Advent Calendar – Day 6

Are you feeling Christmassy yet?

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‘A Garland of the Old Castleton Christmas Carols’, edited by W H Shawcross, featuring ancient carols sung by the choir at Castleton in January 1903 (Archives Reference: D4052/3/1).

According to the information in the booklet, 200 copies were made to be distributed: 50 to members of the current choir, 50 for the church to remain in the choir box, and 100  for the vicar to distribute to parishioners. This copy appears to have belonged at some point to an S. Walker, but probably belonged to someone else beforehand (unfortunately the surname written in pencil on p1 is illegible being written under ‘S Walker’). It was added to the archives at the Record Office as part of the Castleton Methodist Churches collection (D4052).

Click on a page below to read the carols

D4052/3/1 Cover

D4052/3/1 p1

D4052/3/1 pp2-3

D4052/3/1 pp4-5

D4052/3/1 pp6-7

D4052/3/1 pp8-9

D4052/3/1 pp10-11

D4052/3/1 pp12

Registering a Complaint

As someone who spends a fair amount of my time searching through parish registers, I have been known to silently (or not so silently) curse the handwriting of a long-dead vicar or parish clerk.  They should have foreseen that a few centuries later I would need to decipher their scrawl to find Great-Great-Great-etc-Grandfather Fred!  So I was rather amused to find this note in one of the Castleton registers:

(unless the Parish will provide better Parchment, it is impossible to write on it legibly   

Perhaps I shall be a tad more charitable in future, though it’s a poor workman who blames his tools…

The Female of the Derbyshire Species: A History of Women in Derbyshire

New online exhibition available on our website featuring original archives relating to Derbyshire’s women, and heroines, including Florence Nightingale and Joan Waste. Let us know what you think http://bit.ly/oz15DW