1889 Churches and Views of Stroud and Neighbourhood, Reworked c.1938 as a Manuscript Cotswold Archive with Churches, Inns, Mills, Roman Roads, and Slad/Laurie Lee Material

On offer is a heavily annotated and expanded copy of Churches and Views of Stroud and Neighbourhood, with Historical Notes, by E. Hulbert and P. L. Smith, printed at the “News” Office, Stroud, in 1889.

The printed work is a late-Victorian local-history guide to the churches, architecture, and views of Stroud and its surrounding Gloucestershire district. This copy, however, has been transformed into a manuscript-augmented Stroud and Cotswold local-history volume, with marginal annotations on nearly every page, full-page handwritten additions, pasted newspaper clippings and illustrations, and related loose/tipped-in ephemera.

The title page bears the ownership inscription “David & Jean Charles. 1938.” This inscription is the likely anchor for the book’s later manuscript and scrapbook additions. A later inquiry has suggested that the Charleses may have had a direct family or local connection to the volume, though this has not yet been fully documented. A later telephone number beneath the inscription also suggests the book remained in associated family or local hands into the late twentieth century.

One manuscript page headed “History notes of Stroud. etc.” records that “near the gate of the field of Hazlecote barn, a mile from Kingscote,” stones were found in June 1938 “under the turf,” having “formed the surface of a Roman road” and showing “deep cuts worn by the traffic of the distant past.” The same page notes that by the end of the thirteenth century cloth was made in the Cotswolds, “especially in the Stroud district, by handlooms in the cottages,” and describes a Roman altar in Stroud Museum, “with figure and attributes of Mars,” made of local stone about A.D. 300.

Other annotations update or expand the printed text. Beside Stonehouse, the annotator writes that “Stonehouse Court, where, as local tradition states, Queen Elizabeth once slept, has been entirely rebuilt because of fire in 1908.” The Avening entry is supplemented with notes on “Roman road remains,” fossils, and a tumulus “crowned with a monolith, or standing stone,” along with the identification of the church as the “Church of Holy Cross.”

The manuscript additions extend well beyond Stroud. Notes appear for Ledbury, Tewkesbury, Evesham, Beverstone, Tetbury, Leighterton, Northleach, Bibury, Painswick, Selsley, Miserden, Leonard Stanley, King’s Stanley, Frampton-on-Severn, Frocester, Horsley, Minchinhampton, and other Cotswold places. They record Tudor houses, churches, castles, barns, manor houses, market houses, old graves, Saxon traces, Norman and Early English architecture, Gothic arches, Civil War associations, and cloth-trade history.

A long church and chapel section lists Stroud and surrounding parishes, identifying Anglican churches alongside Baptist, Methodist, Wesleyan, Congregational, Roman Catholic, Countess of Huntingdon’s Connexion, and Community Mission chapels. 

The added clippings and manuscript passages also preserve strong social-history content. A pasted clipping headed “Mrs. Siddons–Edmund Kean” discusses the Stroud building associated with Mrs. Siddons’s 1779 appearance, with a pasted photograph identifying the probable brewery barn where she acted. Other manuscript passages record inn-sign and tavern lore, including a Charlton inn sign painted by Miss Honora Jackson of Longcroft near Devizes, the long tenure of licensee Miss Florence White’s family, and the White Lion Inn at Malmesbury, with traditions relating to Malmesbury Abbey, a 1703 travelling menagerie, and Hannah Twynnoy.

The cloth-trade and mill-history material is also notable. Pasted clippings on Painswick and the Slad Valley mills record old mill houses, Painswick Stream, Sheepscombe stream, cloth mills, corn mills, pin factories, timber mills, dye-wood manufacture, local clothier families, and oxen used as motive power. Loose/tipped-in material found inside the volume includes an “Our Village” Series clipping on Slad and Uplands, with references to All Saints’ Church, Laurie Lee, Slad schools, local families, the “Laurels” guest house, and village institutions, as well as a later Book-of-the-Month Club leaflet for Laurie Lee’s The Edge of Day.

Taken together, this is best understood not as an ordinary copy of a Victorian Stroud book, but as a one-off manuscript-augmented local-history archive built around that book. Its value lies in the layered use of the volume: 1889 printed local history, c.1938 manuscript updating, dense marginal annotation, pasted clippings and images, and related loose ephemera documenting Stroud, Gloucestershire, the Cotswolds, churches, nonconformist chapels, inns, mills, theatre history, Laurie Lee, and interwar antiquarian collecting.

Note: This copy does not retain a separate original plate sequence and should not be understood as a complete illustrated plate copy. It has been repurposed as an annotated and scrapbook-augmented local-history volume, with manuscript notes throughout, pasted clippings and images, and related loose/tipped-in ephemera. Its value lies in this later manuscript and scrapbook use rather than in completeness as a standard illustrated copy of the 1889 publication.

Book Details:
Title: Churches and Views of Stroud and Neighbourhood, with Historical Notes
Authors: E. Hulbert and P. L. Smith
Publisher: Printed at the “News” Office, Stroud
Date: 1889
Format: Hardcover, red cloth with gilt lettering and decoration
Approximate size: 9.5 x 7 inches
Ownership: Inscribed “David & Jean Charles. 1938” on the title page
Contents: Printed text with manuscript marginalia on nearly every page, full-page handwritten notes, pasted clippings and illustrations, and related loose/tipped-in ephemera found inside the volume.

Condition:
Good antiquarian condition as a heavily annotated and repurposed working copy. Red cloth boards rubbed, marked, and soiled, with bumping and edge wear. Interior with age toning, scattered spotting, handling marks, manuscript annotations throughout, pasted clippings and images, and related loose/tipped-in ephemera. Some pages from the end section, where many blank pages have manuscript additions, appear to have been removed. This is a manuscript-augmented local-history archive built around the 1889 printed book, not as a clean complete illustrated collector’s copy.