Diary and Terrier Book of Brotherton Parish (WDP74)
1561 – 2001
Diary of a [not so] madman
29th April 1926. 'The girl guides started in the Parish. A troop was badly needed in the Parish to raise the moral tone of the girls.'
It is quite rare to find a diary spanning so many years that gives us a glimpse of the changing attitudes of incumbents towards their congregation whilst at the same time showing how national affairs affected village life.
It is easy to laugh at the outbursts some 100 – 200 years later but the one thing each incumbent seems to share with his predecessors is the frustration at their world around them and the need to improve the lives and facilities of the village.
The diary forms part of the parish chest where a wealth of records such as baptism, marriage and burial registers can be found but also overseers of the poor records, bastardy and apprenticeship papers and plans showing alterations to the church, vicarage and often the churchyard.
It is easy to laugh at the outbursts some 100 – 200 years later but the one thing each incumbent seems to share with his predecessors is the frustration at their world around them and the need to improve the lives and facilities of the village.
The diary forms part of the parish chest where a wealth of records such as baptism, marriage and burial registers can be found but also overseers of the poor records, bastardy and apprenticeship papers and plans showing alterations to the church, vicarage and often the churchyard.
Some of our favourite quotes...
Signature of Justice Southam, Vicar of Brotherton June 1925 - June 1927
‘I would recommend it to all my successors to have their cows brought home from ye town pasture to milk. Because many young men and children in ye town make a practise of duly attending ye maids when they milk ye cows’ John Law, vicar, 1779, commenting on his milk cows and milk maids!
Perhaps one of the most interesting and amusing entries made is by Rev Justice Southam who concludes that Brotherton is indeed an evil place!
The diary takes us briefly through both World Wars and notes with concern that Byram Park was an ammunition dump and if ‘the Nazi’s dropped a bomb there it would blow Brotherton off the map’.
In 1946, 50 German prisoners of war attended Midnight Eucharist on Christmas Eve. The diary goes on to tell us that there were approximately 100 Prisoners of War billeted in Brotherton Hall. It also notes, quite scathingly, that since the end of the war, attendance at church was down and that perhaps people believed that the ‘millennium has arrived and that there is no further need for God’.
View the collection on our online catalogue.
Perhaps one of the most interesting and amusing entries made is by Rev Justice Southam who concludes that Brotherton is indeed an evil place!
The diary takes us briefly through both World Wars and notes with concern that Byram Park was an ammunition dump and if ‘the Nazi’s dropped a bomb there it would blow Brotherton off the map’.
In 1946, 50 German prisoners of war attended Midnight Eucharist on Christmas Eve. The diary goes on to tell us that there were approximately 100 Prisoners of War billeted in Brotherton Hall. It also notes, quite scathingly, that since the end of the war, attendance at church was down and that perhaps people believed that the ‘millennium has arrived and that there is no further need for God’.
View the collection on our online catalogue.
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