Archives of a Victorian Autograph Hunter: T. C. Hine’s Scrapbooks

Archives Hub feature for January 2026

If you’ve ever been to Nottingham, you will have seen how Thomas Chambers Hine (1813-1899) shaped the city, even if you were not aware of it.

Originally from London, where he trained as an architect, Hine moved to Nottingham in his mid-twenties. In 1848 he was awarded first prize in the Society of Arts’ architecture competition to design an agricultural labourer’s cottage. This led to several important commissions and today, Hine is best remembered as the architect of many iconic buildings in Nottingham and around the East Midlands. Hine was versatile and proved this with a variety of styles for houses, hospitals, churches, and railway stations. His significant projects included renovating the fire-damaged Nottingham Castle into a Museum and art gallery, alterations to the Shire Hall (today the National Justice Museum), and designing several lace warehouses during the heyday of the Nottingham lace industry. Just over the county border in Derbyshire, he was commissioned for the rebuilding of Ogston Hall.

For all his achievements as an architect, at University of Nottingham Manuscripts and Special Collections we hold a scrapbook showing that Hine was possibly even more prolific in another field: autograph hunting.

Handwritten index of Royalty and Nobility featured in the scrapbook, which takes up a small portion of the page. It is crowded with printed decorative borders, Hine’s own annotations about the scrapbook’s contents, and some decorative sketches including a plant in a pot labelled ‘VR’. The page is crowded except for a small space that has some lists of royalty in pencil that was probably intended to be inked in at a later date. — *Index page of Autograph Letters, with a photograph of T. C. Hine.* Ref: MS 575/1/1-8.

This large volume, titled ‘Autograph Letters from Kings Nobles Statesmen Churchmen Scientists Authors Artists Architects and Other Notabilities AD 1640 to 1889’, contains over 1000 letters, photographs, printed materials, and drawings. It is arranged according to themes, such as authors, scientists, architects, artists, and royalty; an idiosyncratic mix reflecting Hine’s interests, personality, and professional background.

Over 140 letters were addressed to Hine personally. It’s lovely to think of this well-respected middle-aged Victorian gentleman posting letters to people he admires and then carefully pasting their replies into his book. He also collected autographs and complete letters from people who didn’t correspond with him directly. When he wasn’t able to acquire a genuine document, he would instead paste in copies or printed versions. As a result, the scrapbook is a mix of original handwritten letters and his own sketches next to newspaper clippings and bits cut out of books. He added decorative borders and embellishments, making every page unique. It is a beautiful object and a real labour of love created over many decades.

Whilst the majority of the material dates from the 19^th century, one the earliest items is the signature of Charles I, who was executed in 1649. Hine’s collection encompassed famous historical figures such as Napoleon Bonaparte and various French and German royals, up to notable individuals of his own time, like William Gladstone, Charles Darwin, and Charles Dickens.

Three handwritten letters, two newspaper clippings, a printed photo of Gladstone, a printed image of the caves below Nottingham Castle, and an ink sketch of the tunnel built to allow carriages entry to the Park Estate. Everything is glued to one page but in several layers. Some items have been opened out for the purposes of digitisation. — *Page relating to Nottingham Castle and a sketch of the Park Estate tunnel as sketched by Hine. Hine designed both but the W E Gladstone is the author or subject of most of the documents.* Ref: MS 575/1/165-179.

The geographic range of the subjects is equally international. Places relating to Nottingham and the East Midlands are well represented, though the buildings he designed are featured almost incidentally. For example, a few items relating to his restoration of Nottingham Castle sit in the ‘Nobility’ section of the scrapbook. Even in the section dedicated to ‘Architects’ there is comparatively little about Hine’s own prolific and prestigious career, so this scrapbook is clearly not intended to be a record of his own achievements but a celebration of architects he admired and influenced him. One was Italian architect Alessandro Antonelli (1798-1888), who sent Hine an illustration of his then-unfinished Mole Antonelliana in Turin. Originally intended as a synagogue, construction was halted for a number of years due to the enormous budget overspend, and there were concerns that it would never be finished. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility that Hine had Antonelli’s illustration in mind when he remodelled Nottingham’s Shire Hall with its own dome.

The letters are folded and stuck to the page overlapping each other to avoid covering the section of the Mole Antonelliana (then called the Tempio Israelitico) that runs the full height of the page, and an unattributed detail showing crowns and heraldic shields. — *Letters from Italian architects including, Alessandro Antonelli, to Hine with a printed section of the Mole Antonelliana.* Ref: MS 575/1/819-827.

Manuscripts and Special Collections acquired the scrapbook along with some other material from the family in the 1990s but until very recently, the scrapbook was far too fragile to handle and the contents were largely unknown.

Hine had folded and overlaid items, gluing them to and over each other when he ran out of space on the page, and then inserting loose items. The leaves were heavily laden and brittle, and the binding had broken. This likely happened during Hine’s lifetime as efforts had been made to repair it with scraps bearing his office address or small details of architectural plans.

Close up showing the broken binding, dirt on the pages, tearing along the edges, and a corner of a photograph that has come unglued and is creased over. — ***Scrapbook prior to conservation work showing its fragile condition.***

However, there was a lot of interest in the scrapbook from people in Nottingham. Talks and guided walks of the buildings he designed are guaranteed to draw audiences, and so, with thanks to the National Manuscripts Conservation Trust, we began a conservation project in 2022. The scrapbook was disbound and every item cleaned and repaired where necessary, then photographed. The pages have been left disbound and placed between archival boards to support them, but the documents have been left in situ, interleaved with archival paper where necessary. The way Hine gathered and arranged this collection is equally as important as the collected items themselves.

Photo of the disbound page of the scrapbook, featuring a large watercolour sketch of a tunnel, a letter and a printed image of an unidentified building, being brushed by the preservation assistant whose hands are visible. — ***Conservation cleaning as part of the NMCT project.***

We know that Hine wanted his scrapbook to outlive him, as on the index page he wrote:

‘With the best wishes of the compiler this book is bequeathed by him as an heir loom to his direct lineal descendants.’

Now, thanks to the NMCT and our conservation and digitisation teams, and Research England who provided funding for a cataloguing archivist, it is more likely to survive for future generations.

Kathryn Steenson
Senior Archivist
Manuscripts and Special Collections
University of Nottingham

Archives Hub feature for January 2026

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