Catalogue description Diaries of Lt. Col. Linley Wynter Blathwayt

The diaries include a description of voyage from India to father's deathbed, 1873-1874. The diarist lived in India again 1874-1877, and then at Worthing, 1877-1883, and Eagle House, Batheaston, Somerset, 1883 onwards

The diarist records details of daily life with considerable wit. Extensive gardening and scientific memoranda begin in 1888. In the years 1900 to 1905, he uses two diaries simultaneously.

One volume, D2659/21/16, is used to record daily life for the entire period and volumes D2659/21/17 to 21/22 are used to record gardening and scientific memoranda, one volume per year. In the years 1911 to 1914, he again uses one diary for both types of entry (D2659/21/23)

Entries also include a tour of Gloucester Cathedral with F W Waller (later the cathedral architect). Blathwayt describes him as 'in appearance a very young man, rather deaf, and is the author of 'Six Weeks in the Saddle', a journal of a tour in Ireland', 1874; a discovery that 'the servants have been robbing us wholesale', 1903; his resentment at being disqualified from membership of a school board because he was not a regular communicant, 1903

The diarist, was the eldest son of Reverend Charles and Anne Linley Blathwayt and was a lieutenant colonel in the Bengal Staff Corps

He married Emily Marion Rose in 1874 and for a time after the marriage the couple lived in India. On returning to England in 1877 they lived first in Sussex before moving to Eagle House, Batheaston in 1883. They had three children John Linley, b. 1876, who died when only a few months old, Mary, b. 1879 and William, b. 1882

Like his wife and daughter, Colonel Linley was also a supporter of the Women's Social and Political Movement and many important suffragettes were welcomed to Eagle House