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Borthwick Newsletter - June 2024

Posted on 31 May 2024

Welcome to the Borthwick's June newsletter.

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

Manuscript draft of an address entitled 'Women and the Intellectual Life', given 9 June 1908, with corrections and annotations [MacCarthy Foulds Archive, MCF/5/3/2/1/1]

What’s New?

After a bit of a rainy May, the sun seems to be making a reappearance as we head into June. The academic year is coming to a close so the library building has been busy with students revising for exams or finishing off coursework. Here at the Borthwick we’ve had another busy month (and a few glimpses of our resident fox cubs!).  Our searchroom team has welcomed 51 researchers onsite and answered more than 500 enquiries. We’ve also taken in six new accessions, added two new catalogues, given two public talks, and celebrated the opening of a new photography exhibition by University Photographer Paul Shields.  As well as his work for the university as a whole, Paul is often called upon to photograph particularly large and unwieldy archives for us - and his beautiful photographs of the campus and its wildlife have often been featured in our newsletters.  

New Accessions

In May we took in additions to a number of our existing archives.  We captured memories of the past 60 years of the University of York via a digital memory map, now part of the University of York digital archive.  We also added records of parish visitations, c 1968-2019, to the archive of the Archdeaconry of the East Riding, part of the wider York Diocesan Archive, and received several boxes of parish registers, faculties and other papers from the parish of West Buckrose.  West Buckrose is a united parish comprising the rural village churches of Acklam with Leavening, Birdsall, Burythorpe, Langton, North Grimston, Settrington and Westow, each of which have their own archive. 

Our remaining accessions are additions to our writing and performance collection, both with links to York.  CLAP (Now), previously the New Music Theatre Group, was a music theatre ensemble founded by staff and students here at the university. in 1973. Comprising composers, musicians and singers, CLAP (Now) believed that contemporary music could be enjoyed by anyone and their stated aim was to bring new developments in contemporary music and music-theatre to audiences outside of the main concert halls. Their work included works by established composers as well as new pieces, folk music, piano music and dance, knitted together ‘in imaginative ways’.   The accession includes correspondence, accounts, programmes and promotional posters and pamphlets from the foundation of the group until its closure in 1977.  

It was also in the 1970s that the creator of our last new accession, Martin Dreyer, began his career as music critic for the Yorkshire Evening Press (now The Press or York Press).  His archive covers nearly five decades of classical, operatic and jazz performances in York and includes programmes, notes and press clippings of reviews either written by Dreyer or under his direction.  The current archive runs to 2023, but Dreyer is still very much active and reviewing and you can read his recent reviews on the York Press website.

New Catalogues

Number of archival descriptions on Borthcat on 1st June 2024: 134,957

We added full catalogues for two more of our parish archives in May.  The parish of Langton is believed to date to the 11th century although the church, dedicated to St Andrew, was largely rebuilt in 1822.  It has a link to another of our archives, with the church boasting stained glass windows designed by J.W. Knowles whose workshop was on Stonegate in York.  J.W. Knowles also designed stained glass windows for our second parish, York, St Sampson, as well as painting the chancel ceiling.  As well as the usual records of parish administration; baptisms, marriages and burials; and poor relief, the archive contains a file relating to the use of St Sampson’s as a Centre for Old People in the 1970s with a range of contemporary advice leaflets for the elderly.  The leaflets make interesting reading today, with tips on what to eat, how to cope with the effects of ageing, and how to make the most of electricity in Winter.

We've also continued to expand the catalogue of our Rowntree Family Papers.  You can now read item level descriptions of the 19th century letters to Julia Seebohm (later the first wife of Joseph Rowntree) from her sister in law Mary Ann 'Bee' Seebohm, and from her niece Juliet Mary Seebohm.

Borthwick Out and About

Keeper of Archives and Research Collections, Gary Brannan, delivered a talk for the Archives and Records Association Northern Region on the current challenges facing university archives on the 30th April, coming in just too late to be included in last month’s newsletter.  On the 11th May Collections Information Archivist Sally-Anne Shearn spoke to around 30 members of the Fishergate, Fulford and Heslington Local History Society on the subject of John Bowes Morrell’s long lost plans for a Folk Park in York.  A report of the event, with illustrations, can be read on the society’s website.  

The most exciting event however was the launch on the 23rd May of a brand new exhibition, ‘BRUT’ by Paul Shields, celebrating brutalist and modernist architecture from the university campus and around the world.  The launch was very well attended and the exhibition, which is free and open to all, will run until September.  You can find it in the Fairhurst Corridor of the main university library building - if you’re new to the campus, just ask at the library help desk and they’ll point you in the right direction!

Looking forward to June, the Borthwick will be making a few appearances at the York Festival of Ideas.  On the 6th June you can find three members of staff - Gary Brannan, Lydia Dean and Laura Yeoman - at the Merchant Adventurers’ Hall on Fossgate, where they will be discussing the archive of the Company of Merchant Adventurers of York and its future with the company’s Museum Director Lauren Marshall. Laura will also be chairing the event ‘Penning Poison: A history of anonymous letters’ on 8th June, showcasing the work of historian Dr Emily Cockayne.  Material from York Minster Archives features in the ‘Let’s Sing: Ballads and cries of York’ workshop on the 6th June at King’s Manor, and material from the Borthwick features in a new talk by The Rowntree Society on ‘History Unsweetened: Rowntree, Cocoa and Indian Indentured Labour in the Caribbean’ on the 8th June.  Tickets for these and more are still available from the Festival of Ideas website.

Archive of the Month: Company of Merchant Adventurers of the City of York 

What is it? The extensive records of one of the city’s oldest guilds, dating from the 12th century to the present day.

Where can I find it? The archive has been fully catalogued and is available to search via our online catalogue Borthcat.

Why is it Archive of the Month?  As seen above, the records of the Merchant Adventurers will feature in this year’s York Festival of Ideas, against the backdrop of the company’s beautiful mediaeval hall on Fossgate.  The event is part of a long term partnership between the company and the Borthwick which started in July 2023 when Research Services Archivist Lydia Dean began the mammoth task of creating a comprehensive online catalogue for the archive, together with a dedicated project website.  

The results of Lydia’s work showcases the many and varied uses of this enormous archive, with the earliest record dated almost 200 years before the 1357 foundation of the Fraternity of our Lord Jesus Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary, the origins of what would later become the Company of Merchant Adventurers.  It is a source for religious history, the history of business and commerce in York and of social and cultural history more widely - with links to many other archives in our collections.  Did you know, for example, that the York Dispensary, which provided free medical treatment to the city poor, was first established in a room in the Merchant Adventurers’ Hall? Or that the company boasted the Terrys and the Rowntrees among their members?  The admission of the Rowntrees is especially fitting as the Rowntree company traced its beginnings to the small grocery business of Quaker Mary Tuke in the early 18th century, a business that only succeeded because Mary took on the Company of Merchant Adventurers and won (and she wasn’t the only woman to do so!).  

The Merchant Adventurers also took part in York’s famous Corpus Christi plays (better known as the Mystery Plays) in the mediaeval period, with records listing the props, performers and crafts involved.  Incidentally, many centuries later it was the first Director of the Borthwick, Canon Purvis, who would write the first modern script of the York Mystery Plays for the 1951 revival which formed part of Festival of Britain.  Today the Merchant Adventurers continue to perform the Last Judgement in the four-yearly staging of the plays, one of only a handful of surviving mediaeval guilds in York.

For longevity, the archive of the Company of Merchant Adventurers is rivalled only by the York Diocesan Archive, and this, together with its breadth of subject matter, make it a unique resource in the city’s heritage.  You can find out more about it by exploring the project website or browsing the online catalogue.

We’ll be back in July with more news and events from the archives!