The Trust

Photo of Caen Hill Locks at Devizes by Diane Vose

By David Moss, chairman

I am very pleased to welcome you to our website and to explain who we are, what we do and why we do it.

The Victoria County History, or VCH, is the greatest publishing enterprise in English local history.

Professional historians, working to the highest standards, produce detailed local histories covering the whole country, parish by parish. They use original sources going back, whenever possible, to the earliest known records.

It’s a huge undertaking and the result is the definitive local history, providing information for dozens of uses, now and in the future. And it’s not just for historians: anyone with an interest in where they live will find fascinating detail in the VCH. No wonder it has been likened to a modern Domesday Book.

The project is taken forward, county by county, coordinated by the Institute of Historical Research at the University of London. Here in Wiltshire we have so far produced 19 of the famous big red books. They are readily available in public libraries. Most of them are also available online, free of charge; you can find links on the previous publications page.

Volume 20, for the Chippenham area, has just been published. Volume 19, covering Mere and the Deverills, is also nearing completion. And we are about half way through the research needed for volume 21 which will cover the south-east corner of Wiltshire. Our objective is to tell the story of Wiltshire in 25 volumes and we are well on our way towards achieving that ambition.

For many years work on the VCH in Wiltshire was funded by local authorities, most recently Wiltshire Council with additional help from the University of the West of England. But public spending cuts brought that to an end in 2014. Rather than abandon the VCH, a group of individuals with a shared love of history rose to the challenge of completing the work by creating a charitable trust - registered charity number 1196961 - now a Charitable Incorporated organisation (CIO), under the patronage of Dame Sarah Troughton, HM Lord-Lieutenant of Wiltshire. The Chippenham volume is the first in the Wiltshire series paid for through voluntary fundraising; this has taken time and it is 15 years since the previous volume in the series appeared. We hope to get our funding onto a more secure basis.

Funds raised are used to commission suitably qualified historians to research and write each chapter of the book. When the writing is complete the text must be approved by the Institute for Historical Research at the University of London before being published. Draft texts of the chapters are available to read free online.

History of this quality is expensive - each volume of the VCH currently costs around £250,000 to research and write. Once we have completed the two volumes now in preparation, there will be 4 further volumes to produce, costing around £1 million. We are now appealing to our supporters to help us raise this sum. Please donate or remember us in your will. You can read more about our appeal in the 'News and What's On' section of this website.

All donations go directly to fund the painstaking and important task of researching our county’s fascinating history for the benefit of this and future generations.

The VCH is history for everyone, and we want everyone to have the chance to share our county’s captivating story.

Thank you.

David

To find out more about our policies click on the following links: Complaints Procedure; Policy on Personal Data Protection; Policy on Conflicts of Interest; Policy on Financial Reserves; Policy on Risk Management; Policy on Safeguarding; Policy on Serious Incident Reporting; Policy on Trustee Expenses; Procedure for Letting Contracts.