| Description | A W Boyd, naturalist: notes, correspondence and papes re local history, folklore, architecture and war; includes a number of 18th and 19th century letters, including a letter from William Pitt the Elder and drawing by Edward Lear, and material on Markland and Conybeare families and on Great Budworth. Within the papers relating to local history there are transcripts of the Sevenoaks and Barnton town books (18th century). Within the papers on war there is an account of an air raid over Wallasey in 1941. |
| Administrative History | Arnold Whitworth Boyd was a naturalist and antiquarian with interests in local history, folklore, dialect and conservation. He was born in 1885 and died in 1959. Through his marriage in 1919 to Violet Blanche Conybeare he was related to the latter family and to the Marklands of south Lancashire [see D 5154/16, 17]. He attended Rugby School and Oxford University and served in World War I, attaining the rank of major. From 1920 he lived in Frandley House, Seven Oaks, Antrobus.
His best known work is A Country Parish: Great Budworth in the County of Chester (1951). He calendared the Markland Mss held at Wigan Public Library in 1930 and transcribed the churchwardens' accounts and town books of Great Budworth, Antrobus, Seven Oaks, Barnton and Newton by Daresbury. He contributed for many years to the Manchester Guardian and was assistant editor of British Birds. [For an obituary, see Trans Lancs & Cheshire Antiquarian Soc, Vol 69].
Many of the historical papers and ephemera of the Markland and Conybeare families came into Mr Boyd's possession. This collection has been divided into three parts, relating as far as possible to the activities of the Marklands, the Conybeares and the Boyds. |