Published in Windlesora 23 (2007)
© WLHG
My association with the files of the Windsor and Eton Express, which was founded by Charles Knight & Son in 1812, goes back to the early 1970s. At that time they were housed in the Express offices at 4 High Street. I used to go into the back room, where the volumes were stored and searched for news items concerning the Windsor garrison. It was wonderful to handle these dusty old volumes, and discover wondrous stories of local history and find titbits of ancient gossip. But I was also concerned about the state of preservation of some of the volumes, and was quite worried about handling them. Sadly some people in the past had shown very little regard for the importance of these papers as historical evidence and had cut items out that interested them.
Some twenty years later I wanted to consult the newspapers again, when I finally got around to completing my research on the Windsor garrison. They were now stored at Slough library, not only that, but they had also been microfilmed, and I was told to consult those, rather than handle the precious volumes. Fair enough, but I soon found that many of the interesting items I had carefully recorded 20 years carlier were simply not there any more. Like for instance the story on 2nd November 1828 of the young soldier’s sweetheart, Ann Kilminster aged 17, who was hauled before the magistrate on ‘suspicion of bearing a burthen which might in a few months, prove burthensome to the parish of New Windsor’. She was told to marry her soldier or leave Windsor to return to her own parish.
Eventually I persuaded the Express office to let me research from the original files, and here were all my lost stories. So what had happened? The newspaper files which had been microfilmed were from the Slough edition, which did not feature many of the Windsor stories.
Soon after, Slough library returned the volumes to the Express office, because of lack of space, but they too were pressed for space, and finally the odyssey of the newspaper files ended, for the time being, in a basement room at Windsor Guildhall. Here they were piled up on the floor and on some makeshift shelves until one day the room was flooded. Some restaurants behind the Guildhall had emptied their fat down the drains, which had become blocked!
I simply had to rescue them. When alerted the editor too was concerned and proper shelving was eventually provided. Permission was given to sort and catalogue the papers. Members of the WLHG are now helping me to work through the papers and record items of mainly local interest which eventually should make an important contribution to local research.
We have also had the first volume, 1812-1814, restored and rebound and hope to find sponsors to pay for the preservation of other volumes which are in need of much attention.
Windsor Local History Group 