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Historian with a love of all things local

This month marks the 50th anniversary of the death of one of Newark and Nottinghamshire's most distinguished local historians, Thomas Matthews Blagg MBE, FSA.

In a lifetime which spanned 73 years T. M. Blagg became one of the most respected authorities on the history of our county and someone to whom successive generations of local and family historians have reason to be particularly grateful.

For it was through Blagg's untiring efforts in transcribing such documents as parish registers and settlement certificates that created a legacy of work which today still forms the starting point for much local historical research.

Blagg's work on the parish registers on Nottinghamshire occupied him, off and on, for more than 40 years, and between 1898 and 1938 no fewer than 24 volumes of county marriages were published with his name as editor or joint editor.


At the time of his death in August 1948 the Advertiser noted that "Nottinghamshire has lost a son who loved and knew her better than most."

Thomas Matthews Blagg was born at South Collingham in March 1875, the eldest son of Margaret and Thomas Blagg, a successful tenant farmer in Langford and, subsequently, a valuer with the Newark auctioneering firm of Edward Bailey & Sons.

At the time when he began working for Bailey's Thomas senior moved into a house in Cartergate, Newark, and the young Thomas gained his education at the Magnus Grammar School.

It was here that his consuming interest in local history first began to make itself known.

Upon leaving school at 18 Thomas's first foray into historical research involved a careful examination of the parish church muniments in Newark, meticulously transcribing and annotating a long series of otherwise impenetrable settlement certificates.

Although recognised at the time as a most important debut by other local scholars, the fruits of his labour did not appear in print for more than 50 years.

A second early investigation of Newark history, however quickly proved more rewarding. In 1898 - 100 years ago this year - Thomas produced a detailed investigation of the history of printing and publishing in Newark which first appeared in serial form in the pages of the Newark Advertiser.

The text was subsequently gathered into a book entitled Newark as a Publishing Town which has now become something of a collector's item.

Over the years a great deal of Blagg's research and writing was to centre on Newark, and he was one of the first people to open up and make sense of the complicated history of the borough and its administration.

T. M. Blagg's first employment after leaving school, however, could hardly have been further removed from the cloistered surroundings of archives and libraries which he chose to inhabit for recreation.

He began his working career as a corn merchant in Newark's Middlegate, moving to Buckinghamshire in 1909 to become a partner in a London genealogical practice.

At the outbreak of the first world war in 1914 he took a government position as an Inspector of Immigration, an important post for he was made MBE in 1933.

Throughout these years of career advancement Blaggs interest in history never deserted him and he continued to pursue research during his spare time.

As early as 1903 he had been elected A Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries (being in fact their youngest Fellow) and continued to transcribe and publish records which fulfilled his most heartfelt intent of demystifying historic documents and making them widely available to the public at large.

In addition to forging an association with W. P. W. Phillimore (founder of Britain's most important local history publishing house, and one which continues to flourish today) Blagg personally edited several large volumes for the British Record Society, notably on Nottinghamshire Marriage Licences (1577-1700) and contributed numerous articles to the annual journal of Nottinghamshires Thoroton Society - seminal pieces on such diverse topics as Elston Chapel, Sutton Bonington, Collingham, Nottinghamshire agriculture and the churches of Holme and Hawton. Blagg's name, in fact, became a byword for sound historical research and one to which people could turn for a reliable assessment of the country history across the broadest of contexts.

T. M. Blagg retired from the Civil Service in 1940 and moved to Brunsell Hall at Car Colston in which village he had traced his ancestral roots back to the 17th Century.

Here he spent the last eight years of his life surrounded by his books and manuscripts, bringing together much of the research he had undertaken in the earlier part of his life.

At the time of his death in August, 1948 Blagg was working on an extensive history of the village of Car Colston which, if completed, would undoubtedly have contributed greatly to our knowledge of that part of the county.

A lengthy obituary notice in the Advertiser at the time commented that "A complete account of his life's work would fill volumes.

It can be said of it here, however, that it will last to benefit whose who are to come, and that its value will increase as time passes."

This has undoubtedly proved to be the case as Blagg's works continue to be a principal source of information and inspiration to the many hundreds of family and local historians currently working in Newark and Nottinghamshire.

ABOVE: Thomas Matthews Blagg. A local historian who forged a national reputation.

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