Message to all MDA Trustees, Members and interested local community volunteers – Start of Accessions List Project
Monday 13th July 2026 from 2:00pm Victoria Rooms
Can you spare two hours a week, on this select day, every week for two months over the Summer Period as a community volunteer to help us conduct an Audit of Archive materials?
Now with funding received from Milverton Parish Council, and anticipating more funding, the MDA can begin the project. If you commit, we will commit to run and provide training from specialists – let MDA know of your interest and support by contacting Guy Hannaford (Chairman) via email: chairman@milvertondistrictarchive.co.uk
MDA is looking for a volunteer to take up the role of Accessions List Manager - Interested?
Anyone interested in doing some transcribing work with MDA historic material let us know? Would you volunteer?
Anyone interested in a photographic competition involving Milverton, Fitzhead and District locations, spaces, and people let us know?
Milverton Village Market Stall Saturday 1st August 10:00-12:00am - MDA will be attending.
MDA Audit Project: Starts Monday 13th July 14:00 Victoria Hall Reading Rooms.
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July 2025
A Ray of Light (shines on) the Sanford’s of Nynehead and Chipley Park Family Papers
A chance discovery and an anonymous donation of family papers to the Milverton and District Archive (MDA) based in the village of Milverton, Somerset, has led to some unexpected connections with pre-WWII period high society, hospital charity work, international relations and the spiralling downfall of a 1940’s debutante.
Amongst a large batch of Sanford family papers only recently brought to light in 2025 reveals a plethora of 19th Century draft legal documents and notes (in chancery) written and prepared by legal teams working with estate managers to underscore key transactions conducted by the Sanford family and their associates. There are also three quite innocuous communiqués which appear as unlikely interlopers from the 1937-1940 period included in the batch.
The first, by date, is a printed invitation to a hospital charity fund raiser set for 31st May 1937 at Grosvenor House, London, and lists numerous aristocratic names acting as Derby Ball Committee and Patrons for the Royal Northern Hospital (Maternity Ward).
The second is a simple plain postcard embossed with Turkish Embassy, London, dated 21st June 1937 handwritten and signed by A. Fethi Okyar having to decline an evening invitation to dinner on July 1st as it clashed with another appointment on the eve of his departure for Turkey.
The third, a handwritten letter, dated Tuesday, April 23rd, 1940, signed by Lydia Noel-Buxton gladly accepting an invitation from her hostess to join her on Thursday (presumably April 25th) at 12:00 o’clock. Lydia’s amusing reference to “not needing to bring a partner as there were already too many men” is noteworthy. At the time of writing she had only just turned eighteen.
The name of the hostess and dedicated charity worker in all three communications is Lady St John of Bletso herself recently widowed (Lord St John of Bletso passed in 1934) and she was formerly married to Colonel E C A Sanford of Nynehead (he died in 1923) before which she was simply known as Elizabeth May Griffith. She is buried in Nynehead Churchyard.
The Sanford family are well known in Somerset and further afield having many formal papers and documents already accessioned in the Somerset Heritage Centre (SHC) at Norton Fitzwarren, Taunton. These recently discovered and undocumented manuscripts are likely to support the existing papers and will need formal cataloguing and verification before surfacing into the public domain.
One set of papers temporarily assigned within MDA records as No.9 of 37 is a manuscript list of properties and parcels of land written about 1829 (G Ansell 1829 watermark present) covering Chipley, Milverton, Bradford on Tone, Langford Budville, Thorne St Margaret and West Buckland all connected to the Sanford Estates. Would you like to help the MDA to catalogue and present these documents online?
Online research on the Turkish Ambassador reveals a soldier-politician Ali Fethi Okyar (1880-1943) a former Turkish Prime Minister who had his part to play as the fall of the Ottoman Empire impacted on world history and the formation of the Republic of Turkey began. His time in London was enlivened by the presence of his vivacious wife Galibe Hanim for they were a much respected and popular couple in town. Would you like to conduct further research on these and other historic personalities?
Of Lydia Victoria Noel-Buxton very little is known other than what the press had learnt from court proceedings and subsequently published in the national and local papers. Her 1940 debutante year was dismantled and utterly destroyed as a beloved brother died later in the same year. The press had a field day for the next fifteen years or so as she engaged in disastrous relationships, behavioural issues, misguided petty crime and attempts at rehabilitation only ending after an ignominious death in 1955 aged just thirty-three.
Would you like to conduct research and involve yourself in a media project facilitated by the MDA looking at social history and well-being issues affecting young people both now and in the recent past?
Guy Hannaford (Chairman - Milverton & District Archive) July 2025