The October Lecture was Diaries of a Victorian Wythall Farmer.

Val Lewis, secretary of our society, presented to us through diaries and illustrations a picture of the life and times of Richard Pountney, landowner, farmer and major public figure.

Born in 1804, Richard's family lived in Wythall at Goodrest Farm, so called because King Charles II is reputed to have stayed there once. To his farming duties he gradually added a considerable number of other activities in the parish, including parish clerk (a position he held for 30 years), builder of the village school and its first schoolmaster in 1841.

He assumed responsibility for doing the Census returns and for collecting the rates and taxes from local householders, at a time when the tax on a four-wheel carriage was £6 per year and when, if you had 8 windows in your house, you were taxed at 16/6d. per year for them. He travelled to Droitwich to pay these monies in and it is recorded that the total amount he collected one year was £271, a considerable sum in those days when a farm labourer's pay was two pounds twelve shillings per year. He himself was not without problems, being £220 overdrawn at the bank at one point.

The nine diaries he meticulouisly kept provide us with a glimpse of village life, meetings, agricultural shows, strange cures for cattle ailments - even the weather!

He acted as secretary of the local Kingswood Friendly Society, maintaining its strict rules of membership and benefits, which were the forerunners of the Trade Union movement.

The next meeting of the Wythall History Society will be on Friday, November 28, at the Baptist Church Hall, Chapel Drive, Wythall, at 7.30pm .

Mr Frank Townsend will talk about the Origins of the Christmas Card (illustrated with slides).