AD2704-3114

Items received from Huntingdon record Office and Lloyds Bank Ltd

The artifical nature of the present collection, deriving from these various sources, meant that there was no coherent recurring theme, no 'line of descent' running through the whole series. In bulk, however, it divides mainly into three groups: (a) Land in the parish of Sandy, (b) Land in the parishes of Northill & Southill, (c) Land in the parish of Biggleswade. The Sandy deeds in addition to those in the earlier 'A.D' catalogues and those of the Pym Collection, provide a useful gloss on Thomas Batchelor's description of that parish on the eve of its Enclosure: 'This parish........ abounds with gardeners, many cultivating their little freeholds, so that on enclosure, there were found to be 63 proprietors, though nine-tenths of the whole belonged to Sir P. Monoux and Mr. Pym.' (General View of the Agriculture of the County of Bedford, London 1808, p. 240.) The first group of documents are mainly about the business transactions of this society of small proprietors and tenants in the 17th & 18th centuries. Some genealogical information can be gleaned from them, for example of the Adkins family in the 17th & early 18th centuries. The deeds which relate to the parishes of Southill & Northill are mainly concrened with the Fish - Palmer family, descendants on the female side of the earlier Fishes (See B.H.R.S. VIII, 83; V. C. H. Beds. III, 245 ), and with farms and lands mostly at Broom which passed from Charles Fish Palmer in 1787 to John Barber and his descendants. The documents pertaining to Biggleswade are late copyhold transactions of the Manor of Biggleswade. They are concerned with small properties which by 1869 had come into the hands of Charles Power.

Of the 460 documents of this catalogue, 239 (nos. 2704 - 2899; 2978; 3061-4, infra.) were received from the County Council of Huntingdonshire via the County Archivist, the Rev. J. Bagley, on December 30th, 1947. These were believed to have come from the office of the late T. F. Fowler, 70 High Street, Huntingdon. 173 formed part or the whole of a private collection, perhaps of a member of the Lindsell family. Originally they were deposited with Messrs. Wells, Gogge & Lindsell, (c.f. 3092, & 3094, infra.) bankers (of Biggleswade?). They were transferred to Bedfordshire County Record Office by Messrs. Lloyds Bank Ltd. on February 18th, 1948. (see nos. 2881; 2900; 2901 to 3060; 3112-4, infra.) On April 2nd of the same year a small private collection of 48 deeds was received from Messrs. Lloyds Bank Ltd, relating to the property of Charles Powers in Biggleswade. (see nos. 2975-7; 3065 to 3111, infra.)

sub-fonds