The Slade archive covers the period between 1839 and 1846.  It consists of thirty letters written, with one exception, by members of the Slade family.  All letters have the same addressee: Henry Slade, junior.  He had emigrated to Australia during 1839, landing at the Swan River settlement.  After looking for his fortune in Australia, he decided to move to India, working in Calcutta.  No letters from Henry Slade have survived.

The bulk of the correspondence comes from his mother, Charlotte Slade (née Lousley), 1789-1847.  She accounts for the majority of the letters.  The remainder comes from his brothers and sisters as well as one letter written by his future brother-in-law.

The Slades lived in Aston Upthorpe (at the time called Thorpe, sometimes even Thrup), then in Berkshire, and, at that time, existing as a chapelry of Blewbury.  According to an account of the villages, published by Louise Fuller, read in 1921, the village had seen many generations of Slades, going back to 1521, when they had bought Thorpe Farm.  They formed the principal landed gentry in the village, their wealth derived from farming the land around.  Across the road lay another village, Aston Tirrold (at the time called simply Aston), neighbours but in a completely different administrative sector.  Here lived the Fullers, the counterbalance to the Slades.  The Fullers stood out as the premier family in Aston Tirrold.  They too made their money from farming the land having come to the village from Blewbury after the Civil War.   The Fullers were dissenters.  The Slades hedged their bets.

Some sixty years before the letters begin, fertility had driven the Slades to become tenant farmers.  The production of more than twenty children put strains on the family exchequer with the result that they sold the land, while continuing to farm it.  The principals in the story as it unfolds from the archive all derive directly from that exceptional generation.  Many of the relatives appearing in the letters will belong to this generation.

Aston Upthorpe consisted of just over twelve hundred acres, while Aston Tirrold slightly more, quoted as sixteen hundred by Kelly’s Directory for 1847.  The Slades farmed about a thousand, mostly in Upthorpe.  In contrast, the Fullers farmed about twelve hundred acres, mostly in Tirrold.  Aston Upthorpe at this time consisted of thirty-four households and one hundred and fifty nine people.  Aston Tirrold contained seventy-nine households and three hundred and forty one people.  The bulk of the inhabitants made their living as agricultural fieldworkers, but the economy of the villages extended to some retail, a building business, two pubs, a smithy, as well as professional people.  In reality, the economy and society of the villages rotated around the two principal employers, the Slades and the Fullers.

According to the Minutes of the Guardians of Wallingford Union, at this time a poor rate of around £15 was levied on Aston Upthorpe and £30 for Aston Tirrold.  These rates fluctuated up and down through this period.  Of the twenty-eight parishes in this Union, the rates for these two villages run towards the lower end of the scale.

The letters contain many details of life in Aston Upthorpe and Tirrold at this time.  Much of the focus falls on the family, both inside and outside the village.  Aside from this, however, we learn a great deal about the daily life as it ebbed and flowed around Thorpe Farm.  Primarily the letters deal with those belonging to the same social grade as the Slades, if not above (their landlords, the Valpy family of Wargrave, feature constantly).  Occasionally, though, we find references to others that lived and worked in the villages.

We follow the human cycle of courtship, marriage, births (sometimes the other way round), and death.  Endless tea parties held in the freshly mown meadows occupy the leisure hours of the local gentry and their friends.  We hear about bankruptcy, thievery and rowdy behaviour, black sheep, and business.  Just occasionally, we learn about care for the poor, but also about dismal suicides.  We learn about how people got jobs, whether they wanted employment as a shepherd and came to negotiate their wage, or whether they wanted to sell their medical practice and buy another in a better area.  Meanwhile, we watch the teenagers grow into adults, much of their leisure time spent on the hills coursing, hunting, and shooting, playing cricket in the evenings, riding and falling off their horses, or just scaring the maids half to death so that the doctor needs to visit.  Although the facts recorded must have happened, we could be forgiven for believing that we had fallen into a mixture of Trollope, Dickens, Austin and the Brontes.

Around that human framework we hear about the technological wonder of the age - the railway -, the vicissitudes of harvests, life in and to Australia, the dangerous climate in Calcutta, as well as other aspects of the early Victorian age.  The villages nestle away from the main roads and the letters contain little reference to the great events of the day.  We learn of the Queen’s marriage and confinement, the Chartists, electioneering, but little else from the outside world.

Happily, the letters in the Slade archive do not stand in isolation.  A number of contemporary sources enable us to assess the picture given in the letters from other angles.  Documents from later periods can also sharpen our understanding of what the letters contain.

Firstly, we have the official sources, the Census and Parish Register records, as well as the Memorial Inscriptions.  This data has made possible a complete study of the people who lived in the village at this time.  Transferring the data from the original Census Enumerators’ Books and from typescripts of the Register into simple database files has facilitated powerful analysis.  Use of genealogical software has enabled us to look deeply into the family relationships running through the villages, sometimes revealing startling connections.  These help us understand better many of the chance references to individuals contained in the letters.  Much of the analysis of this data underpins the chapter that examines the social and economic structure of the two villages.

Secondly, we have an exactly contemporary description of Aston Tirrold.  The authors of this short review were the daughters of George Marris, the Dissenting Minister at the time.  The authors had a clear view of their objective:

The public may be assured that it is no motive of Pride or Vanity, that has induced the Authors to prepare this little work; but a consideration that as the Village of Aston is very little known, it might be useful to give a few particulars of the place and its vicinity; as it would be an eligible situation for Valetudinarians who wished to retire for a few weeks to recruit their health, but I shall speak of this hereafter.

Very correctly, the authors dedicated their work To the Lord of the Manor, Thomas Fuller Esquire senior.  Thomas had reached the venerable age of 84.  He features through the letters until his death in the winter of 1843.

Aston Tirrold, is situated in a very pleasant valley, (between two hills,) adorned with orchards and gardens; which in the spring appear in their gayest attire.

The soil is fertile and produces abundance of grain, fruit and vegetable ...The climate is salubrious, and we would recommend any invalid who wishes to recruit his or her health, to spend a few weeks in Aston as convenient and respectable accommodation may be obtained, together with the society of the well informed inhabitants, who are particularly kind and hospitable to strangers….

The country is very open, as the fields are not generally enclosed with hedges or walls.

The authors go on to recommend several pleasant walks around where respectable people might improve their appetites.  Presumable these would have skirted around the labourers sweating in the fields.  Nevertheless, we learn that some element of care applied to the less fortunate of local society.

The poor have also great privileges.  They are allowed to glean when the corn is on the land, which is not customary in other places.  They have also a piece of land out in the fields in which they plant potatoes.

We hear about two Sunday Schools – one for Church and one for Meeting – as well as a school of Industry for girls, charging the very reasonable rate of only a penny a week.  Local donations and subscriptions supported this school, so much so that it sported its own library.  For example, the summer bazaar or fete raised the worthwhile total of £28.  The school prospered, as several of the children who have been educated there have gone out to service and promise fair to be good servants.  This was clearly a welcome innovation, since the Marris children elsewhere characterise the women of the village as uncouth and vulgar owing to their being brought up to work in the fields, instead of going to service; few good servants are to be obtained in the Village.  For the daughters of respectable people, a boarding school stood at the entrance to the village, fortunately in a very pleasant setting.

Aston, it seems, was famous for bacon at the time.  Also, it entered its name in the tourism stakes because of a claim as the site where Ethelred and his brother, Prince Alfred, beats the Danes at the battle of Ashdown.  Mr Fuller had ploughed up a spearhead that he would willingly show to whoever declared an interest.

The authors detail other points about the village society, including the gypsy parties to which the Slades found themselves so addicted, how people spend their leisure, a number of which will receive mention they relate to the passages from the letters.  Just as the railway runs through the Slade letters, so it intrudes even into the account given by the Marris children.

The railroad being introduced into Moreton, a village about one mile from Aston, and many of the men employed there travel about with it as it advances lodge in the village and being rude men they have caused many disturbances.

George and Sarah Marris, a proper eleven years younger than her husband, had a fruitful marriage, the Census recording five children in their household.  In fact, they had at least one other child, Mary Ann, but she had sadly died in May 1841, aged nineteen.  The letters make no mention of this tragedy.  The next eldest, Sarah, may also have caused her parents some concern.  Charlotte Slade observes that she was still excitable and will not be out of her mama’s lap.  Mr Marris drifts in and out of the letters, generally on hand to solve difficulties: trying to decipher Henry Slade’s letters from Australia, carrying bodies of deceased parishioners, looking after Mrs Fuller in her madness.  He did, however, preach an excellent sermon, much appreciated by Charlotte Slade.

Thirdly, we have the diaries of the Reverends Leigh Hoskyns (Aston Tirrold) and Richard Hooper (Aston Upthorpe and Upton).  Leigh Hoskyns came to Aston Tirrold in 1845 and reigned through the entire century, doing much good in the village as well as establishing his church strongly, it lying in the heart of a devout Dissenting community.  The Hooper diaries run from 1862.  They are particularly interesting because they recount the events surrounding how Aston Upthorpe and Upton were split from Blewbury.  This happened in 1862 and did not at all please the irascible Blewbury incumbent, Mr MacDonald.  He appears occasionally in the letters, his portrait confirming the view given by the Reverend Hooper.  The Hoskyns and Hooper diaries contain many later references to individuals living in the parishes, alive at the time of the letters.

Fourthly, we have the account of the villages written by Louise Fuller.  She apparently gave this as a paper in 1921, publishing it over thirty years later.  It contains this excellent portrait of Thorpe Farm at work:

Thorpe Farm House, judging by the architecture and chimneys, may in part date from Tudor times … Mr Benjamin Slade’s … sons can tell us of the long stone-flagged hall in which breakfast was given every morning to the labourers.  The horses having already been fed by the carters, all the men assembled at six o’clock and enjoyed a substantial meal of home-cured bacon, home-made bread, and home-brewed small beer, before they went to work.  Of course the women started early to prepare a meal for so many, or perhaps to see to brewing or breadmaking.

This Mr Benjamin Slade is the young tearaway that features in the letters, actually writing the last two, each consisting of a wonderful portrait of a teenage farmer’s son out on the loose with his cousins.  He was the youngest brother of Henry Slade, the recipient of the letters.

Just around the corner from Thorpe Farm, but lying in Aston Tirrold, we find Copsestyle (sometimes called Cob Style) Farm.  Here lived Mrs Elizabeth Humfrey Fuller, one of the protagonists in the letters.  This unfortunate woman, a widow at this time, went through a terrible time, as we will see in more detail later, but she attempted suicide and received attention from nurses practised in dealing with insanity.  The letters contain a very unflattering portrait of her, so bad in fact that Charlotte Slade at one point expressly asks her son Henry not to let Mrs Fuller see them.  Eventually, we learn via Charlotte of something concerning Mrs Fuller that seems best described as a delusion.

This account of the letters observes how the arrival of the railway begins to change the lives of the Astons people.  The railway was the technological marvel of the time.  It connected the country together.  A century and a half later, the Internet has created the same effect for the world.  It therefore seems quite appropriate that, during the course of this work, an email came into the Local History Association’s web site.  The email came from Douglas Fairchild, living in California.  We exchanged highly excited emails over the period of a week, no need for us to wait six months as Charlotte and Henry had to exchange letters or a year for a response.  Douglas descends from the Fuller family, one branch of which had emigrated to the USA in the early part of the nineteenth century.  The Fuller representative who came to live in the USA, Selina Merchant, was none other than a cousin of Mrs Elizabeth Humfrey Fuller, or Cousin Betsy as they knew her.  From time to time Cousin Betsy would write to her cousin Selina, many of which letters currently lie in the care of Douglas Fairchild.  Astonishingly - no other word for it - he has a series of letters written by Mrs Fuller exactly contemporary with the Slade letters.  They contain a number of references to events contained in the writings of Charlotte Slade, including a direct confirmation of the shattering news with which she greeted Charlotte Slade in February 1845.