Message to all MDA Members, Volunteers and interested local community
Thank you to everyone who was able to attend our AGM on 24th September 2025 and a special thanks to local historian Michael Harvey for his engaging slide show covering many aspects of Milverton and the local surroundings.
The MDA would like to thank the following former MDA Trustees for their time and effort given to the business of running a volunteer Trust for the community and for enabling us to progress as we endeavour to make the archive material available and accessible:
Anna Farrow (former MDA Secretary & Trustee)
Paul Farrow (former MDA Accessions Manager)
Maggie Dinning (former MDA Researcher & Trustee)
Thank you also to Shelagh Dempsey as outgoing Treasurer and Trustee but who has graciously agreed to help with accounts as roles are transferred. We thank Louise Heald who, as a volunteer, has contributed hugely to the website development for the MDA and energised many logistic exercises over the last eighteen months as we have moved from location to location.
The MDA continues with Guy Hannaford, Carol Hannaford and John Clements. There is room for more potential trustees to join the Board of Trustees, and we welcome new members and volunteers accordingly.
We also thank David Dowling for agreeing to re-start his brilliant interviews with local villagers recorded for posterity – this programme is already underway. The MDA will continue to engage with the community at each monthly Market meeting in the village hall.
Please feel free to approach the MDA with any suggestions and expressions of interest to chairman@milvertondistrictarchive.co.uk in matters relevant to you that might fit well with our future programme of advancing the awareness levels of the archive content to our membership and potentially the general public.
October 2025
Trustees meeting Wednesday 15th October 2025 - Postponed until 29th October (7:00pm onwards at venue to be decided)
November 2025
Milverton Village Market Stall - Saturday 1st November 10:00am - Meet the MDA and new website offerings; contribute to the programme with donations of materials for sale at market table top.
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