| Description | Personal diaries of Ann Prest (b c 1748) of Bedale, North Yorkshire for 1769, 1771-1772, and 1776.
These diaries have been kept using the 'Ladies Own Memorandum Book', or 'Pocket Journal'. These have their original covers and contain printed pages at the front and back including calendars, songs, tables of roads between London and Edinburgh and information about fashion and country dances.
The four volumes contain short entries giving brief information about her day-to-day activities. She made two extended visits to London in 1769 and 1771, and the entries for these periods mention trips to the theatre and the titles of the plays she saw, as well as visits to London sights, and walks in parks and gardens. She also records seeing George III and Queen Charlotte on several occasions. She uses the accounts pages of the 1769 and 1776 diaries to record her expenses, including clothes she bought in London, and in 1776 for her wedding.
The majority of the diary entries describe visits to and from family and friends, and tea drinking as a social activity features prominently. She occasionally mentions the weather, and the state of health of herself and her family. She records a trip to York in the summer of 1776, where her future husband lived, before her marriage to Leonard Terry in October that year. After the wedding, she went back to York, where she and her husband are living when the diary ends. |
| Administrative History | Ann Prest's name does not appear in these diaries. However, it is apparent from internal evidence that these diaries are hers. The Bedale parish registers record the baptism of an Ann Prest, daughter of William Prest of Bedale, currier, in Mar 1748 and her marriage to Leonard Terrey of York on 31 Oct 1776. Her diary for 1776 also records her marriage on this date. |