Buckinghamshire Archives

A black and white photo of a boy in a bathtub with an improvised sail. He is rowing using an oar. He is looking off to the left of the image and is moving across the water on a pond. This photo is probably from the 1950s.

"Buckinghamshire is such a boring landlocked county! It doesn't even have any naval history!"

Yeah well I bet you feel real stupid right now

A black and white photo of a woman sat on a wooden chair and a man leaning against a doorframe, both looking at the photographer. The woman on the chair is Cleo Laine, singer and actress. The man is her husband, John Dankworth, composer.

For #MKMonday, here's a brilliant photo of legendary musicians Cleo Laine and John Dankworth at The Stables, 1981. The venue was founded by them back in 1970 and is still running today.

'LOST VICTORIAN VOICES' in black text, surrounded by a repeating pattern of the symbol of Buckinghamshire in red, a swan a halved shield.

Six panels from the graphic novel, cropped. They depict a man describing the sentence of a sixteen year old, illustrating his transportation to Tasmania.

As #LGBTHistoryMonth draws to a close, we thought we'd share the stunning graphic novel that was created as part of our Lost Victorian Voices project last year by the artist Paul Sammut.

To read it, head to lostvictorianvoices.org.uk/graphic-novel

A tiny floral circle of lace, zoomed in. It shows the complex arrangement of the fibres. They're yellow, on white paper, but originally would have been a bright white.

It's rare that we have something that's not a document in our collection but we'll make an exception for something as wonderful as this!

This is a tiny piece of lace that was made by refugee Belgian lacemakers living in Buckinghamshire during the First World War. It's about an inch in diameter!

A black and white photograph of a male golfer, standing in a bunker. He has hit the ball, launching it and a great plume of sand up in the air. The ball is hurtling towards his chin.

It's #MKMonday, so here's a photo of a golfer trying to escape a bunker at Windmill Hill Golf Course, 1981! Maybe it's just the perspective, but it does look like he's launched the ball right at his own chin.

Our enquiries desk will still be available by emailing us at archives@buckinghamshire.gov.uk, so contact them for all of your archive needs*

*as long as your needs are to do with the historic county of Buckinghamshire, Milton Keynes, or our disability sports heritage

The homunculus that runs this account will be on leave for the next two weeks, starting from this evening. This mean this account will be unmonitored, so any messages, puns, or witticisms won't be responded to until they return.

Fear not: we have lots of posts scheduled for you in their absence.

We do have a lot of chair making history here! We'll no doubt share some more of it soon. Thank you for following us!

For more information about the project, head to our website below!

www.lostvictorianvoices.org.uk/theatre

This project was only possible thanks to the support of The National Lottery Heritage Fund

The 'Lost Victorian Voices' logo, the text surrounded by a rainbow border.

For #LGBTHistoryMonth we thought we'd share another great part of our Lost Victorian Voices project. Our friends at @unboundtheatre.bsky.social produced this rehearsed reading exploring some of the stories we uncovered in our research.

You can watch the performance below.

youtu.be/8qrSoUKOK6w?...

It seems this one is a different one! Harry Higgott rather than Herbert Henry.

A photo of the spine of a book, green with golden text. It is 'Making Love to Mother Earth' by H.H. Thomas.

Just a regular book in our local studies collection

Massive congratulations to one of our local museums! Wycombe Museum is a real seat of power for our local industrial heritage and we can't wait to visit.

The beer probably helps!

We'll take it!

An image of the Victorian court in Aylesbury, tinted green. Text is overlaid saying the following. 'Victorian Crime & Punishment A free talk on the 19th century criminal justice system 10:30am, Saturday 7th March, Buckinghamshire Archives'.

Are you curious about crime? We're running a free talk on the Victorian criminal justice system in a couple of weeks.

Interested? Book your free space by emailing us at archives@buckinghamshire.gov.uk

🕗10:30am
🗓 Saturday, 7th March
🔍 Buckinghamshire Archives

Is this relevant to the history of Buckinghamshire? No.

But is it funny? Also no.

Hustle culture? Sorry, we thought you said Hussite. Get in the war wagon.

We shook it too hard and they all tumbled down to the bottom of the screen.

This is what actually inspired the original post! A really fantastic talk on the intersection of hobbies and heritage.

That's where we were going wrong, thank you!

Our conservator loves it when we keep documents at humidity!

We're just a small group of tired Remembrancers toiling in 026.M3.

An image of a broken therma-hygrometer on a wooden tabletop. It has a screen only showing partial letters, making a bizarre set of symbols. The colourful dial at the top is plain.

Good news everyone! This therma-hygrometer is now telling us we're keeping our documents at a fantastic _._ '¬ degrees.

Okay the more we think about this the more tempted we are for the following reasons:

1) no one will stop us

We've actually got some more information about him on the back of the photo! That's Mr Burford, 'a [mixed race] man who used to sing and play the bones for beer in the pubs'. Given the look on his face, he must have sung quite a few songs.

Our role as an archive is to consistently ruin childhood fantasies with the precise application of cold hard historic fact.

A black and white photo of eight men sat down on a grass verge in the 1920s. There is a wooden fence behind them. Most of them are looking at the camera. Several are smoking with pipes and they all are wearing hats. One man, in the bottom right, is staring off into the distance with half a pint still held in his hand. Their clothing is fairly typical for agricultural labourers, with hard wearing jackets, boots, and trousers. Many of the men are smiling enthusiastically. The caption of the photo goes into detail about one of the men. In the bottom right is ''Tanny' Burford, a [mixed race] man who played the bones and sang for beer in the pubs'.

We've found this great photo of some of the locals of Hedgerley in the 1920s. This should come as no surprise given their facial expressions, but this photo was taken right outside of the Brickmould pub, where the eight men seem to have been enjoying themselves.

While we're not dexperts (duck experts) we believe a key way of knowing an Aylesbury from a Pekin duck is the colour of the beak. Rather than yellow, an Aylesbury duck's beak should be a soft pink colour, traditionally described as 'the colour of a lady's finger', so you be the judge!

We're glad you enjoyed it!