THS

Tewkesbury Register

Tewkesbury Historical Society

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Tewkesbury Register

Burd swoops again to save Records

Years ago, councillors Cliff Burd and Jim Bourton rescued nearly 50 bound volumes of the Tewkesbury Register from destruction by trundling them by trolley to the Town Hall. On Monday Cliff, aided by his youthful sons Paul and Nick, ably assisted by the ageing THS Committee members John Dixon, David Willavoys and Ken Flude, plucked 35 volumes out of the cells at the Town Hall for safe custody at the County Archives, Gloucester. A problem arose after the cupboard, in which the volumes had been safely stored for a generation, was converted into a toilet for the disabled - and the cells are no place to care for historical records!

The Tewkesbury Register was the last surviving weekly newspaper devoted to the Town which was published between 1858 and about 1970 when, after several mergers, it was taken over by the Gloucestershire Echo. In the halcyon days of the late 19th century, there was a second weekly, the Tewkesbury Record which was a little Liberal versus the Register's little Conservative.

The Register was a broadsheet which, with great foresight, was bound into huge annual volumes and, in the 1980s, the late Town Librarian Kathleen Ross started to index the them with the aid of a doughty team of volunteers, storing their records in the famous card shoe box (which is still safely in my custody!). Since the formation of T.H.S. in 1991 David Willavoys has taken up the baton with his group of doughty volunteers who enjoy the monthly hospitality of the Town Clerk and his staff. However, now the records are transcribed by Penny Last into the Society's Woodard Database, which can be freely consulted in the Town Library.

Kate Maisey of the County Archives has agreed to care for the newspapers, enabling us to borrow them as needed for purposes of indexing: a invaluable task which David Willavoys feels will outlast us all!

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