Borthwick Newsletter - May 2022

Posted on 29 April 2022

Welcome to the Borthwick's May newsletter

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

May Moss: Papers relating to the stewardship of May Moss, a former YWT nature reserve and SSSI in the North York Moors. Records include letters, management plants and peat depth studies 1970-1986, as well as recording the first discovery of Cloudberry in the vice-county in 1973. [Yorkshire Wildlife Trust Archive, YWT/5/53]

What’s New?

The university has begun its Summer Term and the campus is looking increasingly bright and sunny - although the return of the rather fierce campus geese is always something of a mixed blessing. University Photographer Paul Shields has been out and about taking photographs in the lovely weather - capturing blossoms, daffodils, and even one of our mandarin ducks out on the lake.

Mandarin duck photographed by Paul Shields

You may have spotted the Borthwick in the news in April when we announced the acquisition of a new archive with connections to legendary comedy duo Morecambe and Wise. The archive of producer Ernest Maxin includes scripts, photographs and memorabilia covering five decades of his work in television, from his time on the Morecambe and Wise Show to his work with comedians like Dick Emery, Les Dawson and York’s own Frankie Howerd (whose archive we also hold). See the ‘Borthwick in the Media’ section below for more details of the archive and its coverage in the press and on the radio.

In addition to the Ernest Maxin material, we have taken in six other new accessions over the past month, and added more than 2000 new descriptions to our online catalogue Borthcat. We also filled fifty six appointment slots in the Searchroom and Microfilm Room in April, as well as answering hundreds of enquiries by telephone, email and letter. As a typical week of enquiries at the Borthwick can include everything from a straightforward request for a copy of a will, to someone emailing from thousands of miles away seeking answers to a longstanding family mystery, this core part of our job is rarely boring!

New Accessions

Four of our seven accessions in April were additions to our University of York Archive, including hard copies of university prospectuses and articles concerning the design and building of the university library in the 1960s. If you have ever visited the Borthwick you will know that we are situated in a later addition to the main library building, which was built by local York firm, Shepherd Construction, between 1962 and 1964. Its proper name is of course the Morrell Library, named after John Bowes Morrell, a friend and colleague of the Rowntree’s, one time Lord Mayor of York, and a key figure in the campaign to establish a university in the city.

An addition was also made in April to our St Saviourgate Unitarian Chapel archive. The chapel is the oldest surviving place of nonconformist worship of York and it was established only four years after the 1688 Act of Toleration allowed Protestants to worship outside of the Church of England. Its archive is a fascinating one, dating back to the late sixteenth century. It contains many things you might not expect, not least a cache of family records belonging to one of its ministers, Charles Wellbeloved, which includes the poems and other writings of his son John, who sadly died while travelling on the continent in 1819 at the age of only 21. The new accession is similarly varied, including as it does key records of chapel administration, chapel magazines, and photographs, alongside intriguing early survivals, such as a 1692 ‘Schedule of Writings belonging to ye Meeting house at York’ which gives an account of how the chapel came to be. You can read more about the original archive in a 2017 blog, and we look forward to adding to our knowledge with this new accession.

Finally, we were gifted records relating to George Gale, a Professor of Medicine who spent much of his career in South Africa. We already hold the Papers of George Gale, which were donated to the university’s Centre for Southern African Studies in the 1970s by the Gale family. However this new accession was collected separately as part of research carried out into the history of public health in South Africa and as such will eventually form a distinct archive, albeit one that complements the existing collection.

New Catalogues

Number of archival descriptions on Borthcat on 1st May 2022: 91,465

We’re very pleased to say that we have begun adding our enormous Tuke Family Collection catalogue to Borthcat. The Tukes were a York Quaker family who were prominent in the local Anti Slavery movement and instrumental in the foundation of a number of well known institutions, including the Retreat Hospital and the Mount School for Girls. Their archive includes thousands of letters and papers, photographs, books and ephemera on a wide range of subjects, from family life to religion, education, mental health, business, travel and York civic life. The scanned paper catalogue for the archive runs to some 1,768 pages, making it a daunting task for retroconversion. However we have now made an excellent start, adding all of the sections of the catalogue down to the subsubseries level. Although we have not yet added the descriptions for individual letters and documents, this means you can now find key names and dates, as well as subjects, for the entire archive, giving researchers a window into a collection that was otherwise confined to a printed volume on the searchroom shelves.

Our searchroom team has also added another parish archive catalogue to Borthcat in April, this time the parish of Sherburn in Elmet. The foundation at Sherburn has a very long history, as reference was made to its existence in the York Gospels and then again in the Domesday Book. If you have visited the museum at York Minster you may have seen the Gospels, a beautifully illuminated Anglo-Saxon book brought to York sometime around 1020 by Archbishop Wulfstan. The original Anglo-Saxon church was replaced by the Normans and then substantially expanded later. Interestingly the manor of Sherburn was the country retreat of the Archbishops of York until the fourteenth century, providing another link between the Minster and the medieval parish. Although the parish records for Sherburn only date to 1640, they include one of those registers beloved of archivists and researchers alike. Not content to simply record parish burials, the parish officers who filled out the burial register for 1754-1778 added their own news and insights, noting new furnishings, new bridges in the local area, the time the vicar dug up ‘the skull of Lord Dacre’, and when hail fell ‘as big as penny rolls’.

Borthwick in the Media

The acquisition of the Ernest Maxin Archive was the biggest Borthwick news story in April. As well as the university press release, it was covered in the York Press and on Yorkshire Buzz. Our Keeper of Archives, Gary Brannan, also appeared on BBC Radio York to talk about it with Breakfast presenter Georgey Spanswick on the 12th April, you can listen back on the website, from around 1 hour 37 minutes in.

Archive Assistant Lydia Dean also gave a fascinating talk to the Gainford Local History Group in April on the life and achievements of remarkable Yorkshire botanist Catherine ‘Kit’ Rob. Despite never having received any formal botanical education, Kit Rob went on to become President of the Botanical Society of the British Isles, helped to compile the Collins Pocket Guide to British Wildflowers, championed other women botanists, and even found time to compete and win at Crufts with her prize winning Corgi dogs. You can read more about Kit Rob on the University of York website and find out about her archive on Borthcat.

Finally we ran a poll on our Twitter and Facebook pages to find out whether there was interest in attending some one-off learning sessions with us in the future, aimed at introducing some of our key collections. Thank you to everyone who responded, we had some very helpful feedback so please watch this space!

Archive of the Month: Yorkshire Wildlife Trust Archive

What is it? The records of the work of Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, or YWT, a charity set up in 1946 to conserve, protect and restore wildlife and wild places in Yorkshire.

YWT/A177

Where can I find it? The catalogue of the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust Archive is available on Borthcat.

Why is it Archive of the Month? The archive of YWT begins in 1933 but its story goes back 15,000 years to the formation of Askham Bog in the Vale of York during the last glacial melt. Today the Bog is recognised as one of the most ecologically diverse sites in the North of England and is a designated Site of Scientific Interest, but its future wasn’t always so well assured. In 1915 it was included on a list compiled by the Society for the Promotion of Nature Reserves detailing sites worthy and in need of preservation, but it wasn’t until the 1940s that it was finally saved - thanks to two confectioners and the newly formed Yorkshire Naturalists’ Trust, later renamed Yorkshire Wildlife Trust. In 1944 the Bog was purchased by Sir Francis Terry and Arnold Stephenson Rowntree and the Trust was formed just two years later to take ownership of the site and ensure its preservation for future generations.

Since then the work of YWT has expanded to include the management of more than 100 nature reserves across more than 3000 acres of land in Yorkshire. These include Flamborough Cliffs, Spurn, and Potteric Carr. The archive was first deposited with us in 2013 and has been added to regularly ever since. As well as records of the foundation of the Trust, its officers, staff and administration, the archive includes the records of more than 180 of its sites to date. These include site management plans and correspondence and a vast array of ecological records, from a 1933 survey of Askham Bog to surveys of species found at Denaby Ings in the year 2000 and beyond, as well as correspondence on a wide range of subjects relating to conservation work, both locally and nationally. As a record of the ecology of Yorkshire, the archive is a unique and essential resource, preserving the history of these sites just as YWT have worked to preserve the sites themselves. It also represents the largest of a growing collection of environment and natural history archives here at the Borthwick which are now the subject of a dedicated website. As stated in the inaugural Annual Report of YWT, such archives must surely be of interest to all ‘Naturalists and all lovers of the beauties of Yorkshire’.

We’ll be back with more news in June!