Archives on Loan

This is a guest post by Catherine Dand, a Conservator at the Borthwick Institute.

Our Conservation department is pleased to report that we have a number of archives and special collections that will be going on loan this year. Loaning archival material, especially for the purpose of display, is an exciting way to increase access to the archives. It is an excellent opportunity to raise awareness of our collections, and to build up context and associations for our archives, giving them greater depth.

Our largest loan request this year was from Fairfax House in York. Fairfax House has asked to borrow 4 books and 1 pamphlet from the University of York Special Collections and 4 objects from the Retreat Archive at the Borthwick Institute, to be displayed in their exhibition In Pursuit of Pleasure: The Polite and Impolite World of Georgian Entertainment, which runs from Friday 29th July to Saturday 31st December 2016.

The conservator’s role in the loans process is to reduce the risks that the archives might face while away from home. This can take various forms.

Fig. 1 Sample page from UKRG Facilities Report

• Initially we need to gather details about the loan that could impact on the safety of the archives. We want to ensure that security has been fully considered at all stages of the loan, including transport, storage, access and display. We would request information about the environment that the archives will be stored and/or displayed in, which would take into account aspects such as temperature and humidity, light levels and exposure, and fluctuations in these environmental factors. We would also want to know what materials the display cases, mounts or supports will be made from, to check that they are appropriate and there will not be anything that might damage the archival materials.

Often facilities reports will be filled in and returned to us, which provide most of the information outlined above (fig.1). Fairfax House sent us a facility report along with 2 supplementary reports – one on security and one on display cases – which addressed almost all of our questions very quickly. Any extra enquiries can then be easily answered.

• If there are any concerns with the information that we have gathered, our first response is to look for solutions to problems and ways to work around any issues. If we can be helpful, we are keen to provide advice and support to the people and/or organisation that will be responsible for the archives while they are on loan.

There were no obstacles to the Fairfax House loan, but as they will be providing their own mounts and supports we were able to offer advice and suggestions on these aspects from our condition reports (see below). Previous loans to other organisations have included the additional loan of equipment such as display cases, book rests or weights, as well as environmental monitoring equipment such as data loggers to record temperature and humidity, blue wool samples to monitor light exposure or simple Oddy testing materials to check for off-gassing.

Fig.2 Photographic documentation

• Each item requested for loan is condition assessed to confirm that it is in adequate condition for the purpose of the loan. We will undertake written and photographic documentation of each item, which should effectively communicate the structure and materials of the item and the condition of these different aspects (fig.2).

Accurately recording the condition of items before they leave the building is also the only way in which we can monitor any changes that may occur while they are away. The vast majority of loans are made to people who are careful with the archives, but there have been occasions where carelessness or lack of knowledge has led to damage. If we are aware of what has happened then we can prepare for it better next time.

Assessment also gives us the opportunity to highlight any specific advice or cautions with regard to individual items and the purpose of the loan. If a volume requested for exhibition is very large or has a restricted opening and extra thought will be needed regarding a book rest, this can be passed on. If the item has been requested for access but the materials are too unstable to be handled, we can discuss what the options are.

As Fairfax House had decided to provide their own book supports, our condition reports allowed us to make recommendations as to the maximum angle of safe opening for display on books that have a restricted opening or damaged joints. It also gave us the opportunity to highlight any particular damage or weaknesses – forewarned is forearmed!

Fig.3 Page requested for display is detached

• Once we have assessed the items conservators can also undertake any treatments to ensure that the items are as stable as possible for the loan.

One of the volumes requested for the Fairfax House exhibition had several detached pages, one of which was the page selected for display (fig.3). The volume does not open freely, and straps will be required to keep the book open at this page; therefore the loose, protruding pages could be at risk of damage from both handling and the straps. All detached pages were reattached to the volume.

This book also had a detached back board. It was decided that it was not necessary to reattach the board for the exhibition. As long as the board is carefully positioned on the book support, it will still be able to provide the necessary support for the textblock while the volume is on display. The damage has been noted, and this information will be stored on our Work Required database, to be addressed in the future.

Fig.4 Packaging objects for loan

• Finally, conservators package loan items to ensure that they are transported safely. Usually this will include: individual packaging for each item; a box for easy transfer; padding within the box to stop the items moving around and to provide an environmental buffer for the items; and a plastic covering for the box in case it rains! 

Sometimes packaging for loans needs to be more extensive. Fairfax House has requested a number of un-accessioned objects from the Retreat archives, including various manacles and restraints. It was necessary to rethink their packaging, to ensure that the items were secure during transit. Layers of Plastazote were built up to create a mould for each item, and these slotted together in a box (fig.4). The mould for each item is still separate, and so items can be stored in individual boxes on their return to the archive.

The exhibition at Fairfax House opens on Friday 29th July, and we are excited to see the items on display. If you get a chance to attend, see if you can spot the items that have come from the Borthwick and the University Special Collections!

For more information on the Fairfax House exhibition In Pursuit of Pleasure: The Polite and Impolite World of Georgian Entertainment, please see our news page.

York County Hospital and World War One

York County Hospital was established in 1740 and until 1977, when the current hospital opened, was the main hospital in York. The hospital was originally run as a charity, supported by wealthy subscribers. It continued to be run in this way right up to the 20^th century when the income from subscriptions and investments was supplemented by patient fees and insurance schemes.  It joined the NHS in 1948 and treated its last patients in 1980. The original County Hospital buildings are still standing and can be seen just off Monkgate.

In 1914, when World War One broke out, the hospital allocated 50 beds for military patients. By the end of that year it had treated 102 sick and wounded soldiers. The percentage of military patients treated at the hospital increased throughout the war and, to accommodate them, two additional hutted wards were built at the back of the main hospital building. 

Photograph of sick and wounded soldiers,

Annual Report 1916 (BIA YCH 1/2/9)

Analysis of military cases

Annual Report 1916 (BIA YCH 1/2/9)

The hospital treated both medical and surgical patients. During 1916, amongst other medical cases, staff dealt with 7 cases of gas poisoning and 13 cases of trench fever. This extract of the surgical treatments carried out on military patients includes numerous bayonet, bullet and shrapnel wounds, as well as several shell shock patients.

During the First World War, around 10% of British casualties were classified as suffering from shell-shock. At the start of the conflict, it was believed that shell-shock was caused by physical head injuries resulting from bombardment. In 1915, a paper in the medical journal The Lancet put forward an alternative, psychological, explanation for the disorder noting that many soldiers that were suffering the symptoms of shell-shock had not received a head injury. By 1917, the British military authorities tried to limit the use of the diagnosis and continuing debates over causes and treatments created further controversy. By World War Two, to diagnose shell-shock was forbidden.   

List of gifts donated for wounded soldiers

Annual Report 1916 (BIA YCH 1/2/9)

Photograph of the night staff, 1914 (BIA YCH 1/6)

The coming of war meant that the County Hospital faced huge financial strain. With an existing debt of £3,800 and the price of commodities rising, the hospital’s 1916 annual report noted an increased expenditure of 24%. A special appeal in 1915-16 sought to raise funds and the generosity of hospital supporters is documented in the lists of gifts donated to the military patients. An extract of this list is included above, showing a range of the gifts given: from eggs, tobacco and newspapers to concert tickets, gramophone records and car rides.

By May 1919, the County Hospital had treated over 2000 military patients. As the hospital slowly returned to its peace-time operations, the wards built for the soldiers were converted into new treatment spaces. One space formed an orthopaedic department for discharged servicemen and other patients who required ongoing therapy. The continuing treatment of veterans was something at the forefront of the minds of those running the hospital, succinctly displayed in this quote from their annual report (BIA YCH 1/2/9):

"It is, of course, essential that those who have been disabled or broken in health in the service of the Country should receive the best possible treatment, and it seems obvious that such treatment is not most readily available at the general hospitals...Pending the satisfactory arrangement of conditions, the Committee, with the complete agreement of the Medical Staff have decided that the full resources of the Hospital shall be placed at the disposal of all discharged men who are recommended for treatment."

Lydia Dean

Archives Assistant

This blog is in part based on a forthcoming exhibition at York Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.

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Sources:

Ben Shephard 'Pitiless psychology’: the role of prevention in British military psychiatry in the Second World War' in History of Psychiatry October 1999 10: 491-524

Edgar Jones, Ph.D., D.Phil. Nicola T. Fear, D.Phil. Simon Wessely, M.D. 'Shell Shock and Mild Traumatic Brain Injury: A Historical Review' in Am J Psychiatry 2007; 164:1641–1645

K.A. Webb From County Hospital to NHS Trust, The History and Archives of NHS hospitals, services and management in York 1740-2000 (Vol 1: History) Borthwick Texts and Calendars 27, UoY 2002

pp147-173

Conservation and The Science of Light

A data logger hidden behind an exhibit

The Conservation Department has recently been involved in the installation of two new exhibitions: ‘The Architecture of War Memorials’, which can be found on the third floor of the Raymond Burton Library, and ‘The Pity of War’, which is on display along the ground floor main corridor in the Harry Fairhurst. We decided that this would be a good opportunity to set up some environmental monitoring, so that we could investigate the environmental conditions within the display cases for the duration of an exhibition. We positioned data loggers in various cases to record temperature and relative humidity, hiding the loggers under exhibits and behind stands. We also agreed that we would conduct some light monitoring for the exhibition areas.

Data Logger hidden behind an exhibit

It is difficult to be discreet about our light monitoring – the blue wool sample cards that we have positioned in the cases need to be in direct light to give an honest indication of light exposure in the cases. You should be able to spot two sample cards in each exhibition.

Blue Wool Sample Card

The principles behind the blue wool scale were originally developed for the textile industry in the early eighteenth century. French chemist Dufay was appointed to be Inspector of Dyeworks in 1729, and instructed to develop regulations to control the operations of the dyers.[1] He carried out systematic comparative testing on dyes, by exposing test materials alongside standard samples of graded fastness. Although there have been various developments in the materials, this method of using dyes of known light-fastness is still widely used today.

The blue wool scale tests for light fastness. The sample card we use today is made up of eight swatches of blue wool, which are dyed so that each consecutive dyestuff has an increased resistance to fading when they are exposed to light. 

Blue wool scale card in exhibition case

Standard 2 takes twice as much exposure to fade to the same level as standard 1, and standard 3 takes twice as much exposure to fade as standard 2 and so on up to standard 8. The sample cards are used in a variety of industries that need to test their products for light-fastness. This could include testing the dyes in clothes, the colour in wallpaper or watercolour paints used by artists. A standard test will expose the blue wool card to light alongside a sample of the dye. Half of the blue wool sample is covered (as you can see in the sample in our exhibition cases) and half of the dye sample is also covered. After a pre-determined amount of light exposure both the blue wool sample and the dye sample are uncovered and compared, and the dye will be awarded the standard on the blue wool scale that has faded the closest amount.

Conservators monitor light exposure so that we can limit damage to the materials that we care for. Light is energy, and energy is damaging to organic materials. I read a comparison of light and heat damage recently that I thought very expressive. Garry Thomson suggested that we imagine organic molecules as people on a commuter train.[2] People are jostled, but this causes minimal physical damage, just as a steady, cool temperature causes minimal chemical damage to our archives. If the temperature on the train is raised, this jostling can get out of hand, and this is when chemical reactions to our molecules also become increasingly likely.

The Electromagnetic Spectrum

Now, Thomson associates light energy with projectiles fired at the commuters by a riot control squad. The damage that the projectiles cause is dependent on the type of projectile: a ping-pong ball or a pebble might only cause minimal damage, whereas a rocket or a hand grenade would cause considerably more. Light travels in waves, with the shortest wave-lengths in the visible spectrum at the violet end, and the longest at the red end. Ultraviolet (UV) light lies beyond the visible at the violet end, and infrared (IR) at the red end. The shorter the wavelength, the more energy delivered; and the more energy delivered, the greater the damage. As a result the violet waves of light are more dangerous than the longer red waves; and the UV waves are the most dangerous of them all, equivalent to the hand grenades thrown by the riot control squad. During my research, I was amazed to discover that to get a supply of useable energy from heat comparable to the energy delivered by light in the UV range one would have to heat up to 200°C.[3] This demonstrates how powerful light energy can be.

In our exhibition cases we are not testing individual specimens, but have chosen to use the samples to give us an overall indication of light exposure over a fixed period of time. We also take light measurements with a handheld monitor in our exhibition areas, which give us ‘lux’ and UV values. These tell us how much visible light and how much ultraviolet light can be detected. To reduce light exposure in our Borthwick exhibition area there are blinds on the windows. A shaft of light that once escaped from between the blinds was measured to be 1767 lux, whereas the next highest reading from the cases next to the windows with the blinds down has been 582 lux. Direct sunlight can be very intense, and the blinds significantly reduce this exposure.

The glass of windows and exhibition cases also reduce the amount of light that reaches our archives. UV light is reduced, and only between 80 and 90% of visible light is transmitted.[4] As UV is the most damaging type of light, we aim to reduce this as much as possible, and so we also use UV filtered glass for our exhibition cases. The graphs shown here relate to the display cases in the Harry Fairhurst, and demonstrate how much visible light is blocked by the glass as well as how much UV light is filtered by the glass.

We calculate light exposure by multiplying the time by the intensity of exposure. We aim to limit the ‘light hours’ that our archives receive by restricting the length of time we have them on exhibition. Some more light sensitive materials, such as photographs or watercolours, are given even shorter exhibition periods, and are frequently substituted with surrogate images. We also alternate between exhibitions of original items with those full of surrogate material, so that we can continue to raise awareness of the collections we hold at the Borthwick without putting any items at risk from regular display.

 Although our exposure calculations are necessary, we are excited to see the results of our blue wool samples at the end of these exhibitions. Our calculations convey some numerical sense of light exposure, but the sample cards will be a significant visual indication of deterioration.

References

Forrester, Stanley. ‘The fast and the fugitive: light fastness testing of dyed textiles up to the 1870s’, Journal of the Society of Dyers and Colourists, 91 (July, 1975), 217-223.

 Guthrie, J., N. Tayan and L. Wilson, ‘A novel approach to light-fastness testing’, Journal of the Society of Dyers and Colourists, 111 (July/August, 1995), 220-222.

 Pugh, Samantha and James Guthrie. ‘The development of light fastness testing and light fastness standards’, Review of Progress in Coloration and Related Topics, 31 (2001), 42-56.

 Thomson, Garry. The Museum Environment, Second Edition, London: Butterworth-Heinemann, 1986

With thanks to Tracy Wilcockson for the photographs and light monitoring statistics.

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This post was written by Catherine Dand, a Conservator at the Borthwick Institute

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[1] Forrester, 218

[2] Thomson, 3

[3] Thomson, 190

[4] Thomson, 5

Have You Seen Our New Website?

If you have looked at our website over the last week you may have noticed some changes! After a year of working away at it behind the scenes we are finally able to share it with you and hope you will see some changes for the better.

The redesign of our website was triggered by a few things.

• A growing body of feedback from our users suggesting that the website could be improved
• A desire to introduce new content to the website in order to fill in some gaps and provide more up to date information about our work
• A need to make information about the breadth and variety of our holdings more readily available

Have we got it right?

 

For the next few days you will see a ‘Help us improve’ button on the right hand side of our home page. If you click on this button you will be able to leave feedback for us. Feedback can either be generic (relating to the whole website) or specific (you can click on a particular element of our home page and rate or comment on it).

 


Here are some of the areas we have been focusing on:

New look and feel

Our vision for the overall look and feel of the new website was clear. We wanted the site to be eye-catching and visually appealing. We have made good use of images of our archives, our premises and our staff at work to illustrate the website and achieve this goal.

The colour scheme for the new website has changed to a striking orange and grey in line with our new branding. We still retain the Borthwick logo at the foot of each page (and if you are interested in the history of our pig logo we have a new web page that tells that particular story). We want to put across a strong and consistent visual identity to all of our users that ties in with the posters, signs and leaflets you will see if you visit us.

New structure

We understand the frustration of not being able to find the information you need online. When planning the new website structure we tried to focus on the user experience. We have rationalised the structure to ensure our content hangs together in logical sections making information easy to locate. Naming the main navigational sections in a user-friendly way was key. We were keen to ensure that our users knew which section to click on in order to get to a particular piece of information. We do hope we have got this right and would welcome your feedback if you think we haven’t.

New Content

New content has been developed enabling the website to expand into new areas.

Donating or depositing material

We have created a set of pages was aimed at those who were considering donating or depositing an archive with the Borthwick. This new area of the website includes a useful overview of the deposit process as well as an FAQ section. Further pages and information sheets about preparing digital material for deposit are also included.

Looking after the archives

We are proud of the conservation work we carry out here at the Borthwick but had not previously highlighted this on our website. The website redesign has given us an opportunity to talk to our users about what goes on behind the scenes at the Borthwick, including our ongoing work to establish a digital archive.

The History of the Borthwick

In our 60th year the website redesign gives us a great opportunity to publish our story. These new pages describe our origins, our links to the University, key people and events in our history and answers to questions that we are sometimes asked (such as how we got our name and why we have a pig as a logo).

Future work

One of the key drivers behind the website redesign was our desire to make information about our holdings more visible and easily accessible. We have begun this process by adding an introduction to some of the themes of our archives within the ‘Our Holdings’ section (illustrated below). This preparatory work gives us stronger foundations to build upon. A future project will lead to an increased number of our finding aids becoming available in a structured and searchable format online.

 

Do take this opportunity to tell us what you think - we are looking forward to hearing from you!

Jenny Mitcham, Digital Archivist at the Borthwick Institute

Read Jenny's blog on digital archiving here

The Borthwick at 60! Our anniversary exhibition

In May 2013 we put up a small ‘taster’ exhibition, marking the 60th anniversary of the Borthwick. Now we have just opened a larger exhibition which reflects on the story of the founding of the Borthwick, explores its early days, and looks at aspects of our development, past and present. The exhibition is in the Storey Exhibition Gallery, top floor, Borthwick Institute. It runs from 1 November 2013 to 31 January 2014.

Norah Gurney

The exhibition poster includes this splendid picture, taken in 1957, of Mrs Norah Gurney. She had arrived the previous year, as assistant archivist - the first such appointment. She is pictured in one of the original Borthwick strongrooms at St Anthony’s Hall, taking a probate act book down from the shelf. The detail in the photograph is superb. It really evokes, for those of us who remember St Anthony’s Hall, the atmosphere of the strongrooms – dark and cramped, with mezzanine floors above, all racked out with rather oppressive dark green metal shelving (state of the art in the 1950s). Things hadn’t changed much between 1957 and when we left in 2004!

Norah Gurney later became the second Director of the Institute, taking over after the retirement of Canon Purvis in 1963. Tragically she died of cancer aged only 52, in 1974. There have been in total four Borthwick Directors (although the title is now Keeper of Archives). It is notable how much continuity we have had between 1953 and today – all our ‘bosses’ served first under their predecessors – this is true of our conservators too.

The exhibition reflects on development and change. Although the past couple of decades – and particularly after our move in 2005 – have seen great changes, there is an obvious continuity in our remit and in what we still think is important.

Searchroom Office, 1953

This photo, of the searchroom office, ready for business in 1953, shows, for example, how some things have physically altered. But other things continue: the importance of teaching and research can be traced back to our original purpose, and so can our role in what we now call ‘outreach’.

Canon Purvis with Summer School students

Here is Canon Purvis with students at an early ‘summer school for archives’. Teaching with documents is still central to our work, but handling techniques have certainly changed for the better! 

The exhibition traces how distinguished academics quickly arrived in the early days (the first visitors’ book is on display), and yet the first name recorded in the visitors book – and very regularly thereafter - is that of “Mrs T” (as we called her), a professional genealogist and a good friend to the Borthwick, regarded with much affection by staff. The exhibition has some photos of her 80th birthday party at the Borthwick. 

We have had quite a low key 60th birthday (though we had cake to celebrate the anniversary of our opening day!) and this is partly because we had big celebrations when we were 50, ten years ago, but also because this year there has been a bigger celebration to mark the 50th birthday of the University, and of course the Borthwick is part of that.

We have been here on campus for eight years now, and only a few of the staff now remember St Anthony’s Hall.

Moving from St Anthony's Hall, 2004

Here we are moving from St Anthony’s in 2004 – archives are being taken off the green metal shelves (how different from the new electronic mobile shelving!). It was a well-planned six month operation.

The Borthwick during construction

And here is the new Borthwick half built. You can see here the massive concrete shell of the strongroom block, on the right. We had 10 strongrooms in the old building, but these came in all shapes (usually small) and all sizes (usually inconvenient). The other day, three of us who remembered St Anthony’s Hall found ourselves perplexed in trying to remember where they all were – they were scattered all over the St Anthony’s Hall complex (as were the offices). We found there was even one strongroom (one of the less frequented ones) that we had quite forgotten!

 

Two of us have memories of the Borthwick going back to 1980, and so in effect remember nearly half of its lifespan. On the one hand it has been a bit nostalgic to remember the past, but on the other it serves to show how important it is to try and record, and carefully consider, our history. The Borthwick really does have origins unique among archive offices.

 

I hope as many as possible will come and see the exhibition. Find out why we are called “Borthwick” (it has to do with William Borthwick of Bridlington, but in fact he wasn’t personally involved at all!), why we changed our name in 2005 (have people noticed?) and why our logo is a pig (clue – it is the connection with St Anthony’s Hall). There are individual exhibition cases about the Borthwick’s founding, about Canon Purvis our first Director, about St Anthony’s Hall and why we had to move from there, about the Borthwick in the early days, about conservation past and present, and about our activities over the years. 

And if you are interested in learning more about the Borthwick’s origins in relation to the founding of the University of York, come along to the 50th Anniversary Public Lecture at 6pm, Bowland Auditorium, Berrick Saul Building, on 18 November. The lecture is: “In York the opportunity waits, and all historybeckons”: the story behind the founding of the University, 1946-1963.

Katherine Webb

 

Who's that Girl? Who were the Aero Girls?

Earlier this year I introduced you to Rowntree’s Aero Girls paintings, which were commissioned for use in Aero chocolate advertising in print and television from 1951 to 1957. Since then we’ve managed to track down the only living painter who worked on the 1950s campaign, Frederick Deane RP, as well as three new Aero Girl paintings fresh out of the Nestlé archives. I'll be telling you more about these discoveries in my next blog post.

We’d love to find out even more about this enigmatic collection of figurative paintings and invite you to share your stories at our upcoming free exhibition 'Who were the Aero Girls?' on show at York Mansion House from 12 October to 20 October 2013.

For those of you a little further afield, below is an image map of our entire collection of twenty Aero Girls paintings. You can find out more about each of these women on our dedicated Aero Girls website.

Do you recognise any of these women? Were the Aero Girls life models, fictitious characters, wives, girlfriends, your grandmother, your sister, your best friend? Where are they now? We want to hear from you!

Credit: Images above are shown with kind permission of Nestlé UK

Anna. Alice. Wendy. The Country Girl. The Art Student. Who were these women? And what was their story? Where are they now? What happened to the paintings that are missing from the Rowntree’s collection? If you were an Aero Girl or if you know of one, the Borthwick Institute would love to hear from you. Please contact us at borthwick-institute@york.ac.uk.

Who were the Aero Girls? Discovering Hidden Art in the Archives is part of Chocolate Week 2013. On display for the first time since leaving Rowntree’s factory, will be a carefully curated selection of our Aero Girls collection. A unique opportunity to glimpse into some of our lesser known archive holdings, the exhibition also documents the Borthwick Institute’s journey so far to unwrap the mysteries and unearth new information about these little-known artworks. Visitors are encouraged share their stories, to ask new questions and continue the research, at the Borthwick Institute and beyond.

Aero chocolate is still made in York to this day by Nestlé, who took over Rowntree’s in the late 1980s and are official sponsors of our upcoming exhibition. Nestlé archivist Alex Hutchinson said, "We're delighted that some of our old treasures are being shared with a wider audience. The Borthwick Institute do a great job of looking after parts of our archive and we’re really proud to work with them. Although we have a large collection of original artworks, some have gone missing over the years. We'd love to know where the rest of the Aero artworks are now, and what happened to the painting's sitters, what were their stories?"

Who were the Aero Girls? Discovering Hidden Art in the Archives takes place at York Mansion House, St Helen’s Square, York from Saturday 12 to Sunday 20 October 2013, from 11am – 4pm daily (closed Tuesday 15 October). Admission is free.

This blog post was written by Kerstin Doble, National Archives Trainee.

The Borthwick at 60

15 May 2013 is the 60^th anniversary of the Borthwick’s official opening. To  mark the occasion we have added a small ‘vintage’ showcase - made for the Borthwick in 1953 - to the current “Best of the Borthwick” exhibition (see 17 April post).

In here, we have put a little display about the opening day. This includes a couple of photographs of the occasion – not the glossy colourful and posed publicity shots we’d have today, but black and white snaps taken by an unknown photographer, showing a rather stiffly formal occasion.

The Borthwick was opened by HRH the Princess Royal, Countess of Harewood. A veritable galaxy of berobed VIPs took part in the opening ceremony, including the Chancellor and Vice Chancellor of the University of Oxford, the Lord Mayor of York, the Archbishop of York, the Deputy Keeper of Public Records, and many senior academic historians.

The Borthwick was then, of course, at St Anthony’s Hall, one of York’s medieval guildhalls, which was home to the Borthwick up to the end of 2004 when it moved to campus.

The press coverage was extensive. Banner headlines such as: “Making York World Centre of History” and “National as well as Local Importance” hint that this was more than just the opening of an archive office.

 

Why was the Borthwick so important? And why is it ten years older than the rest of the university, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year?

Oliver Sheldon

The Borthwick represented a major step in York’s aim to develop academic study within the city – something which it was hoped would eventually lead to the founding of a university. 

A campaign for a university at York had begun in earnest in 1946, led by Oliver Sheldon, a director of Rowntrees and one of the co-founders of York Civic Trust.

His masterly direction of publicity and support led to a petition from York to the University Grants Committee in 1947. At that point York was turned down, but told that if it could show evidence of academic activities its case might one day be reconsidered.

As a result, academic plans were developed by the Academic Development Committee of York Civic Trust: first for summer schools in archives and in architecture, which began in 1949, followed, it was hoped, by academic institutes at some future date. But when in 1949 Oliver Sheldon suddenly heard that the Archbishop of York’s plan to house his rich and extensive diocesan archive at the Minster Library had fallen through – and a large grant from the Pilgrim Trust might be on offer – he moved quickly to develop an alternative archive scheme.

Out of this the Borthwick was born: a home for the Archbishop’s archive, which would be available for scholars, and a building which would provide an HQ for all York’s academic ventures. 

Tragically, Sheldon died unexpectedly in 1951 before the Borthwick was opened, but his vision was carried on by the Academic Development Committee, and after 1956, by the York Academic Trust. These bodies were run by men of great ability and vision, most notable of whom was JB Morrell, a towering and important figure in the history of both the city and the university (the university library is named after him).

In 1963, the efforts of this group of York citizens bore fruit when the university opened and the Borthwick became one of its founding departments.

Since then, the Borthwick has developed in all sorts of ways. In the autumn, there will be a larger ‘Borthwick at 60’ exhibition, to tie in with the 50^th anniversary celebrations of the University. This will include more about Sheldon and about the Borthwick’s first director, Canon J.S. Purvis.

Canon J.S. Purvis

Purvis was an archivist, teacher, scholar, artist, poet and author of the text for the revived York Mystery Plays of 1951.

Until then – note that the ‘Best of the Borthwick’ exhibition has now been extended until mid September!

Oh, and why are we called the Borthwick? Come and see our exhibitions and find out!

This blog post was written by Dr. Katherine Webb, Archivist at the Borthwick Institute and author of Oliver Sheldon and the Foundations of the University of York (2009).

To find out more about the Borthwick's holding, have a look at our Best of the Borthwick post.