Croydon Archives: Collections

This Series provides insight into the sporting activities of a landed gentry family during the nineteenth and into the twentieth centuries. It features a game book of shoots, fox hunting journal and a fishing book providing details of one of Edmund Byron’s fishing visits to Norway. There is also some information on cricket in Coulsdon.

There is extensive documentation on the Old Surrey Fox Hounds, focusing on Edmund’s period as Master for 25 years up to his retirement from the role in 1902. But, with newspaper cuttings and other miscellaneous material, a picture of the hunt is provided covering much of the nineteenth century.

Additional information on the Byron’s sporting activities may be acquired from AR1057/1 – Personal Correspondence and AR1057/6/112 – Journal kept by Charlotte Emily and Edmund Byron, 1865-1875.

Game Book 1877-1895

AR1057/4/111
Item
September 1877-1895

Part of Records of the Byron Family of Coulsdon Court

Material relating to The Old Surrey Fox Hounds

AR1057/4/133
Item
1828 - 1905

Part of Records of the Byron Family of Coulsdon Court

Surrey Provisional Council Minutes

AR1057/5/95
Item
24 January 1889-12 March 1889

Part of Records of the Byron Family of Coulsdon Court

Byron Family: Journals and Memoirs

AR1057/6
Series
1867-1962

Part of Records of the Byron Family of Coulsdon Court

This Series has three items. The most significant is the detailed daily Journal or diary kept primarily by Charlotte Emily Byron, with some contributions from Edmund, covering the years 1867-1875. It covers the early years of their marriage and provides a record of the lives of a landed gentry family. There is information on domestic and family life, a vivid picture of their social and philanthropic activities within their village of Coulsdon, their hunting and other sporting activities, their wider social world and their extensive travels around Great Britain and Europe, including the early years of their annual summer fishing visits to Norway.

The information in Charlotte Emily’s Journal is greatly supplemented by AR1057/1 – Personal Correspondence, which often fills out the ‘backstory’ to the entries in the Journal.

This Series also includes a memoir of the old village of Coulsdon, when it was still a remote and rural community, written by Edmund’s son, Eric Byron, in 1926 at the age of 87.

There is also an extremely detailed travel journal kept by an unknown author. How it relates to the Byron family is unclear.

Journal kept by Edmund and Charlotte Emily Byron