Borthwick Newsletter - October 2021

Posted on 29 September 2021

Welcome to the Borthwick's October newsletter

October in the Archives - delve into our catalogues with this month’s featured description

'Programme of Music: Mrs [Annie] Besant's Birthday Celebration', Music composed and performed by Maud Mann [Maud MacCarthy] and John Herbert Foulds, 1 October 1915 [The MacCarthy Foulds Archive, MCF/5/3/1/9/16. You can also view the document online]

What’s New?

Autumn is now officially upon us and things have been getting busier on campus as the university begins another academic year. There have been a few changes at the Borthwick too. While we remain open from Mondays to Wednesdays by appointment only, we are now extending our opening hours to 9.30-16.30, giving our users more time in the searchroom. Our two daily sessions will now run from 9.30-12.30 and from 13.30-16.30, with the usual hour closure over lunch for cleaning. Visitors will also be able to order original documents on the day at 10.45 and 14.45, to a maximum of six documents per session (including pre-ordered documents).

For our offsite users we are also pleased to announce that we are restarting our paid research service, something we know many people have been eagerly awaiting. Our research service enables users who cannot travel to the archives in person, or who might wish to consult particularly sensitive records protected under Data Protection legislation, to pay staff to carry out research on their behalf and compile a written report of their findings. The standard charge is £15 per half an hour. You can read more about the changes to our service on our website, while our Keeper of Archives, Gary Brannan, explains a bit more about the reasons behind it on our blog.

New Accessions

Last month marked the first addition to the York Covid-19 Archive in several months: a collection of material documenting the pandemic era at Holgate Windmill Preservation Society, recording the experiences of volunteers and staff; capturing the sudden surge in demand for the Mill’s flour during nationwide shortages; and chronicling the disruption to HWPS’s 250th anniversary celebrations in 2020. We would like to remind you that the Covid Archive is still open for submissions: previous contributions have included journals, poems, photographs and videos (while the Archive is not accepting artworks, we are receiving documentation of community arts projects carried out during the pandemic, having previously received pictures of the York Interfaith Group’s ‘Interfaith-Inter-lockdown Quilt’). Further guidance on the types of material we are collecting, with instructions for how to submit material, is available on the Borthwick website (PDF).

September was a month for additions. As well as adding to our existing York Covid-19 archive, we also received additional records for the parish archives of Clifton, Haxby and Wigginton, as well as the Canterbury and York Society and our own University of York Archive.

News from Conservation

We received an interesting enquiry this month regarding the potential digitisation of a series of Act Books. On a first look, a conservator’s main aim is to assess what condition the item is in. This helps me to work out whether they will be harmed in any way from the digitisation process, and if so whether there are ways this can be prevented. Additionally, checking their condition allows me to ascertain whether information is being obscured or image capture hindered in any way, and in either scenario whether there is anything we in Conservation can do to help.

Damaged and dirty first page of a 16th century High Commission Act Book with a large loss in the middle and another at the top of the page.

The Act Books that I looked at have a handful of issues that need to be discussed with the digitisers and archivists. Dirt obscures the text in places, and would also cause considerable dirt transfer during imaging. It is possible for a conservator to clean these areas. Folded corners can sometimes obscure information, and as long as the paper is robust an imager can unfold them and hold them in place. Unfortunately in these volumes the paper is often very soft and pulpy, and using the wrong pressure to unfold or hold a corner in place could lead to a lot of detached corners. There are ways for a conservator to strengthen the paper to reduce the likelihood of this. There isn't too much damage throughout these volumes, but where there is damage the paper is usually very weak, with folded edges. If carefully handled it could be imaged as it is, but there would be some information missed in places. A conservator could unfold, strengthen and/or stabilise these areas to safely provide the best possible image of the information.

Top right-hand corner of a 16th century High Commission Act Book with corners folded in and obscuring writing.

Probably the most awkward issue for imaging these volumes is the extreme curvature of the spines. Many of the spines are significantly concave, and the volumes are relatively thick, which means that when the volume is opened at the beginning or end some of the text is lost into the gutter of the book. To gain a complete image of the page, the page needs to be flat. A method to support these volumes to enable this can be designed between conservators and digitisers.

Concave spine of a 16th century High Commission Act Book.

The relationship between Conservation and Digitisation is really important to us at the Borthwick. There are so many skills across the whole team, and when we work together we can safely create really high quality digital images.

New Catalogues

Number of archival descriptions on Borthcat on 1st October 2021: 82,519

Our searchroom team added two new parish catalogues to Borthcat in September - those of St Martin, Whenby and Holy Trinity, Stockton on the Forest. The parish of Whenby dates back to at least the mid 13th century, when the patronage of the church was held by the Prioress and nuns of Moxby Priory. Moxby was a rare example of an Augustinian ‘double monastery’ in England, meaning it was made up of two establishments of monks and nuns in one place, the nuns in Marton cum Moxby and the monks in Marton on the Forest. Like all monastic establishments, Moxby’s possessions were seized in the sixteenth century during the Dissolution of the Monasteries by King Henry VIII. The surviving parish church of Whenby dates to the fifteenth century and was extensively restored by the Victorians. Today it is in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust.

Stockton on the Forest had rather different origins, beginning life not as a full church but rather as a chapel within the parish of Bugthorpe. It did not become a separate parish until the 18th century. Stockton’s chapel, like Whenby’s church, was present by the 13th century but, unfortunately, the medieval building was demolished in 1808 and replaced by a new church, and this was in turn later rebuilt.

Happily for us, however, both churches have a long run of parish registers, dating back to 1556 in the case of Whenby (one of our earliest surviving examples), while Stockton’s date to 1653. Stockton’s has the added benefit of using the famous Dade registration scheme for the period 1785-1812, named after the Reverend William Dade (1741-1790) who created a scheme to record extremely detailed family information for births and deaths. While an ordinary parish register might record the name of a baptised infant, its parents’ names and perhaps the father’s profession, a Dade register typically adds the child’s seniority in the family and the names, occupations and places of residence of the parents and grandparents. Dade burial registers in turn add the age of the deceased, their date of death and the suspected cause. The Borthwick has 123 parish archives which include Dade registers and they are invaluable to researchers.

Borthwick in the Media

We mentioned an exciting new Rowntree project coming soon in our last newsletter. Well in September we were very pleased to launch a new digital exhibition, ‘Bringing the Rowntree Leisure Time Interviews to Life’, the culmination of a Humanities Research Centre Jane Moody Scholarship project by PhD student Rachel Feldberg, in collaboration with the Borthwick and The Rowntree Society. Using a selection of the 700 interviews carried out by Seebohm Rowntree and his fellow researchers in the late 1940s, Rachel and her team have scripted and filmed nine short monologues that give a glimpse into the private lives of men and women in post war England. From factory workers to retired civil servants, Seebohm included people from all walks of life and with all kinds of moral, political and religious opinions, some of them rather eye-opening today! The results are both fascinating and entertaining. You can read more about the project, watch an introduction and view the films themselves as part of a new Exhibitions page on the Borthwick website, featuring details of exhibitions past and present.

While we’re on the subject of the Rowntrees, we were pleased to be asked to contribute some historic photographs for the WEA (Workers’ Educational Association) and Rowntree Society’s new York Family Walks resource. The walk takes in key locations in the city associated with the Rowntree family and company, taking you from York, where they lived and worked, to the model village of New Earswick founded by Joseph Rowntree in 1904. A perfect way to spend an autumn morning!

Archive of the Month: James Hornby Archive

What is it? The personal papers and photographs of James Hornby, Head Gardener at Heslington Hall in the late 19th century.

Where can I find it? The James Hornby Archive catalogue is available on Borthcat.

Why is it Archive of the Month? For new staff and students arriving on the Heslington West campus for the first time, Heslington Hall and its gardens are often a particular highlight. The University of York is the latest in a long line of custodians of the Hall and grounds, dating back to the 16th century, the records of many of whom are kept safely in the Borthwick strongrooms. One such is James Hornby, head gardener at Heslington Hall from 1870 to 1902. Whilst domestic and outdoor staff do of course feature in the archives of the Yarburgh and Deramore families who owned the estate, James Hornby is the only member of staff to have left his own small archive. It includes family papers and some personal photographs, as well as a delicately beautiful herbarium, originating from Chatsworth in 1866, which contains species of ferns from across the globe. But perhaps most interesting for local residents and garden enthusiasts alike is his ‘Diary of Operations’, which documents the first 18 months of his long career at Heslington Hall.

James Hornby in the gardens of Heslington Hall

Lydia Dean, who archived the collection and wrote a blog on the diary, describes it as not so much a ‘diary’ but rather a garden planner which records Hornby’s work to develop the grounds into an ornamental and productive landscape. It includes notes on the weather and seasonal tasks such as gathering apples and stocking the ice house, as well as ongoing experiments in successfully growing cucumbers, pineapples and melons on the estate. It is a unique record in our collections of the myriad of tasks, large and small, that made up the daily life of a working gardener in the later 19th century. When Country Life Magazine visited the estate in 1900 they called its garden one of strange character, but one to linger in. If you are fortunate enough to visit Heslington Hall today, why not take a walk through the remaining gardens yourself in the footsteps of James Hornby.

We’ll be back in November with more news from the archives!