The History of Buchan St John No. 636.
As best we know it!
Since time passes on each moment of the day these following pages will always be considered as being

WORK IN PROGRESS.

As we have 125 years of history to tell, this section of the site has become a significant amount documentation. To aid you (the browser), we have broken it down into managable time periods. They are as up-to-date as of February 2004 (the date of our official 125th).These may be accessed by clicking on the appropriate time periods below. These individual documents still constitute a subsantial ammount of data but will be opened in a separate window for you to browse or print as you see fit. To return to this window just close the time period window.

Information to assist in the understanding of our history!
Since this history goes way back - for those in the rest of the world outside the U.K. and those in the U.K. who cannot recall what transpired on the 21st February 1971, the following may either clarify (or confuse) the way that some monetary values are expressed in this document.
On the above noted date the U.K. notionally accepted the fact that decimalised currency was needed to allow the rest of the world to simply equate Pounds Sterling (£) to other currencies.
Before that we attempted to rule the World by confusing everyone - using a duodecimal method of handling smaller denominations than the Pound (£).
We had, in those days, Pounds (denoted as now by "£"), Shillings (Whole Shillings denoted in the form "1/-", or some other number), and Pennies (Which had, for some unknown reason, connotations back to the old Roman coinage of Dinares) a "d" following them.
We therefore have the case where a sum of "Seven Pounds, eight Shillings and nine Pennies" would be written as £7/8/9d.
Hopefully that will explain the format of the written currency within the document.
For those of you who wish to take calculating values of currencies further, the following should really cause consternation - it certainly seemed to during the time that it was being utilsed - and all visitors to this country seemed to be totally bemused by it when asked to discuss costs of items.
Starting from the smallest denomination being used at the time, there was a quarter of a penny (known as a Farthing) - so it was possible to note a price for an item that was shown as 6¼d., 6½d. or 6¾d. O.K. further to that, to move up demoninations, one Shilling was consituted from twelve pennies (1/- = 12d.) and to move up the last step, One Pound was constitued from twenty Shillings (£1 = 20/-) or (£1 = 240d).
On 21 February 1971 the UK made the bold move of revaluing our base unit of the new currency (the Pence) to be worth 2.4 Old Pennies! (Although no governmental body will admit it, we here in the UK felt that we experienced an overnight and one-shot 240% inflation - but that's another story.)
Overnight we had one hundred "Pence" to the "Pound" and we are told the rest of the world breathed a sigh of relief and sacked half of its international Accountants.
It is left to your undoubted mathematical skills for you to work out exchange rates and convert any old currency value in this document into your local currency. Please don't forget to include any currency inflation (or deflation?) over the 125 year period if trying to compare prices in todays economies.
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