INTRODUCTION

In this booklet are presented the researches of a local history class which met at fortnightly intervals between October 1965 and March 1966.

This course was the successor to a short series of talks on the general history of Wrington and area and in it members studied for themselves original documents relating to the village. Twenty-nine members attended the course, and everyone has made a contribution to these studies.

Wrington is a village unusually rich in records: its own parish records, those in the Bristol and the Somerset Records Offices and others in private hands. Some have been printed by the Somerset Records Society. Many of these have never been studied before or, in the case of those in print, have never been examined from the point of view of the village itself. The only brief, local histories of Wrington are :

(i) An article by Preb. Scarth in Proceedings of the Somerset Archaeological
and Natural History Society vol. 33 (1887) Pt. 2.

(ii) The Wrington Handbook 1861 issued by Wrington Literary Society and
now very scarce.

These, together with the usual county histories and also G. G. Coulton's The Medieval Village (which makes special reference to Wrington), provide the general background against which the individual studies of the local history group should be set.

These studies, as can be seen from the "Contents", cover a wide range of date and subject matter. Documents were studied sometimes by individuals, some-times by groups. Individual members worked on the shorter topics, while bigger projects were undertaken by several members together. About half the group, on their own initiative, started the major project of walking the manor boundary.

The documents themselves ranged from 19th century print to medieval Latin - and medieval hand writings. We are most grateful to the Bristol and Somerset Records Offices, who made these early manuscripts available to us in Xerox copy form. This did mean that, in many cases, members had first to master both a strange language and very strange hand writings. With all except the 19th century printed documents a full transcript of the record was first made. These papers therefore, like the top of the iceberg, represent only a part of a much bigger undertaking by this local history group and an achievement which has thrown new light on a variety of facets of the village's history.

The Tutor would particularly like to thank Colonel J. M. Lee for organising the meetings, Preb. B. Leigh, Mr. P. F. Bennett and all others who have lent us original records and given help in many other ways and the Extra-Mural Department of the University of Bristol for producing this booklet.

FRANCES NEALE

                                                                                                                          Page