Blencowe Documents
Collection available on request
In a recent Blencowe newsletter, you will have read how Jill Dudbridge toured the county record offices of England in search of records relating to the "Blencowe family". In doing so she amassed a collection of photocopies of nearly 400 documents mainly dating from the 15th to the 19th centuries. The documents range from deadly boring legal ones to fascinating personal letters.
These records were principally handwritten and included legal records, property transactions, wills, inventories and a few personal letters etc. In order to make them easier to read, over a number of years I transcribed the handwriting and typed them out and even attempted to translate those written in Latin. Anyone who has a copy of The Blencowe Book will have seen extracts from and references to the transcriptions.
The photocopied documents and copies of the transcriptions were deposited several years ago in the County Record Office of Northampton. In order to make these records more widely available, I am now in the process of collating all the individual transcriptions files into seven PDF files (which can be read with the freely available Adobe reader software) each of about 80 pages in length. If anyone would like copies of these files, send an email request to me at mjw6 @ st-andrews.ac.uk
Please note that they are not in any particular order, just the order I transcribed them. Each document is titled with the name of the principal Blencowe involved, the type of document, the place and date. However, at present, there is no overall index.
Mike Walton
York, UK