List of Publications

Price

• The Society’s latest publication, available from 23rd March 2010. On sale at meetings (free to members) or from Lyefield Road Post Office or Jane Sale, price £3.50 (plus pp where applicable)

• Contents include an obituary, with photographs, to Mary Paget; together with articles on:

  • The Eagle Gates
  • White Friars
  • Charlton Kings UDC
  • 125 Squadron Air Training Corps
  • Bonds in Charlton Kings
  • History of Bafford Farm
  • More about Moses Bradshaw
  • St Mary's Churchyard Extension
  • Care of KIngs House
  • The Royal Hotel
  • Charlton Kings in World War I.

• Issued in March 2009. Price £3.50 plus pp. Includes articles on Samuel Higgs Gael and Battledown Manor, the Drinking Fountain at Holy Apostles, Proposed Railways Plans in the Charlton Kings Area, Charlton Park in the 20^th Century, Early Cheltenham Manor Court Rolls and Moses Bradshaw Clockmaker and others.

Charlton Kings Probate Records 1600-1800

2003

£12.00 + pp

• This book, in the form of a hard-back file, contains over 300 wills and inventories for Charlton Kings inhabitants, with a 12 page introduction and glossary of unusual terms. It is indexed under Personal Names, Place Names and Subjects.

Charlton Kings Tudor Wills

2004

£2.50 + pp

• This publication, intended as a Supplement to the Probate Record, contains 80 wills for the period 1542 to 1598 indexed under Personal Names and Place Names.

• A booklet describing five walks of various lengths, all starting at the lych-gate of St Mary’s church. Illustrated with maps and drawings.

• A booklet describing longer walks out into the country around Charlton Kings. Illustrated with maps and drawings.

• (92 pp, 91 maps and illustrations. ISBN 0-951945)
• The Hole in the Ground is the story of the development and eventual demise of the Battledown Brickworks at Charlton Kings. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries there were many local brickfields producing hand-made bricks from surface clay. Under the guidance of four generations of the enterprising Webb family, Battledown mechanised its production and outstripped its competitors to achieve a monopoly position in the Cheltenham area. Not all was smooth going: the First World War brought cold kilns and a flooded pit, and a slump followed. However, by the early 1920s the business recovered, its heavy bricks, and particularly its hand-made tiles, were in demand throughout the country until the 1950s when Battledown was unable to compete with the country-wide marketing of the London Brick Company's Fletton brick. The winning of the clay stopped in 1955 and the Hole in the Ground was purchased by the council as a landfill site for Cheltenham's rubbish. In 1978 a new sports field was opened but subsequent subsidence rendered it untenable and the area is now an informal green space.
• The book, which is lavishly illustrated covers not only the personalities and the history but also the geological problems which had to be overcome, the production machinery and processes, the products, and the marketing methods of Webb Brothers Ltd. of Battledown. The author is David O'Connor. who is Vice-Chairman of the Charlton Kings Local History Society and lives in Battledown.

• (215 pp, 90 illustrations)
• From 1820 onwards the growing population of Cheltenham struggled to find a water supply to replace its inadequate and polluted wells. How to achieve this became a matter of a passionate and angry debate. The factions were of many kinds: Liberals and Tories, private and municipal, gentry and tradesmen, Economists and Non-economists, plumbers and employers, landlords and tenants, Spa purists and philanthropists. External conflict spread to Charlton Kings, Tewkesbury and Gloucester and nationally through Parliamentary Bills. Fought through the Press, meetings, petitions, speeches and even poems, and not without its humorous moments, the Great Cheltenham Water Controversy lasted over 60 years, as Government legislation, a new breed of water engineers and sheer necessity began to change entrenched attitudes. The story has its technical aspects in the building of local reservoirs and water infrastructure but it also presents a vivid picture of local government and social attitudes over the period.

• Charlton Kings Parish Rate Books for 1858

2003

£4.00 + pp

• Charlton Kings Parish Rate Books for 1882

2004

£4.00 + pp

• Charlton Kings Register of Electors for 1832/3, 1842/3 and 1862

• Lives Revisited

• John Burgh Rochfort Preacher Extraordinary

• Indexes to Parish Register Transcripts for the following years:

• 1538-1634

• 1634-1700

• 1813-1834

• Index to Bulletins 48-52