Tag: #specialcollections

Library by the sea: the first printed catalogue of the Bamburgh Castle Library

Way before the existence of the large online library catalogues we are now familiar with, libraries users would have had to visit a library to find if it held the material they were interested in, or they might be able to consult a printed catalogue. Today, these printed catalogues are valuable to researchers and librarians interested in what libraries used to have on their shelves and how the library’s contents changed over time. They tell us about former library management practices and collection development. They offer an insight into what was considered appropriate reading material. Where libraries no longer exist, historic catalogues are important witnesses to how knowledge and information circulated among communities. They are occasionally also a source of information about who could use the library and on what terms.

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Item of the month: From tea rooms to decontamination centres – developments at South Shields sea front in the 1920s 

plan showing concrete platform with swimming bath and tennis courts, identifying parts of beach and land north of Lawe Road from different deeds, and marking row of buildings with red and blue hatching.

A post by archivist Andrew Gray

August means summer holidays.  And for many of us, summer holidays means days at the beach.  So this month, we celebrate the beaches at South Shields, and in particular the development of the foreshore north of the pier (Littlehaven beach) in the 1920s. 

Our item of the month comes in the middle of this development, so first some context.  The end of the 19th century saw the transformation of local government, culminating locally in the formation of South Shields County Borough in 1889. In 1896, the Corporation had got Parliament to pass the South Shields Corporation Act, “… to make better provision for the health and good government of the Borough and for other purposes.”  This gave the local authority extensive powers (among others) to acquire new lands, to regulate the use of the seafront and public bathing, and to lay out and manage public parks. During the first decades of the 20th century, they took advantage of their new powers, and development of the foreshores at South Shields was typical of this new ambition. 

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Item of the month: First world war novel or anonymised memoir: ‘The Crown Prince’s Jewels’

The Sudan Archive recently accessioned the papers of Philip Ingleson (1892-1985) and his wife Gwen (née Fulton, 1896-1986). Philip Ingleson was Governor of Darfur from 1935 until his retirement in 1944, his period in office probably extended due to the war. Unusually, Ingleson also served as governor in Halfa (1931-1932), Berber (1932-1934) and Bahr el Ghazal provinces as well. He thus must be one of the few people to have governed in north, south and west Sudan; he began his career in the Sudan Political Service in 1919 as an Inspector in Um Kedada, Darfur.

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Item of the month: 1933 Essay Book of Georg Backhaus

A post by Jenny Coulton, Archives and Special Collections Graduate Intern

This month marks ninety years since a series of events which culminated in the Nazi monopolisation of power in Germany. On March 23rd 1933, the Enabling Act was passed, allowing the Nazi party to pass legislation without the approval of the Reichstag. From this point onwards, a slew of vitriolic propaganda and indoctrination was produced, mentally preparing citizens for war, and encouraging them to denigrate certain social groups. Much of this indoctrination occurred within the classroom, and this month’s item was produced in such an environment.

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Graduate intern update: Jenny

Graduate intern Jenny Coulton tells us what she’s been up to recently…

Hello again readers! I’m here to give another update on what I’ve been up to since October as an intern with Durham’s Archives and Special Collections.

One of the biggest projects I’ve been working on has been cataloguing my first collection. I’ve been working on the Backhaus family papers – a small group of material that will be part of our larger Else Headlam-Morley collection. The papers are centred around a woman (Frieda Backhaus nee Herzberg), her life in Germany 1893-1950, and her emigration and final years living in the UK under the employment of the Headlam-Morleys. It’s a fascinating insight into a family, and a great source for life in Germany just before and after the Second World War. One of the most interesting items, in my opinion, is a letter from Frieda’s father, Max, to the commander of the Russian occupation of Berlin, praising the Red Army and even sending the commander a copy of a manuscript he had been working on – and all this on a letter written only a few days after the end of the war! I’ve also been really enjoying the process of cataloguing, although learning how to not get sucked into reading every detail is surprisingly difficult. Nevertheless, it’s very satisfying to summarise, and even more fulfilling to realise that my work means that these collections are now mor easily accessible for future academics and research.

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Item of the month: Codrington College, Barbados. After a drawing by the bishop of Barbados

A post by University Archivist Jonathan Bush

This print of Codrington College, Barbados, was sketched by William Hart Coleridge (1789-1849), the bishop of Barbados and the Leeward Islands, and is one of the earliest examples of lithography by William Louis Walton (1808?-1879). The date of printing is uncertain, but likely to be shortly before the Slavery Abolition Act (1833), which abolished slavery on a gradual basis in most parts of the British Empire.

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Item of the month: Ye Peakrel, a Winster Christmas hodgepodge, 1878

A post by Collections Assistant Jennifer Leach

Content note: Historic material will reflect the language of the original creators. Voices, objects and images from the past can display attitudes, opinions and relate to events which may be viewed as biased and offensive in today’s society.

As Christmas is fast approaching, this month’s item shows how a family in 1878 brought some festive cheer to those around them. This is a humorous newsletter “Imprinted at Winster Hall, in the County of Derbyshire, at the private press of Llwellynn Jewitt, F.S.A”, sold for the princely sum of “Nowt!” for private distribution. The newsletter states that only 25 copies were printed so perhaps these were to amuse friends, family or neighbours in the Christmas season.

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Book of Transumpt: conservation completed

completed conservation, bound sections, bespoke storage box

A post by Conservator Fiona Butterfield

I recently completed conservation treatment of a Book of Transumpt (1529-1553) that was started pre-pandemic.  The Book of Transumpt (B of T) is a large volume of more than 700 pages each approx 320mm h x 220mm w.  It is hand-inscribed (in Latin) in iron gall ink.  The pages were bound in a limp vellum binding.  It comprised 18 sections made up from 35 sub-sections.  In the original binding sections were predominantly sewn with linen thread and then attached to the binding with parchment tackets.

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