EDITORIAL NOTE

VOLUME ELEVEN is the fifth to be published of the Victoria History of Gloucestershire, and the fourth since the revival of the Gloucestershire History in 1958. An outline of the structure and aims of the Victoria History as a whole, as also of its origins and progress, is included in the General Introduction (1970), and the arrangements by which the Gloucestershire County Council and the University of London collaborate to produce the Gloucestershire History are indicated in the Editorial Note to Gloucestershire, Volume Six. Once again it is the General Editor's pleasure to record the University's gratitude for the generosity displayed by the successive County Councils.

In 1974, on the reorganization of local government, the functions of the Library and Archives Committee of the County Council, which under the chairmanship of Mr. G. T. St. J. Sanders had supervised the compilation of the larger part of the present volume, were transferred to the new County Council's Recreation and Leisure Committee, under the chairmanship of Mr. P. M. Robins. Mr. (later Dr.) W. J. Sheils resigned as assistant editor in February 1973 and was succeeded in the following July by Mr. A. R. J. Jurica.

Many people have given valuable help in writing the volume, and, while most of them are named in footnotes as providing information about particular parishes and need not be mentioned individually here, they are all thanked most warmly. Mr. F. T. Hammond of Chalford and (as for Volume Ten) Mr. L. F. J. Walrond of the Stroud Museum have given much useful help on the Stroud area, and Dr. Julia de L. Mann has again provided many useful references about the cloth industry. Mr. J. O. T. Blow gave access to the Painswick manorial records, and the Librarian of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, to deeds in the college archives. Mr. G. T. St. J. Sanders, chairman of the former Library and Archives Committee, put his extensive local knowledge at the disposal of the Gloucestershire editorial staff. The Gloucestershire County Record Office and the Gloucester Library (formerly the Gloucester City Library) have continued to give their indispensable aid, and the co-operation of the County Archivist, Mr. B. S. Smith, of the successive Librarians, Mr. A. J. I. Parrott and Mr. V. A. Woodman, and of their respective staffs is recorded with particular gratitude.