STUDLEY stepped back in time last Saturday at the latest exhibition by the local history society.
Key attraction was the 1939 register, a national document taken when it became clear that war – the Second World War – was on its way, and a fascinating stand on the English Civil War in Warwickshire.
Speaking about the register, Joy Pegrum of Studley Local History Society said: “It was a kind of census detailing people’s occupations and where they lived just in case the country went to war.
“The importance of the document can’t be overstated – the 1931 census was destroyed in the war and there wasn’t one in 1941 so it meant the 1939 register not only formed the basis of the National Health Service database but was also in use right up to the 1950s and 1960s.”
Local historians are now busily transcribing the sections relating to Studley – it contains many mistakes caused by the computer reading of the document, and desperately trying to fill in the blanks in the pages as the information of all those still alive and mentioned in it has been redacted.
“The exercise today is to ask Studley people who might be mentioned in it, and there are an awful lot still alive, if it’s all right to put their details in so we can make it a complete record,” added Joy.
Stepping back nearly 400 years, Dr Maureen Harris’s stand detailed the trail of destruction left by both Royalists and Roundheads across the county during the English Civil War.
Warwickshire has the UK’s most complete record of claims for compensation instituted by the victorious Parliamentarian side.
“The county lay between the Parliamentarian strongholds of Edgbaston and Birmingham and the Royalists out of Oxford and there were garrison towns in between,” said Dr Harris.
“The result was that there were numerous raids across Warwickshire and much to-ing and fro-ing by the two sides.”
Her research, supported by the National Lottery, Warwickshire County Record Office and the Stratford-based Dugdale Society even tells of a claim for compensation by a Studley man accidentally shot by Roundheads.
Studley Local History Society meets every two months at the Parish Centre in the village – for more details email [email protected].
Claims for compensation:
STUDLEY lay in the contested area between royalist Worcestershire and parliamentarian Warwickshire and was raided by parliamentary soldiers – Colonel ‘tinker’ Fox’s men from Edgbaston garrison – and the Scots’ army in the summer of 1645.
Local Studley villagers who suffered included:
William Dodd, innkeeper, who had to offer ‘free quarter’ for up to 17 men and horses and lost ‘one new hatt and fiftie shillinges gayned uppon severall pretences to prevent further Plunder’.
Edmund Court, a genetleman, paid £1 ‘unto Captain Ascough for redemption being his prisoner’.
Thomas Walker, a gardener, lost working tools and ‘Cloathes, sheetes, brasse, Pewter, melting it for bullets’. He was ‘sore Cutt and abused’ fleeing his house ‘to preserve his life’.
William Petford, ‘In January Rydinge peaceably one the way, was suddenly….wounded by one Smith which was of Colten (Coughton) Garrison…the which wounds was soe soreand tedious that hee lay under the surgions hands some 20ty weekes ore more’. Unable to dress or help himself he lost £15 in physick, salve and expenses and was ‘a maymed main for ever’.
