I'm now in the middle of a 4-5 year project aimed at transcribing all the documents contained in the Quarter Sessions rolls and order books which are kept in the Powys Archives. That means copying them all out thoroughly and creating an index of names, places and events which will eventually be published on CD.

A lot of the work is boring and the documents can be repetitive but you come across fantastically interesting documents such as documents relating to the great fire of Llanfair Caereinion of 1758.

Amongst the papers in the Quarter Sessions are about 20 documents which are lists of items each shopkeeper or housekeeper lost during the fire. They believed that if they made a full list with a valuation and submitted it to the Quarter Sessions, they could get permission to go to churches and to gentry and other leading people to ask for help and financial assistance.

There are about 20 of these documents. For example, there's one for the White Horse pub in Llanfair which obviously went on fire and the landlord lists everything that he claims to have lost. He says that he lost 30 pounds of steel which was burnt and damaged, a cart chain, a box of handkerchiefs, pins, boxes.

It's difficult to read these lists because they were fairly illiterate people. They were often Welsh-speaking with very little English and they were trying to write down for an English court - because the official language of the court was always English - in their best English, the items they'd lost. Many words are spelt in a 'Welshified' way of spelling an English word and they're very difficult to work out - for example scissors is spelt sisarus.

An account of the fire was also published in 'The London Chronicle' Sept 9-12, 1758: "We learn from Llanfair in Montgomeryshire that a terrible fire broke out at the house of one Edwards Jones, shoemaker, which entirely consumed it. The wind being high at the time, the fire raged and spread violently. It consumed besides ten family houses, seven shops and several barns, outhouses and the Market House. The steeple of the church being cased with wood also took fire and the church with great difficulty was preserved. The confusion among the inhabitants was very great as they had not the advantages of fire engines. Providentially no person was hurt but the loss of the inhabitants is very considerable."

There are other interesting documents in the Quarter Sessions rolls about law and order - about assaults and theft and people appearing before the court. The sentences ranged from a basic ordinary one like pinching from a shop where the punishment was whipping. Men and women would be stripped to the waist and whipped on market day for a couple of hours. The highest form of punishment was transportation. People would be kept in Montgomeryshire gaol until they were transported. Other punishments included fines or two years in prison perhaps.

I'm also very interested in family history and am preparing an index of names of all the people in these documents so that any family historian can look for ancestors - all you need is a person's name a and a place and a context for time. It's possible also to have an index of place names so anyone interested in Llanfair can pick out all the documents relating to Llanfair in the 18th century.

Most of this material and these documents have not been available because they've been in the rolls and unlisted. Nobody knew what was inside these rolls and volumes. Most of it has been hidden until now."

By Bryn Ellis from Welshpool