Borthwick Newsletter - November 2024

Posted on 31 October 2024

Welcome to the Borthwick's November newsletter.

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

Programmes for Halloween Plays, including for ‘The Eleventh Hour’ and ‘The Ghost of Jerry Bundler,’ performed by the fifth form in 1946, with a bonfire song attached. [MOU/6/4/2/5/11]

What’s New

We’ve had a very busy autumn so far! Since the start of this semester, Archives and Research Collections have been part of 32 classes across the Borthwick and the Minster Library, engaging with 467 students - as well as receiving over 1,100 enquiries! We love being able to showcase our collections and to share them as part of teaching - we’re really lucky to have such rich collections at our fingertips here in York. Let us know if you have a favourite item that you’ve seen recently - we love to know what other people find exciting about our collections!

If you visit us in person, you’ll see that we’re also taking part in the Archives and Records Association on-site user survey, which we do every couple of years to find out a bit about who uses our collections and how they feel about our service overall. Thank you so much to those researchers who have already completed the optional survey during their visit - your feedback and responses are all so helpful to us in improving our services and making your experience as good as it can be! We really appreciate your help. We’re running the survey through to the last week of November and will get the results back in due course.

On-site visitors will also have seen that, following a trial period over the summer, from 28th October our building is now operating in eco-mode. This means that the opening hours of the Library have changed slightly. The main Morrell library building will remain open until midnight, and the Burton building (where the Borthwick Institute reading room and microform room are) now closes half an hour earlier, at 9.30pm. This change allows us to power down the building, save energy and reduce our carbon emissions. During the exam periods at the end of each semester, all the Library buildings will return to 24/7 opening. You can see an overview of the opening hours through the University Library’s website. Our main opening hours remain unchanged.

New Accessions

We took in 14 new accessions in October, all but four of which were additions to existing archives. Among our brand new archives is the Robin Murray Fair Trading Archive, comprising the papers of British economist Robin Murray and his work establishing Twin Trading, which combines trade with social and economic development. Twin Trading helped set up Cafédirect, the UK's first fair trade coffee brand, and Divine Chocolate, which gave co-ownership to Ghanaian cocoa farmers. The archive complements our existing food industry collections, and documents early examples of hybrid social enterprise businesses.

We also took in the archive of the filmmaker, writer and musician Richard Woolley, a large collection of papers from the York-based architectural firm W.R. Dunn & Co, and the records of the Goon Show Preservation Society (GSPS). We look forward to sharing more detail about these collections in a future newsletter - watch this space!

New Catalogues

Number of archival descriptions on Borthcat on 1st November 2024: 137, 086

In July we mentioned the exciting new accession of the York Racecourse Archive. We’re pleased to tell you that the archive has now been boxlisted and the list is available on Borthcat, pending a full catalogue which will be created at a later date.

Back in July we also mentioned the addition of the David Whitaker archive to our holdings. You can now browse a box list to this collection through Borthcat too, covering material from 1940s-2023.

This month, we’ve added the catalogue to the parish records of Nether Poppleton and this is another example of how varied the parish chest can be! The archive dates from 1640, although there has been a church at Nether Poppleton since the 11th century. The collection includes dade registers from 1777-1804, bastardy bonds and apprenticeship records, and also a selection of 18th century manor court documents laying out the holding of land in trust for the poor of the parish.

News from Conservation

Through October and November, we’re welcoming some conservation volunteers one afternoon each week. They’ve already tackled packaging glass plate negatives, wrapping unpackaged volumes and rolls, surface cleaning of architectural plans, reboxing a new accession, checking and cleaning another new accession to the collection and cleaning some probate bundles. And we’re only halfway through the placement - we’re very excited to see what else the group gets up to during their time here!

Borthwick Out and About

At the end of September, Art Curator Helena Cox and Keeper of Archives Gary Brannan were delighted to mark the unveiling of a new statue of Long Boi, by BBC Radio 1 presenter Greg James. The life-sized sculpture of the much-missed duck was cast in bronze from a hand carved mould created by award-winning wildlife sculptor Neil Mason, and stands near the lake at Derwent College on the University’s west campus. The Long Boi memorial was broadcast live on BBC Radio 1 Breakfast Show and also appeared on the BBC News at Six. You can watch highlights of the memorial service through the Radio 1 instagram account, as well as images of and reaction to the ceremony through the University of York Art Collection account.

Through his work on our collection of material relating to Southern Africa, our University Records Manager and Archivist, Charles Fonge, is part of SCOLMA, the UK Libraries and Archives Group on Africa. The latest series of SCOLMA seminars is now available through their YouTube channel - and the first in the series (‘Digital Re-Curation & Creative Research with African Archives’) also features our former Borthwick colleague Sally Kent, now Curator of the Royal Commonwealth Society collections at Cambridge University.

On 8th October, colleagues were pleased to attend the talk ‘York and the North: The Black Death, 1349-1373’ by Professor Sarah Rees Jones which brought together old and new evidence for future research avenues into the region’s experience of this global crisis. The talk drew on primary sources including records from the Borthwick’s collections, including the Archbishops’ Registers and our rich probate archive.

On 14th October, Gary Brannan and Access and Digital Engagement Archivist Laura Yeoman spent a morning with three Year 4 classes from Westfield Primary School, as part of a wider York Cares careers initiative called 'Day in the Life'. Gary and Laura spoke to the children about what being an archivist is like and what they do, and the children had the opportunity to draw what they would put in their own archives box, to help people from 2224 find out what life in 2024 was like. We've kept their drawings for the archives!

On the 18th October we held the first archival workshop for students from the University’s Centre for Applied Human Rights, using the records of the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust to explore ‘activist archives’. Founded as a company, not a charity, the JRRT had the freedom to fund overtly political causes and organisations and from the 1960s onwards they became a key source of support for campaigns both large and small.

We were also very excited to host the official launch of one of our current exhibitions, ‘The World Turned Upside Down: The weird and wonderful world of the chapbook’ on 22nd October. The exhibition featured in our September newsletter, and it was wonderful to see lots of people enjoying the exhibition. It’s open to all so please pop up to the third floor of the Burton Library to see it!

In the coming month, we’re involved in an exciting mix of online and in-person events. On 5th November, we’re once again taking part in History Day, an initiative set up by the Institute for Historical Research at Senate House which sees organisations share interesting aspects of their collections. This year, we’re showcasing the archive of the Company of Merchant Adventurers of the City of York - you can explore our Google microsite dedicated to the archive through the History Day Discover Collections web page - as well as browsing all the other exciting content on offer!

On 6th November, the annual general meeting of the Canterbury and York Society is being held at King’s Manor, where Dr Richard Allen (Magdalen College, Oxford) will present an address on ‘Qui scripsit hanc cartam: charters and their scribes through the archives of Magdalen College, Oxford (c.1100–c.1300)’. Find out more about the Society’s events and publications through their website.

Gary Brannan will be giving a talk at Riccall Historical Society on Thursday 14th November, exploring the Black Death in Yorkshire during 1349, drawing on the information and stories in our probate archive. The talk is free to members of the Riccall Historical Society, and costs £4 for non-members.

Finally, you can catch us at the Military Memorabilia Day at York Army Museum on Saturday 23rd November where Access and Digital Engagement Archivist Laura Yeoman will be on hand to answer all your burning questions about military records. If you can’t make it on the day you can read about our military collections via our handy online guide.

Archive of the Month: Catalogue of Books Presented by the late William Priestley Esq. to the Halifax Parish Church Library

What is it? A catalogue of books which was presented to the Vicar of Halifax in aid of the restoration of the ancient library in the church of St John the Baptist in Halifax.

Where can I find it? The archive forms part of our Miscellaneous Documents collection, and you can find them through our online catalogue Borthcat.

Why is it Archive of the Month? This month we thought it would be nice to tie into the Rare Books theme, following the success of the Chapbooks exhibition launch, and so this interesting volume seemed like the perfect fit. Including a list of 347 books purchased, as well as associated music scores, the catalogue relates to the extensive parish library of Halifax, which is held here on deposit from Halifax church. The library was founded by Robert Clay, who was the vicar of Halifax between 1624 and 1628, and contains a wonderful variety of books, from works of the Church fathers St Augustine and St Ambrose, to Cicero, to Erasmus. The catalogue of books was presented by William Priestley, a wool clothier from Halifax, who had a strong interest in music and literature. The Halifax parish library forms part of a wider collection of parish and theological libraries held both here in Rare Books and at the Minster Library. You can book to see both this manuscript catalogue and items from the library itself by sending us an email on borthwick-institute@york.ac.uk!

We’ll be back next month with our last update for 2024!