THE PARSON WOODFORDE SOCIETY'S ONLINE RESEARCH RESOURCES

Our website is a mine of information for researchers. Most of its features are freely available.

In March 2024 we uploaded ALL the editions of our printed journal (more than 200) to the website where it is available for free viewing and download by both members and non-members:  https://www.parsonwoodforde.org.uk/journal

As that page explains, the set of five indexes to the run of journals is also available for free, arranged; it is arranged under names, places, subjects, authors and book reviews. The journal covers a wide range of topics of interest to those pursuing research into eighteenth-century England and includes aspects of life in cities like London, Oxford and Bath as well as in rural areas.

The full text of the diary. In August 2024 we uploaded the full text of all seventeen volumes of our society’s edition of James Woodforde’s daily diary 1759–1802 which we had begun to publish in printed form in 1978. It is available only to members via our website. See https://www.parsonwoodforde.org.uk/digitising-the-diary

These volumes are the only ones containing the complete text; all other transcriptions are of the abridged text only. Each volume is fully annotated and has an index. Family historians will find the thousands of names and places mentioned over the forty-three-year period during which Woodforde wrote his diary of great value.

The cost of becoming a member can be as little as £12.00 a year:

https://www.parsonwoodforde.org.uk/membership

Single diary volumes are also for sale in printed form from the website:

https://www.parsonwoodforde.org.uk/publications

Examples of our studies are to be found in our journals and on the website - for example in the series Woodforde’s World in a Dozen Objects.

https://www.parsonwoodforde.org.uk/features

Family historians are used to relying on the registers compiled by conscientious parish clergy for their research. A short study of the loneliness and isolation faced by the rural clergy is built around the cream jug used by Woodforde during his regular meetings with supportive neighbouring clergy in Norfolk. Despite his attacks of loneliness, at times amounting to depression, his care for his parishioners across the classes comes across clearly in his diary from his days as a young Somerset curate at Thurloxton, Ansford, Castle Cary and Babcary.

The Woodforde family’s comfortable lifestyle, and part at least of the funding of the diarist’s education at Winchester and Oxford, derived from the advantageous marriage made by his father, also a parish priest, to the eighteen-year-old minor heiress, Jane Collins. The young James enjoyed excellent relations with his loving parents and was always appreciative of the way they had supported him.

His parents’ marriage was one of equals – as was common for such partnerships as they were reinforced by manorial customary law.

‘Coverture’, the common-law tenet whereby a wife’s legal identity was subsumed into that of her husband, had no place in the manor courts and church courts; sometimes the court minutes specifically reject coverture as having any validity. An examination of the Woodforde parents’ marriage,accessed from the Features pages, accompanies a photograph of their mural tablet in Ansford Church, Somerset.

Family historians who study the exact wording of manor court records will have noticed how even married women made wills. Wives, single, separated and widowed women were all able to devise their property and represent themselves in court as they wished. It was the common law which gradually eroded their rights.

Since 1968 we have held annual ‘frolics’ - two- or three-day expeditions to various parts of the country associated with Woodforde. As a scholarly society, comprising a wide range of people including literary enthusiasts, family historians and local historians, we arrange residential field trips in order to engage with the physical settings in which the diary was written.

As well as visiting churches, museums and galleries and enjoying coach and boating trips, we have guest speakers on chosen topics.

The Suffolk Coast was our venue in 2023, with trips to Oulton Broad and Southwold from our Lowestoft base. In 2024 we stayed at the diarist’s extremely hospitable Oxford college, New College; private archival exhibitions specially arranged for us in the college and in the university's Bodleian Library were two highlights.

Our 2025 and 2026 frolics will be held in Bath and King’s Lynn, with rural Somerset planned for 2027. Year after year those attending the frolics attest to the friendly, welcoming atmosphere in which even first-time participants feel immediately at home. One first-timer sent us a card after Oxford: I enjoyed every minute.

This article was contributed by Margaret Bird, Chairman of the Parson Woodforde Society.