Permission To Use The Transcribed Records

Introduction

Many volunteers and organisations have been involved in bringing together this searchable archive which forms part of the Heritage Lottery Fund (now National Lottery – Heritage Fund) project.

The Leigh Heritage group hold extensive parish records in a number of forms but key to the Heritage Lottery Fund project are the transcribed parish record (baptism, marriage and burial records) which are held as Excel data.

Parish records were transcribed, checked and in some cases verified by a combination of ten individuals – Yvonne Scrivener, Malcolm Lay, Peggy Goodger, Pat Baird, Christine Peach, John Aven, Graham Harris, Margaret Loten, Reg Davis and Lyn Faulkner.

Gaining Permission

Parish records are held for many parishes based on the Frome area (the Frome Hundreds) but the main difference between the wider Frome and the Leigh on Mendip records was that all the Frome registers were transcribed by people who knew that their transcripts would be made available to archives.

Those who contributed to the Leigh on Mendip transcripts did not necessarily know their end use and it was felt by the Frome archivist that, if at all possible, their permission should be sought for their agreement to the use of the records in the heritage hub here at St Giles church.

The Frome archivist confirmed that in their opinion what has been undertaken in this Heritage Lottery Fund project does not fall into either the category of Internet publishing, or profit-making publication or distribution.

The Excel files containing the transcribed data are not available on-line or in printed form, and copies of the transcripts more than 100 years old have already been sent to the Somerset Heritage Centre.

The data from the Excel files has been imported into a database which is hosted on a web server for security reasons but the data in it are not publicly available.

Agreements from the ten transcribers to use their data was sought and obtained in early 2017 with the exception of Lyn Faulkner who could not be found. Accepting that it was not going to be possible to locate Lyn Faulkner, further examination of the transcriptions undertaken by Lyn show that the records were freely available on the Frome site and these were then incorporated and revamped by some of the other transcribers detailed above to produce the Excel records for Leigh on Mendip for the same period (e.g. marriage records 1754-1812), and that these alternative records have been checked and are fully usable. The Frome archivist has confirmed that Lyn had made the records freely available and thus she considered that Lyn would be happy for their further use in the Leigh on Mendip Heritage Lottery Fund project.

Sadly Peggy Goodger, who has helped many with their family research, and been involved with the transcription for Leigh on Mendip, passed away a few weeks after giving her permission for the use of the transcripts for this project.

Somerset Records Office

With regard to a request in 2007, for permission to upload the transcripts, the points that were made by the then Somerset Record Office were:

The Somerset Archive and Record Service will allow transcripts of parish registers to be posted on the Internet subject to prior agreement and the following conditions:

  1. The transcripts are circulated without profit to the transcriber and with a proviso that any subsequent copying is allowed only if free of profit.
    Anyone wishing to include a subsequent copy as part of a profit-making publication or distribution must apply to the Somerset Archive and Record Service for permission.
  2. A statement to this effect is included with the posting.
  3. A copy of the transcript is supplied in an agreed format to the Somerset Archive and Record Service.
  4. The transcriber agrees to the transcript being made available to users at the Record Office and to its re-use in Archive Service databases and distribution over the Internet or by other means. The transcriber makes no claim for copyright against any such use by the Somerset Archive and Record Service.
  5. A link is made from the site hosting the transcript to the Somerset Archive and Record Service site.
  6. Transcripts of registers under 100 years old are not published.

Anyone wishing to include a subsequent copy of the data held in this archive as part of a profit-making publication or distribution must apply to the Somerset Archive and Record Service for permission.

The Searchable Archive

The records in the searchable archive are derived from the Excel transcripts of the Parish records (baptism, marriage and burial) for St Giles church/churchyard.

Mapping burial information to grave locations and memorial headstones has been undertaken by the Leigh Heritage Group for the whole churchyard and have been addded to the database.

In addition, the burials from the more recent Parish Cemetery have also been mapped and included in the searchable database.

Please note that the actual searchable archive is only available (on a free basis) in the community room (Tower room) in St Giles church. For further details please email the Leigh on Mendip Heritage Group via info@lomhg.org.uk.

Thanks and Acknowledgements

We are very grateful for the support and enthusiasm of the many volunteers involved to bring this work together and make it available to visitors to St Giles church.

The work to convert the Excel parish records to a searchable archive has been undertaken by Otter Software Ltd, who have made their expertise, resources and time freely available to the Heritage Lottery Fund project.