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Borthwick Newsletter - April 2025

Posted on 31 March 2025

Welcome to the Borthwick's April newsletter.

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

Typescript copies of letters of Susan Mary Patten [later Susan Mary Alsop] to her mother, describing a visit to England in April 1945, and life in France, 1946-1947, where the writer was working in Paris with the Red Cross [HALIFAX/A2/280/28].

What’s New?

The biggest news in March was the return, after nearly seven years of work, of the parish register of St John Figtree to the Caribbean island of Nevis.  The register, which records baptisms, marriages, and burials (including Horatio Nelson’s 1787 marriage), has been through a lot — high humidity, high temperatures, and insect damage.  But now, after all that work, it’s finally back where it belongs.

Conservation Manager Alison Fairburn and Keeper of Archives Gary Brannan, supported by project partners the 1805 Club, flew to Nevis earlier in the month to take part in official ceremonies on Nevis to mark the register's return.  The handover at St John’s Church was a special moment. The Deputy Governor and Deputy Prime Minister of Nevis, alongside members of the St Kitts and Nevis Defence Force and representatives from HMS Medway, the Royal Navy’s permanent presence in the region, joined us for the ceremony. The ceremony was deeply moving and was a reminder of how the register is not solely a historical document but a vital part of the island’s story.

Our time in Nevis wasn’t all work, though. The AGM of the Nevis Historical and Conservation Society gave us the chance to meet fantastic people, including new NHCS President Isobel Byron. We also visited the Nevis Archives, where we exchanged ideas with archivist Delvon Clarke, discussing future conservation projects and even the possibility of a visit to York.

And then there was all the joys of being on Nevis itself - monkeys everywhere, a dramatic (but thankfully survivable) hike, and birds, fruit, and plenty of rum punch.

This project has strengthened our relationship with Nevis, and the work isn’t stopping here. We’re already looking at further collaboration with the island’s heritage community and more. But for now, we’re just grateful to have been part of such a meaningful journey.

New Accessions

In March, we added a new edition of Goon School News to the Goon Show Preservation Society Archive and two boxes of church surveys to the archive of the Arts Society (formerly the National Association of Decorative and Fine Arts Societies).  New additions to the University of York archive included memories of campus dances and music gigs between 1968-1972; copies of The Derwenter, a newspaper created in 2023 by students of Derwent college; and records of the Outdoor Society.  The Outdoor Society is one of the university’s oldest societies, founded in 1964 and meeting weekly for organised walks in the Yorkshire Moors and Dales.  The latest batch of material dates from 1986 to the present and includes newsletters, walk reports and administrative papers.

We also received an unexpected accession by post.  Usually we know when new archives are coming, but near the end of March a large envelope arrived containing photographs of the Rowntree North Street and Cocoa Works factories, Rowntree workers, delivery vans, and the company fire engine, as well as copies of memorial booklets about Joseph and Seebohm Rowntree.  The sender included a note donating them to the archive, but no address so we were unable to thank them for their generous gift, but the items will be placed in our Rowntree Private Deposits archive where we have no doubt they’ll prove popular with our Rowntree researchers!

We finished out the month with another donation of pictures, only this time in the form of some beautifully painted watercolours.  The Mrs Carr Watercolour Archive comprises five sketchbooks of views of York and the surrounding area (with a small number from as far afield as London) dating from the 1830s to the 1860s.  

The watercolours appear to be the work of Joseph Hall of the aptly named 9 Camera Square, Chelsea, who is recorded in the 1841 census as an artist.  As well as watercolours of the York city walls and riverside, he also painted local windmills, village churches and coastline, interspersed with handwritten notes on his various travels back and forth between Yorkshire and London.  The books are a wonderful glimpse into a lost Yorkshire, capturing York and its rural surroundings in vivid colour - and long before photography could achieve the same.

New Catalogues

Number of archival descriptions on Borthcat on 1st April 2025: 139,981

In March we completed a preliminary box list for the Robert Holman Archive, which can now be viewed on Borthcat.  The 33 boxes of material include personal and professional correspondence, scripts, set designs, production notes and promotional materials for plays written by Holman between the 1960s and 2021.

We have also added the full catalogue for the parish archive of Old Malton.  St Mary’s Church in Old Malton began life as the church of a Gilbertine Priory in the 12th century, although an earlier church was mentioned in the Domesday Book.  The present archive dates from 1606 and the earliest record, the parish register, is one of those rare but wonderful survivals in which the parish priest has recorded not only baptisms, marriages and burials but also fascinating bits of parish memoranda. Thus we know the burial fee for anyone over the age of 21 buried in the chancel, chapels or aisles of the church in 1606 (five shillings); the contents of the parish library in 1630; and even the armour belonging to the parish for the same year - which included an impressive eight swords and four muskets.    

News from Conservation

The conservation team were busy with exhibitions in March, completing the final switching of colourful material in the Chapbooks exhibition which has been happening every 3 months, to make sure that the colours don't fade. This exhibition will be deinstalled at the beginning of June, so do come and see it in the next few months before it goes.

They have also installed a new Dante exhibition in the Burton foyer, but it will only be with us for a month, so catch it while you can! The beautiful facsimiles of works by or relating to Dante will be swapped for a second batch half way through, so it will be worth a couple of visits to see the full extent of the exhibition.

We’ve also said goodbye to our latest cohort of conservation volunteers, who completed their placement after achieving a huge amount of work in just a few months.  As well as all of the activities outlined in the last newsletter, this month they have been: cleaning mouldy records; unrolling probate bundles which haven't been unrolled in hundreds of years and cleaning them for digitisation; cleaning parchment documents ready for conservation; learning about monitoring the environment for temperature, relative humidity, light, dust and pests; and reboxing unpackaged collections.

Looking ahead, the team have been doing some work for an event at this year’s York Festival of Ideas on paste paper bindings. The programme and bookings aren't live yet, but we are very excited to share it with you in another few months!

Borthwick Out and About

We mentioned in last month’s newsletter that we had acquired the joke books of Eric Morecambe at a recent auction.  This latest accession was covered by BBC News and by BBC Radio York (clip included in the BBC News article) and they are proving popular among visitors to our searchroom.

You might also have spotted our Access and Digital Engagement Archivist Laura Yeoman on the Kickass Women of History podcast in March, talking about York anchoress Isabel German.  An ‘anchoress’ (the male version was an anchorite) was a kind of religious hermit who lived a life of spiritual seclusion, usually in a small cell attached to a church or other religious building, and had very limited contact with the outside world.  The tradition had its heyday in the late medieval period, and ended in England with the Dissolution of the Monasteries and the widespread religious changes of the 1530s and 1540s.  

Isabel German was the anchoress of All Saints Church in Fishergate, York, in the 15th century.  The discovery of her remains in 2007 in the ruins of the church and its graveyard had already revealed a great deal about her life and death, but new research from the Borthwick adds a rich vein of documentary evidence to what we know about Isabel and contemporary attitudes towards her.  You can listen to the podcast on the Kickass Women of History website or read more about Isabel on the accompanying blog.  

This is not the first time our records have featured on the podcast, in a previous episode you can listen to Rare Books Librarian Sarah Griffin discussing the 17th century women printers of York.  Alice Broad and Grace White were both pioneers in the city.  Alice continued her husband John’s printing business after his death c 1656 and was, for a time, the only printer operating in York. Grace White later inherited half of the Broad business through marriage and, like Alice, continued to run the press herself, creating the city’s first ever newspaper, the York Mercury.  Examples of their publications (and the York Mercury) can be found in the Rare Books collection here and at York Minster Library and Sarah discusses the challenges faced by both women, as well as their successes.

Looking forward, you can find a brand new exhibition in the Borthwick display cases in the Burton Foyer (mentioned above, in News from Conservation).  Installed in time for Dantedì ('Dante Day'), the exhibition showcases facsimiles connected to some of Dante’s famous works, including the oldest known manuscript of the Commedia itself and a 14th century manuscript by Francesco da Barberino which is believed to contain the earliest reference to the same.  The exhibition will be available until 28 April, with new facsimiles on show from 10 April.

On 9 April researcher Stan Young will be looking at the life, letters and legacy of Noel Terry in the Spring Sheldon Memorial Lecture on campus.  The lecture draws on new material from the Terry Family Archive, which was gifted to the Borthwick in 2023, and promises to explore not just the life of Noel but also the significance of the Terry family as a whole and the legacy of the famous confectionery company which gave the world the Terry’s Chocolate Orange.

Finally (and in case you missed it!) late last year a series of drawings by a York artist were donated to the Company of Merchant Adventurers of the City of York.  The drawings were of a building in Lady Peckitt’s Yard which once belonged to the company - if you’ve explored York you may have spotted the narrow entrance to Lady Peckitt’s Yard beside what is now York Gin Shop.  The Yard has links not only to the Merchant Adventurers but also to the Rowntree family who used a building there as the base for their Adult School in the 19th century.  You can read a short blog about the drawings on the company website or explore the rest of the company’s archive on our online catalogue Borthcat.

Archive Of The Month: Michael Young Archive

What is it? The records of businessman Michael Young and the role he played in secret talks between the African National Congress (ANC) and the South African government in the 1980s.

Where can I find it? The full catalogue is available on Borthcat.

Why is it Archive of the Month? Among the many individuals and organisations who played a part in dismantling the racist Apartheid regime in South Africa was the York alumni Michael Young.  At first glance he might not have been an obvious candidate for such a role, working as he did for the UK based mining company Consolidated Gold Fields. But Young had long been active in politics - for the Conservative and then the Liberal Party - and was personally opposed to Apartheid. Moreover, the company he worked for had a subsidiary in South Africa and as their Public Affairs Director and Political Advisor Young knew they would need a contingency plan for a post-Apartheid state.  To that end, he and other businessmen met with the exiled ANC leader Oliver Tambo in London in 1985 and 1986.  It was after the 1986 meeting that Young approached Tambo to ask what else a company like his could do and was told that what was needed was a means of opening communication between the ANC and the South African government.

As a result of this conversation, Young secured the approval of his company Chairman and began approaching senior figures in the Afrikaner establishment with a view to initiating secret talks between the two sides.  The first talks were held in October 1987 at a hotel in Marlow, England, with further talks hosted by Consolidated Gold Fields at their headquarters in Somerset.  The privacy and unofficial nature of the talks allowed for varied discussions - ranging from the release of Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners to the private attitudes of senior government figures.  The archive covers the planning of these controversial meetings, the minutes of the meetings themselves, reports on the progress made, and their long term effects.  

Knowledge of the talks finally became public in 1989 and have since been the subject of books, articles, and even a film dramatisation, ‘Endgame’, in 2009.  The archive, however, captures the slow and painstaking reality of a course of action which, at the time, had every possibility of going wrong, but which, through the efforts of Young and representatives of both sides, ended up instead laying crucial groundwork for a democratic South Africa.

We’ll be back in May with more news and events from the archive!