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News from the Glamorgan Record Office In 1995, there were two main issues for the Glamorgan Record Office based in Cardiff: the Fonmon Archive Appeal and preparations for local government reorganisation, both placing heavy burdens on a staff who strove to and succeeded in preserving 'normality'. Not only did the Record Office's routine work continue, but positive initiatives were taken to improve services to the public and to protect records and make them more accessible for research. As a consequence of some of this activity, public interest in the Glamorgan Record Office rose considerably. In the period 1 December 1994 30 November 1995, 7,041 visits were made by researchers; 96,643 microfilms or fiche were consulted; 7,123 documents were produced for researchers to consult; and 773 postal enquiries involving considerable research, were answered. The decision of Sir Brooke Boothby of Fonmon Castle, near Barry, to sell his family and estate archive, which had been on loan to the Glamorgan Record Office since 1953, could have been a disaster; instead, it was the catalyst for much of the Record Office's support during 1995. Initially, the records which Sir Brooke offered to the Glamorgan Record Office by private treaty for £ 55,000, included two groups 'neither of which', according to Sotheby's, bore 'relevance to Glamorgan'. This was true of the first group, five volumes of late seventeenth, century diaries and letters of Sir William Boothby of Ashbourne Hall in Derbyshire; these were auctioned in London in July 1995. The second group was an integral part of the collection, letters by John and Charles Wesley 'and their circle,' mostly written to Mary Jones of Fonmon Castle over a period of some forty years in the eighteenth century. She was the widow of Robert Jones II (died 1742) who had been Charles Wesley's contemporary at Christ Church, Oxford, in the 1720s. The letters describe the Wesleys' preaching tours and plans for visiting Fonmon and nearby Fontygary, advise Mary on the education and up-bringing of her son (Robert Jones III), and send her messages of friendship and spiritual comfort. Happily, Sir Brooke Boothby agreed to add the Wesley letters to the records on offer to the Record Office, but this raised the purchase price to f 75,000. Documents of the Commonwealth period in the Fonmon Archive are equally