The staff at the Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre in Chippenham, England have posted Wiltshire Treasures, a terrific new website which incorporates the catalogs from eight local museums as well as art and photographic collections owned by Wiltshire County Council. There are currently over 170,000 records on the Free searchable site. In most cases the entry found after doing a search will be a catalogue reference. These references are descriptive, so you can get a pretty good idea of the artifact. However, in some cases you will find photographs of the item.
I did a search on the surname “Wallop,” and got 17 hits, including an entry and photograph of a needlework sampler made
by Hannah Wallop, a school girl in Castle Combe, Wiltshire in 1851.
Wiltshire Wills & Probates – Indexes & Digital Documents
The Wiltshire and Swindon Archives, also based at the history centre on Cocklebury Road, has also launched its new pay-per-view format for accessing digital images of what will be over 100,000 Wiltshire wills and probate records, ranging from the time of Henry VIII to 1858. About 25% of the documents have been posted thus far. Free access is available to the index, which actually gives quite a lot of information all by itself. If the researcher finds an image of interest, and the document has been scanned and posted, it will cost £5 for each individual will downloaded (Starting January 26 – free until then!).
I proceeded to do a search for the surname “Wells,” getting 125 hits. Following is a screen shot of a few of the search results. Note the little picture of a camera found in the far right of the image. This indicates that an image of the will is available. Cool.
Read more about the ceremonial county of Wiltshire, England at Wikipedia.org.
Read more about Swindon, Wiltshire County, England at Wikipedia.org.