Library

 library

 

Our Library

The Museum has a library of approximately 1500 books, pamphlets and periodicals which are available for reference use by staff, Museum friends and visitors doing research on the Vale of White Horse. The library includes more than 100 maps in various scales and of various dates from 1795 to the present day. Ordnance survey 1:25,000 maps (mostly of 1950s editions) are held for the whole of the Vale of White horse and parts of adjoining districts and larger scale maps (1;10,000 and 1: 2,500) for Wantage and certain areas. The most valuable part of the library’s holdings is a collection of photocopies and transcripts of Wantage documents bequeathed to the Museum by the late Lis Garnish. These include Wantage wills from 1500 to 1699 (with comprehensive card index), leases, churchwardens’ accounts, governors’ minutes, removal orders, etc. A gift from Alan Rosevear of photocopies of Wantage wills from 1700 to 1857 and other documents complements the Garnish collection.

Local History Articles

Here is a major library of more than 80 locally written articles – including some from the now discontinued journal ‘Blowing Stone’ (see the Friends Page). You can download the articles by clicking on the title you want.

The articles were converted from printed to electronic form by John Price, one of our local history researchers, with help from Howard Fuller, our photo-archivist. Webmaster Howard Hill then converted them to pdf format and uploaded them to the website. All gave of their time freely – an excellent example of how volunteers make a major contribution to the Vale & Downland Museum.

If you have any questions about any of our articles, then please contact our curatorial team at the museum either by phone (01235 771447) or by email: [email protected]

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