VISITORS to Wellington Flower Show this weekend will have a rare opportunity to see an interesting historic document.

Wellington’s 1836 Poor Law Rate Book will be on display on Saturday (August 27) in the Alan Rogers Centre, Wellington School.

The unique document lists all the householders in the town, including Rockwell Green, together with the name of their landlord, the location of the house and the Poor Law Rate payable.

The Rate Book, in the possession of Wellington Museum, is not usually on display.

It is a useful resource for research, especially family history research, but requires careful handling, so the entire book containing 1,400 entries has been transcribed by volunteers to a spreadsheet.

In this form the Rate Book

can easily be used to find ancestors’ entries and see who, 180 years

ago, owned what in Wellington in 1836.

Copies of the spreadsheet will be available at the flower show for £2.