Authors
Dr John Chandler
John was brought up in Devon and read classics at Bristol University, completing his doctorate in 1977 on religion and politics in the later Roman empire.
He trained as a librarian and worked in Wiltshire until embarking in 1988 on a freelance career of writing, lecturing, researching for archaeological units and publishing local and regional history.
John has worked intermittently for the Victoria County History (VCH) for some 15 years, in Wiltshire (Codford), Herefordshire (Ledbury) and Gloucestershire, where as county editor from 2011 he completed a volume on parishes near Gloucester, and has planned and contributed to three further volumes.
Since 2016 he has also served as consultant editor in Wiltshire, contributing West Knoyle to volume 19 and parts of Chippenham to volume 20, which he is overseeing. Having lived at various addresses in Wiltshire for 40 years, he moved to Gloucester in 2014.
John’s interest in history and topography began as a teenager and became his full-time occupation when appointed Wiltshire’s local studies librarian in 1979.
The VCH, with its exhaustively researched and carefully referenced text, has always been the bedrock for studying Wiltshire’s history and places, and John is anxious to see it continue and complete its coverage of the county.
Dr Mark Forrest
Mark read history at Royal Holloway where he returned, after a spell as a secondary school teacher, to complete his doctorate on the estates of Chertsey Abbey in 2002. As a researcher he worked on five counties for the Records of Lay and Clerical Taxation 1188-1688 ("the E179 Project") before completing three counties for the Manorial Documents Register. He moved to Dorset in 2004 to become an archivist at the Dorset History Centre and since 2019 has been an independent archive consultant.
He is the General Editor of the Dorset Record Society, Local History Editor for the Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, Dorset Editor for Somerset and Dorset Notes and Queries and a member of the Publications Committee of the British Association for Local History.
Dr Louise Ryland-Epton
Louise was awarded her doctorate in 2020 by the Open University (OU) where she is now a Visiting Fellow. Her thesis research focused on social policy, welfare innovation and governance in the late Georgian period. She has published several books and articles.
Louise gained her MA from the OU in 2016 and, soon after, contributed to VCH volume 16 in Gloucestershire.
Since 2018, Louise has worked on Wiltshire VCH Volume 20 on Chippenham. She has also collaborated with the Bremhill Parish History Group on a community project supported by Wiltshire VCH to research, record and communicate the rich and varied heritage of Bremhill village.
Louise is passionate about local history, believing that social, economic and political change is best understood by looking at the lives of those who lived through it.
She lives in Gloucestershire.
MARY SIRAUT
Mary is a historian and archivist with degrees from Bangor, Cambridge and London universities. She has worked for the Somerset Victoria County History since 1978 and has been county editor since 2007 having contributed to eight volumes. She also wrote a history of Southern Exmoor for the VCH England’s Past for Everyone project and an Exmoor Field Guide for the national park. She has also contributed to several books and journals and is a former editor of the Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society Proceedings.
Mary has been interested in local history since working as an archivist in Cambridge writing parish histories for recently deposited parish records and began writing articles and giving talks on the subject. She obtained her master’s degree for work on Elizabethan Cambridge.
Since moving to Somerset to work for the VCH she has produced talks, lectures, seminars and taught courses for the former Bristol University Dept. of Continuing Education and Dillington House Adult Education College. As well as holding several roles in the Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society [SANHS] she is a member of Somerset Record Society and has calendared and edited collections of letters and wills for publication. She has continued archive work on a voluntary basis and has catalogued several of the major estate collections in the Somerset Heritage Centre.
Mary will be responsible for editing Wiltshire volume 21