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Volume 72 of the Oxfordshire Record Society series is the diary of Madge Martin (born 1899), the happily-married wife of the Vicar of St Michael at the North Gate in Oxford.

Madge led a pre-war life full of travel, books, films, the theatre, walks, and other leisure activities. With the onset of war – she had been a keen supporter of appeasement – these activities did not end, but they were significantly reduced. Madge found that she had to work harder than ever before – at housework (by 1943 she had lost both her maids), as a volunteer with the Red Cross preparing bandages, and as a provider of housing for her two sisters’ families, who self-evacuated at different times to Madge’s home in Oxford to escape London’s air raids.

This is a well-written private diary that discloses a lot about Madge Martin’s thoughts and feelings and social relations. It also records some tribulations, such as her enduring serious and frequent headaches, and her ambivalence concerning her role as a parson’s wife. In many diary entries, she also details public life in wartime Oxford, which, though never seriously bombed, had still to contend with strain and hardship. While Madge and her husband, Robert, both favoured "placid" lives for themselves, the war forced them to live frequently on the edge of crises, and with a new-found intensity.

This is an absorbing diary that takes the reader into the life of a comfortably-off woman during a time of national crisis. Her wartime perspective is different from those of other women whose diaries and memoirs have so far been published, for it shows how a fairly conventional, unpolitical woman, with a great love for films and the theatre and holidays, strove to preserve the fundamentals of her pre-war life while "doing her bit" for the war effort.

This volume was published on 20 September 2018, and was circulated to the society's ordinary members and institutional subscribers immediately thereafter. Non-members wishing to order a copy (or members wishing to order a second copy) can go to the website of ORS’s new publisher, Boydell & Brewer, at https://boydellandbrewer.com/9780902509740/a-vicars-wife-in-oxford-1938-1943/.

Descriptive catalogue of inscriptions in Oxford, from the twelfth to the sixteenth century.

Inscriptions made in the mediaeval city and university of Oxford have come down to us in many forms and types of material - stone, glass, wood, metal, paint, ceramics - even textiles. There are a variety of handwriting styles, and inscriptions were written in Latin, French, or English. Some can be seen in their original context, such as the church or chapel as the donor intended; others have been moved to new locations, often in order to protect and conserve them; others survive only in the notes and drawings of long-deceased antiquaries. Now, for the first time, the richness and variety of mediaeval Oxford's epigraphy are revealed in this comprehensive catalogue of inscriptions from the twelfth century to the mid-sixteenth. Each entry includes the type of artefact, the dimensions where known, the materials and type of lettering, a description, the text of the inscription (with a translation of non-English text), a commentary and references to previous notices. There is a full scholarly introduction, a selection of illustrations, and a series of indices to facilitate use of the catalogue.

This is the first part of a two-volume work, the second of which covers the epigraphy of the mediaeval county of Oxfordshire.

The late Jerome Bertram was the leading authority of his generation on monumental brasses, indents and incised slabs; he was especially interested in epigraphy and had an impressive publication record on the topic. He died in 2019.

Keywords: Medieval History

Volume 71 of the Oxfordshire Record Society series is devoted to a transcription of the administrative records of Holton Park Girls' Grammar School, the institution at which Theresa May was educated. Edited by Marilyn Yurdan, an old girl of the school, the records cover a period of radical change in UK secondary education.

Oxfordshire Record Society is pleased to acknowledge the financial support received from the Greening Lamborn Trust in the publication of Volume 71. The objective of the Greening Lamborn Trust is to promote public interest in the history, architecture, old photographs and heritage of Oxford and its neighbourhood by supporting publications and other media that creates access to them.

Bishop Gore's Visitations of Oxfordshire, 1914 and 1918

Edited by Mark Smith

Surveys of aspects of clerical life - services, social activities, size of the congregation - shed new light on the church at the time.

In the early twentieth century the Church of England remained a significant institution in the lives of the people of Oxfordshire. It was for many a key provider of education and social activities as well as being a focus for religious worship and community life. The two surveys in this volume show a range of aspects of the Church at work in the last unclouded summer before the Great War of 1914-18, and also detail the responses of both clergy and people to four years of conflict. The returns to the bishop by clergymen in each parish reveal the opportunities as well as the struggles that the war brought to many households and the ways in which the conflict proved to be a catalyst for social and religious change. The reports are presented here in full with biographical notes on the clergy and an extensive introduction.

MARK SMITH is Associate Professor in History at the University of Oxford.

Volume 69 of the Oxfordshire Record Society series is devoted to a transcription of the first three journals of a Charlbury Quaker, William Jones. He compiled ten journals in total from 1784 when age 22 until his death in 1838. The first three, transcribed here in full, cover the period of his life until 1818. He describes his entries as ‘Benefical to my Minde... as it caused me to Recolect how I had passed the Day and wether I had done anything that was rong’.

The editor, Hannah Jones is a graduate of University of Wales Lampeter and postgraduate of Aberystwyth University. She has worked at Oxfordshire History Centre since 2000, and qualified as an archivist in 2007.

A presentation of Oxfordshire in a way never previously available. Some 70 texts, accompanied by more than 120 specially drawn maps, capture current knowledge (up top 2011) of the archaeology, landscape, buildings and history of the county. Place-names, politics, landholding, agriculture, population, wealth, poverty, trade, communications, religion and education are amongst the themes considered. A fascinating read.

Sacramental records known to survive from the Oxford Catholic Mission, 1700-1875.

This volume presents the contents of the sacramental records known to survive from the Oxford Catholic Mission, 1700-1875. These original registers are held in five volumes in the Archives of the Oxford Oratory. The Oratory's Oxfordshire archive consists of registers from Waterperry House, the chapel of St Clement's, Oxford, and the church of St Aloysius Gonzaga, Oxford. [1] The registers feature much common form and use of Latin and the contents are made accessible here in transcribed, translated and tabulated form.

The records opened up by this volume will be of use and interest to historians of religion, locality and family alike. They throw light on an era of 'country house' Catholicism, when the practice of the faith was largely linked to the presence of local landowners, they illuminate the theory and practice of legal exclusion, the gradual movement to a more public faith, and the emergence of a confident and outward-looking Roman Catholic role. The names and identities recorded in the registers help identify the nature of congregations and how they changed and varied over time.

[1] A further brief register, from the Catholic chapel of St Mary the Virgin, Bampton, 1856¬60 found its archival home in the collection but is not historically linked to the Oxford Mission. It is included here for completeness. See also Appendix B.

Catalogue of the mediaeval inscriptions encountered in a range of media, and illuminating the social, religious, and economic history of communities in the past.

Mediaeval inscriptions were made by donors to commemorate people, and they enable modern reader to find out about the lives of individuals and communities in the past in detail that would not otherwise be possible: their family origins, education, professional achievements, political connections and service. The subsequent history of inscriptions - survival, loss, or relocation - is sometimes evidence of the resilience of local communities but it may reveal the turbulent history of the buildings for which the inscriptions were intended.

A study of growth and controversy in Victorian Methodism, through the records of the Local Preachers of the Oxford Wesleyan Circuit.

Wesleyan Methodism was the largest Free Church denomination in Victorian Oxfordshire, with a presence in many towns and villages as well as in the city of Oxford and its growing suburbs. Crucial to the nurture and expansion of Methodism were the Local Preachers, lay volunteers who conducted most of the Sunday services in Methodist chapels. The quarterly Preachers' Meetings supervised the recruitment, training, deployment and discipline of these volunteers, and their minutes track the development of the denomination and the fortunes of individual preachers and preaching places across three-quarters of a century. The minutes of the Oxford Wesleyan Circuit Local Preachers' meetings from 1830 to 1902 are presented here in full, with annotations and biographical notes on the preachers. The introduction to the volume sets the scene by discussing the history of Methodism and the place of preaching in the Wesleyan movement.

Martin Wellings is Superintendent of the Barnet and Queensbury Circuit of the Methodist Church and former Minister of Wesley Memorial Church, Oxford.

Although the Compton Census of 1676 suggested that Protestant dissenters made up only a small minority of England's population, most Restoration bishops were deeply concerned concerned about the problem of dissent. The documents in this volume relate to the attempts by John Fell, bishop of Oxford, to assess the extent of the problem in his diocese and to combat it.

This volume calendars the first court book in a series which begins only in the late 16th century, but then continues to the mid 19th century; it also incorporates additional material from two books of fair copies covering those same years, 1588-95.

Despite the narrowness of its scope; covering only seven years of court proceedings in a small market town, which in the late 16th century was only some 60 acres in extent with probably fewer than 600 inhabitants, this is an important volume because it owes much to the concerted efforts of a well-run local history group aiming at the highest standards and seeking out scholarly advice when necessary.

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This substantial addition to published town records for Oxfordshire makes available, as a calendar in modern English. the proceedings of a court which sat once every three or four weeks to hear various civil pleas and discharge certain administrative functions. The book is an excellent addition to a fine series.

Kate Tiller's clear edition of the Census draws out and refines the general picture for Oxfordshire following the national results of the Religious Census of 1851, and the introduction to the text provides a good stimulus to future studies.

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Edited by Fred Sonic Smith

This work combines the extant Oxfordshire Protestation Returns and Tax Assessments, with those which have survived for the areas of north-western Berkshire absorbed into Oxfordshire in 1974.  Edited by Jeremy Gibson the volume incorporates a much expanded version of the Oxfordshire Family History Society’s index of personal names of those taking the Oath. A very worthwhile investment for anyone interested in the recusant history of Oxfordshire and Berkshire, and highly recommended.

This volume in the Oxfordshire Record Society series explores the history of the development and subsequent decline of friendly socie-ties in the pre-1974 county of Oxfordshire. No previous publication has recorded the extent of infor-mation contained within Oxfordshire Friendly Societies, 1750-1918. The vital details and historical notes of 755 societies and branches in the calendar is supported by a number of comprehensive appendices, including 188 cases of the interface of friendly societies with crimes and courts, and the listing of 266 brass and other bands that played at annual club days.

This volume is an essential reference to those interested in parish history, the development of friendly societies, and social history in general. The author delves into numerous interesting and humorous stories concerning these mutual organiza-tions, widely available to the working man, and occasionally woman.

Almost every village in the county had its own friendly society during the nineteenth-century, a remarkable development.

Shaun Morley is an MSc. Graduate in English Local History, a current D.Phil student and part-time tutor at the University of Oxford, Department for Continuing Education. He is secretary of the Oxfordshire Record Society and was a contributor to volume 67, An Historical Atlas of Oxfordshire.

This exceedingly interesting volume has a wider scope than its title may suggest, and it enables us to see how interlocking jurisdictions functioned in a particular locality at the end of the 14th century. The years in question, 1387-98, belong to a critical period in English politics, and the administration of justice, whether at the centre or locally, was a controversial issue at the lime. This publication skilfully relates local events to national history, the well-chosen sources are finely presented to the reader in a format that is a pleasure to use.

This volume contains the diaries of three rectors over a period of more than a century, between 1774 and 1892.  This volume repays study at several levels and has clearly been illuminated as well as motivated by the editor’s insight as a more recent rector of Brightwell.

This volume consists of the ‘small beer’ of a diocesan's in-tray (three hundred and fourteen pages of correspondence over twelve years) during Secker's time in Oxford, a period he later described as one in which he had ‘not much work on (his) hands’. The volume aims to preserve as much as possible of the original character of the papers reflecting correspondence with non-resident and incumbent clergy, churchwardens, curates and long running debate with Oxford Colleges and their fellows.

We could do with a description here

Historians of the Civil War, and especially those interested in the Royalist Army, will be particularly grateful to Miss Toynbee for the skill and erudition she has lavished on this apparently slight collection of documents which under her editorial cafe becomes a source of real importance. These papers provide an illuminating introductory essay on the office and activities of a Royalist Waggon-Master and an Oxford Commissary General. Together with the notes on other lesser known individuals this is a model of careful scholarship and an important contribution to the history of the Oxford garrison and of the Civil war in the south and west during 1643-4.

This most interesting volume gives a vivid account of the development of rural education in Oxfordshire, based on visitation returns and Parliamentary reports, as well as a full transcript of Whitchurch school log book, and extracts from the school accounts for the years 1829, 1838, 1853, 1868 and 1873. It is possible to become involved in the day to day running of this school, to recognize the problem families, sympathise with the conditions under which untrained and inexperienced teachers tried to work, appreciate the looming importance of the yearly examinations for both staff and pupils, and be moved by the ever present threat of sickness and death. The four head-teachers who kept this log succeed in conveying all this to the modern reader. This is a most valuable book for all those who are interested in nineteenth-century elementary education.