Digital Archive: Journal No 26

  • Foreword
  • The Butler of Bruern
  • Remembering St Michael’s
  • Dr Gordon Scott Revisited – The Wychwoods Social Centre
  • Wychwoods Local History Society Publications in Print

Introduction to The Wychwoods Local History Society Journal No 26

This edition of Wychwoods History takes a rather different form in that there are only two long articles with another shorter but related one.

In 1903 a new butler arrived at Bruern Abbey, the home of the Samuda family. Henry Gooding’s great-grandson, Mark Cathcart, records the ‘upstairs/downstairs’ life that was lived in this Edwardian household and the memories of Henry’s young daughter whose heart never left Bruern for the rest of her life.

There is a connection with our other long article when Princess Victoria of Schleswig Holstein, a grand-daughter of Queen Victoria, visited the Wychwoods in 1911 to attend a Temperance Society meeting, a fete at Bruern Abbey and a visit to the Waifs and Strays Society home at St Michael’s, all arranged by Mrs Samuda.

St Michael’s College for Young Ladies was founded in 1869 and moved in 1881 to purpose-built premises in Milton Road, Shipton. The building had a chequered career until it was demolished in 1989 and the site became Willis Court. With much information gathered over many years about the uses of the building by John Rawlins, Wendy Pearse has pulled together the history of what was for just over a hundred years a landmark building in Shipton. In the late 1940s the building nearly became The Wychwoods Social Centre. Trudy Yates has tried to unravel why the scheme did not take place.

Trudy Yates, Joan Howard-Drake and Sue Jourdan

[ Download Full Journal No 26 PDF here]

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