How did our ancestors live, work, shop? What were the day to day things that made up their normal lives? How did they relax? Did they receive an education and if so, where, when and for how long? So many things make up our normal every day lives and we don’t always appreciate that for our ancestors things were different. No health care unless you were rich, no schooling, just a life picking stones off the fields from the age of 5, transported for stealing a loaf of bread to feed your family. It’s not always easy these days but how much harder was life for our ancestors.
Resources that can help with filling in the ‘interesting bits’ vary tremendously. Occupation records, school records, poor law union records and before the creation of the unions the overseers records, newspapers are particularly good if you had a slightly wayward scallywag in your midst! Unfortunately the Tetbury Petty Sessions records have been lost in the mist of time and I bet they would have made good reading, all we can do is catch up with the local newspaper reports.