STARTING OUT

STARTING OFF YOUR DLYW RESEARCH- A CHECKLIST

Here are some things to do to kick of your research if you are just starting.

  1. Form your group. (separate document for this)  Don’t stick to just members of your organisation.
  2. Decide which area(s) you will research.  You may not now have time to do your whole county.  You and your group members may have particular interests in specific areas.  This is fine.
  3. Get hold of a copy, or copies of “Restoring the Record”
  4. Start to think about how you will record what you find and store the documents that you have copied.  The British Horse Society and the Ramblers may have resources you can use for this. I recommend the BHS project 2026 interactive map and record because it enables you to map your routes and store some information. It shows routes that are already being investigated or claimed. They may have a PCloud store for your area to store larger amounts of information in.
  5. Get acquainted with your county archive.  Sign up to get a reader’s card. Find out how to order documents.  Make a visit.  Order some documents.  At this stage be happy if you manage to find your way round the archive.  It is a bonus if you actually manage to copy anything useful.
  6. Get acquainted with the catalogue of your county archive. Ask staff to explain it to you if you find it difficult to understand.  You will need it for a number of things below. If you can’t find specific things ask staff for ideas.
  7. Search the catalogue for something like “catalogue of quarter sessions highways”.  These were catalogues made at the time the definitive maps were created.  Someone went through the whole of the quarter sessions records picking out the ones that included diversions or stopping up of roads, paths and bridleways.  Without this catalogue it is very hard to work with quarter sessions records, but see below.
  8. Search the catalogue for “Definitive map” and “rights of way” to see if there are any records about the definitive map process in your county.  Records range from nothing, to almost everything that ever existed.  These can be very important to see what documents have been looked at previously, why certain routes were rejected.  Alternatively, as your rights of way team if they have the material and will copy it to you. You could make a freedom of information request for it.
  9. Search the catalogue for “1932 rights of way Act”.  This Act was a predecessor to the Definitive maps.
  10. Search the catalogue to see whether there is any material about the handover of rural roads from District Councils to the County Council.  These were often called something like “schedule or roads” or “map of roads” and will be dated in the 1930s.  This will tell you what was considered a minor road at the time.
  11. Find inclosures in your area at http://enclosuremaps.data-archive.ac.uk/first.html  Work out which ones are relevant to your area and then look them up in your county archive catalogue.
  12. Search the catalogue for a map of parishes in the county.  Parish boundaries often changed, so it is useful to have maps of parishes at different periods.
  13. Railway and canal plans can often be found in a series called QDP at the county records office.  Depending on the indexing method you may be able to search for railway AND (name of parish) to find plans for railway lines through the parishes you are interested in.  Remember that there were far more railways built than ever got built and they all deposited plans showing footpaths etc.
  14. Ask the rights of way team which old maps they consult when looking at historic claims.  Find these in the county archive catalogue.  You might also find them online.  If the team is unhelpful ask county archive staff to tell you what detailed old maps of the county they hold and copy them.  The maps at https://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/ , https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=8&lat=53.76150&lon=-1.70740&layers=171&b=1  and https://www.old-maps.co.uk/#/ are extremely useful as well.
  15. The easiest way to obtain tithe maps may be to take out a subscription to the Genealogist which has pretty much every tithe map in England and Wales and also the apportionments.  You can take out a short subscription and download what you need .  You need a Diamond subscription.  As I write the cheapest one of these is a year at £140, but if you create an account and sign up to be sent offers you are likely to find a cheaper offer sent to you later.
  16.  Also consider taking out a subscription to the British Newspaper Archive.  This has copies of the pages of the majority of local newspapers back to the 18th century in some cases. Rights of Way diversions at the quarter sessions and inclosures had to be advertised and there were often detailed reports on parish and district council meetings The search facility depends on optical character recognition so does miss a lot.  But searches on “right of way dispute”, “stop up and turn” (a phrase used in highway diversions) bridleway, “bridle road”, inclosure, can be very useful. “Footpath” will bring up a huge number of results so you need to break it down by searching also on the parish or similar.  As I write this a month’s subscription costs £13 and a year costs £80.
  17. Try to work out how you are going to get material from the national archive.  If you are some way away from Kew this will be an issue. You should be prepared to pay someone.  The main things that you need from Kew are the Inland Revenue maps and the Inland revenue field books.  If you are researching footpaths or bridleways you are going to need both.  You will need to get the maps and then work out which field book entry you need- so two visits at least.  Do you know anyone studying in London who might need a bit of spare money? Somebody’s child or grandchild perhaps?

This all may sound a lot, but you may be able to split the work between the group.

The next job, of course it to look at all these documents and make copies of them.

You may already have a list of routes you want to investigate, but as you go through these documents be open-minded.  You may find that your chosen route has little or no evidence, but that the documents reveal other lost rights of way.

Chris Smith 15/7/21