Category: Zone For Other Stuff

From The Wiltshire Times, Saturday 7th February 1885:

Trowbridge. Red Hat Lane.
The Local Board decided, after some light-hearted discussion, to change the name of Back Lane to Red Hat Lane, not Red Hat Court as at first suggested. They also decided to provide more light there to discourage nuisances.

Warminster Herald, Saturday 16 August 1879:

“NORTH WILTS FOUNDRY. – Much excitement has been created in this town [Devizes] by the announcement that, in consequence of the continued depression in trade, Messrs. Brown and May, the eminent engineers, have determined to put their employees on short time. The foundry may also be said to keep Devizes going, there being over 200 operatives employed at the works, the sum of money paid every week in wages being very large. The reduction contemplated is 2 and a half hours every day, and commenced on Friday. It is also rumoured that several hands will be discharged. Messrs. Brown and May have, until now kept their works at full time.”

From The Farm, Garden, Stable And Aviary, edited by I.E.B.C., published by Horace Cox, Strand, W.C., 1869:

Stilton Cheese, Making Of

Take 4 quarts of cream, 30 quarts of new milk, mix them together warm as it comes from the cow, with 2 tablespoonsful of rennet, set it to cum three hours, well covered up; when cummed have ready two sieves with strainers covered over them; take the curd gently out into the sieves, and keep moving the strainer till the whey comes from it; then put half the curd into the cheese vat, with a handful of salt, then the other half upon it; put it into the press with a small weight upon it; turn it the same night. It must be turned twice a day in fine cloths for three days, then whitewash it over with fine whiting, new made.

From the Warminster Miscellany, Saturday 1st June 1861

An Excise return just issued shows how the number of paper mills at work in the United Kingdom has been gradually decreasing for years.

In 1838 it was 525; in 1860 only 384.

The decrease in England in that period was from 416 to 306; in Ireland, from 60 to 26.

But the quantity of paper manufactured rose from 93,466,286 lb. at the former date (1838) to 223,575,285 lb. in 1860.

From The Warminster Miscellany, 1 June 1861:

Already the civil war in America has had the effect of raising the price of tobacco from a penny to twopence per pound in the wholesale market. The dealers who have large stocks are anticipating considerable gain by their foresight. We hear of a Bristol firm, famous for its manufacture, whose stock is valued at £30,000.

From The Wiltshire Times, Saturday 16th June 1860:

North Bradley Sparrow Club.
The annual meeting of members of this society lately took place at the New Ring Of Bells Inn, when the honorary secretary returned the number of heads delivered in during the past year to be 5,989 by 14 members.

The American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson, in 1850, wrote:

All things are engaged in writing their history . . . Not a foot steps into the snow, or along the ground, but prints in characters more or less lasting, a map of its march. The ground is all memoranda and signatures, and every object covered over with hints. In nature, this self-registration is incessant, and the narrative is the print of the seal.

Ancienne Race de Wiltshire (The Old Wiltshire Breed) From the French edition of the pioneering work ‘The Breeds of the Domestic Animals of the British Islands’ by David Low. Published in Paris. William Sheils was commissioned by David Low, the second Professor of Agriculture at the University of Edinburgh, to create an accurate pictorial record of domestic breeds of animals. From 1829 onwards, in what became a
lifetime’s work, William Sheils painted 100 of these portraits, depicting many breeds of animals which are now obsolete.

From The Salisbury & Winchester Journal, 26th November 1781:

On Thursday a cart being observed to pass through this city (Salisbury) which was suspected to contain smuggled goods, some officers of excise with a soldier, immediately pursued the same, (three in a chaise, and one on horseback) and came up with it near Abbot’s Ann, about three miles from Andover, a little past 5 o’clock. There were two men on horseback, and a boy, belonging to the cart; one of the men being some distance behind, was seized first, and put into the chaise. On coming up with the other, the officer on horseback demanded a surrender of the goods, on which a scuffle ensued. The smuggler, with a large whip, striking at the officer with great violence, he called out to those in the chaise for assistance, when one, who was riding on the shaft, took a gun out of the chaise, and jumped down, and in the fray, while he held it by his side, it went off, and shot the smuggler in the head, so that he fell wounded on the horse’s back. He was immediately put into the chaise, and carried to the White Hart and Star inn, at Andover, where a surgeon attended him, but he died about 11 o’clock the same night. The next day the Coroner’s inquest sat on the body, and brought in their verdict of Manslaughter. We hear that his name is Friday, and that he lived at Longham. The seizure made on this above occasion consisted of 240lb. of tea, a cart, and four horses.

John Aubrey, in his Natural History Of Wiltshire, written between 1656 and 1691, noted:

“King Charles II when he lay at Salisbury, in his progresse, complained that he found there neither good bread nor good beer. But for the latter, ’twas the fault of the brewer not to boil it well; for the water and the mault there are as good as any in England.”