger Thornburgh, president of the Loose Area History Society (LAHS) and other members who started work on the project more than 20 years ago.
Some of the inscriptions they noted in the 1980s are now illegible, making the transcriptions an invaluable resource for family historians.
Furthermore, when the floor of All Saints’ was taken up in 2003 during building work, Roger took the opportunity to record the inscriptions on gravestones that had previously been hidden. Now that the floor has been reinstated, only two of these are still visible.
The earliest recorded Loose MI is for a member of the Lamb family who died in 1590.
Said Ted Connell, who runs the KAS website: ‘The real value of MIs is that not only do they tell us about people who are buried in our graveyards, they often provide details of people who once lived in the parish but were buried abroad – sometimes at sea.
‘Although visiting churches and cemeteries to compile MIs is a project that many family and local historians enjoy, there is nothing they can do about inscriptions that have been destroyed or eroded over time. But gravestones are only the “tip of the iceberg” of all the burials in a churchyard. Many graves were marked with wooden rails that lasted only last a few generations. Stone gravestones often weather badly and become illegible. And of course many of the people buried were from poor families who could not afford a gravestone.
‘Church registers, often dating back to the late 16th century, should provide a comprehensive list of burials in our churchyards, but we often find that MIs recorded by our project cannot be cross-referenced to the church’s burial registers - presumably because the sexton or vicar failed to record them’.
Roger Thornburgh has in some cases cross-referenced deaths recorded on the Loose MIs with entries in the burial registers The LAHS holds copies of All Saints’ baptism, marriage and burial registers, dating from 1559 to 1843.
Among the many fascinating details in the Loose MIs are various occupations of parishioners and their relatives in days gone by. Among them are an alehouse keeper (Robert Wilkins); a barrister (William Post); two butchers (Edward Froud and John Mead); a carpenter (John Coomber); a clerk (William Muddle); a draper (Thomas Pearne); a farmer (Michael Golding), a fuller (Walter Jones); a husbandman (Thomas Robinson); a maltster (James Castreet); a merchant (Richard Beale); a miller (Robert Wilson); a music seller (Thomas Pearne, related to the draper); five papermakers (Thomas French, Henry French, William Hunt, William Harris and John Farley); three tanners (Thomas Fisher, William Peene and William Wilkins) and two victuallers (John Farley and Joseph Silk).
To view the MIs visit www.kentarchaeology.org.uk and from the Home Page navigate to Research and then to the ‘Churchyards MIs’ list in ‘Library & Visual Records’.
