Catalogue description BURBAGE WHARF, WILTSHIRE

Records of Burbage Wharf, mainly concerned with Accounts and Administration

List compiled March 1996.

TR BWH/AC1/1-4 Ledgers

TR BWH/AC2/1-2 Cash books

TR BWH/AC4/1 Journal

TR BWH/AC6/1-3 Other accounts

TR BWH/AC7/1 Annual account

TR BWH/AC9/1-5 Invoices and receipts

TR BWH/AD2/1-11 Administrative and commercial records

TR BWH/AD4/1 Premises records

TR BWH/AD8/1-2 Correspondence

TR BWH/DO1/1 Drawings

TR BWH/P2/B1 Individual advertising publication, other firms

TR BWH/SP2/1 Records of events

For more information, see Roy Brigden, 'A Story of Burbage Wharf', Folk Life, Vol 31 (1992-93), 77-87.

The Ailesbury family archive is deposited at the Wiltshire Record Office.

Burbage Wharf, Wiltshire, manufacturer of agricultural machinery

DX127

The records were deposited as a gift in June 1991.

• Agricultural machinery

Until its transfer to the Crown Commissioners c1929-30 Burbage Wharf, situated on the Kennet and Avon Canal and close to a Great Western Railway goods yard, belonged to the Marquess of Ailesbury's Savernake Forest estate. In 1874 the tenancy (which included a small farm) was taken up by John Fall, then tenant of Warren Farm and bailiff on the estate, who had moved from Yorkshire to Wiltshire in the 1840s. From Burbage Fall operated a coal and corn merchant's business, as well as operating as a steam ploughing and threshing contractor; he was also acting as an agricultural machinery agent while occupying Warren Farm and after the move to Burbage, mainly dealing with Henry and George Kearsley, agricultural engineers of Ripon, Yorkshire. The business was taken over by John's son George (c1865-1925) in the 1890s, and subsequently by his grandson Jack (1904-1991) in 1925.

The company's trade in coal and agricultural commodities was successful at the turn of the century, reaching a peak during the First World War; but business declined in the 1920s. The ploughing and contracting operation continued (a pair of Fowler BB1 engines having been purchased in 1919), although adversely affected by agricultural depression. After a temporary revival during the Second World War, the Fowler engines were sold to the government in the 1940s for shipment to Africa, although the contract threshing continued until the early 1970s. The Falls' tenancy of Burbage Wharf terminated with Jack's death in 1991.

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