Kettle’s Yard is a unique and special place. It is so much more than a house, a museum or a gallery, and it invariably leaves a lasting impression with those who visit.
Between 1958 and 1973, Kettle’s Yard was the home of Jim and Helen Ede. In the 1920s and 30s, Jim had been a curator at the Tate Gallery in London. It was during this time that he formed friendships with artists and other like-minded people, which allowed him to gather a remarkable collection of works by artists such as Ben and Winifred Nicholson, Alfred Wallis, Christopher Wood, David Jones and Joan Miro, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Constantin Brancusi, Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth. Ede also shared with many of his artist friends a fascination for beautiful natural objects such as pebbles, weathered wood, shells or feathers, which he also collected.
Jim carefully positioned artworks alongside furniture, glass, ceramics and natural objects, with the aim of creating a perfectly balanced whole. His vision was of a place that should not be
“an art gallery or museum, nor … simply a collection of works of art reflecting my taste or the taste of a given period. It is, rather, a continuing way of life from these last fifty years, in which stray objects, stones, glass, pictures, sculpture, in light and in space, have been used to make manifest the underlying stability.”
Jim Ede’s bedroom table – Kettle’s Yard, University of Cambridge. Photo: Paul Allitt.
Jim originally envisaged making a home for his collection in quite a grand house, but unable to find a suitable property, he opted instead to remodel four derelict 19th century cottages and convert them into a single house.
Kettle’s Yard was conceived with students in mind, as ‘a living place where works of art could be enjoyed . . . where young people could be at home unhampered by the greater austerity of the museum or public art gallery.’ Jim Ede kept ‘open house’ every afternoon of term, personally guiding his visitors around his home. This experience is still faithfully recreated as visitors ring the bell at the front door, and are welcomed into the house.
Jim Ede at Kettle’s Yard – Kettle’s Yard, University of Cambridge
In 1966 Jim gave the house and its contents to the University of Cambridge, though he continued to occupy and run it until 1973. In 1970, the house was extended, and an exhibition gallery added to ensure that there would always be a dynamic element to Kettle’s Yard, with space for contemporary exhibitions, music recitals and other public events.
The archive
If Kettle’s Yard is the ultimate expression of a way of life developed over 50 years and more, the archive adds an extra dimension by documenting the rich story of how that philosophy evolved. At its core are Jim Ede’s personal papers, which chart a wide range of influences throughout his life, from his experience of World War I, through the ‘open house’ the Ede’s kept in Hampstead through the late 1920s and early 1930s and the vibrant set who attended their parties; the weekend retreats for servicemen on leave from Gibraltar at the Ede’s house in Tangier at the end of World War II; the ‘lecturer in search of an audience’ who travelled to the US in the early 1940s; the prolific correspondence not just with artist friends, but figures such as T E Lawrence; and the development of Kettle’s Yard and its collections.
Thanks to the support of the Newton Trust, we are now half way through a 2-year project to improve access to the archive and support research by producing a digital catalogue of the collections, putting in place proper preservation strategies, and establishing procedures for public access. This work builds on the foundations laid by the dedicated archive volunteers, who continue to work with us.
We have started out by publishing a high-level description of the Ede papers on the Archives Hub [http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb1759-ky/ede?page=1#id1308050], to which we will add more detail over the coming year. The catalogue already includes detailed descriptions of c.120 letters Jim Ede received from the artist and writer David Jones between 1927 and 1971, and c. 200 from the collector and patron Helen Sutherland, from 1926 to 1964. We will soon be adding correspondence with the artists Ian Hamilton Finlay and Richard Pousette-Dart, and the museum director Perry Rathbone; papers relating to Jim Ede’s lifelong mission to promote the work of Henri Gaudier Brzeska, and the establishment and running of Kettle’s Yard; and other small collections such as Helen Sutherland’s letters to the poet Kathleen Raine.
In another exciting development, Kettle’s Yard has now received backing from the Arts Council England Capital Investment Programme Fund to create a new Education Wing and carry out major improvements to the exhibition galleries. The plans [http://www.kettlesyard.co.uk/development/index.php] include a purpose-built archive store and dedicated space for consulting and exhibiting archive material.
One recent addition to the archive is a letter that Jim Ede wrote in 1964, in response to a thank you note from an undergraduate who had visited Kettle’s Yard. In typical style, Jim expresses concern about whether he really is providing pleasure to others through his endeavours at Kettle’s Yard, and draws strength from the expression of gratitude. He ends the letter ‘Do come in as often as you like – the place is only alive when used’.
“the place is only alive when used” – Kettle’s Yard Archive, University of Cambridge
This is very true of the house, but equally true of the archive – and hopefully everything we are doing to improve physical and intellectual access to the archives, and integrate it into all aspects of the Kettle’s Yard programme, will ensure that it is well used.
Frieda Midgley, Archivist
Kettle’s Yard, University of Cambridge
All images copyright Ketttle’s Yard, University of Cambridge, and reproduced with the kind permission of the copyright holder.
Back in 2008 the Archives Hub embarked upon a project to become distributed; the aim was to give control of their data to the individual contributors. Every contributor could host their own data by installing and running a ‘mini Hub’. This would give them an administrative interface to manage their descriptions and a web interface for searching.
Five years later we had 6 distributed ‘spokes’ for 6 contributors. This was actually reduced from 8, which was the highest number of institutions that took up the invitation to hold their own data out of around 180 contributors at the time.
The primary reason for the lack of success was identified as a lack of technical knowledge and the skills required for setting up and maintaining the software. In addition to this, many institutions are not willing to install unknown software or maintain an unfamiliar operating system. Of course, many Hub contributors already had a management system, and so they may not have wanted to run a second system; but a significant number did not (and still don’t) have their own system. Part of the reason may institutions want an out-of-the-box solution is that they do not have consistent or effective IT support, so they need something that is intuitive to use.
The spokes institutions ended up requiring a great deal of support from the central Hub team; and at the same time they found that running their spoke took a good deal of their own time. In the end, setting up a server with an operating system and bespoke software (Cheshire in this case) is not a trivial thing, even with step-by-step instructions, because there are many variables and external factors that impact on the process. We realised that running the spokes effectively would probably require a full-time member of the Hub team in support, which was not really feasible, but even then it was doubtful whether the spokes institutions could find the IT support they required on an ongoing basis, as they needed a secure server and they needed to upgrade the software periodically.
Another big issue with the distributed model was that the central Hub team could no longer work on the Hub data in its entirety, because the spoke institutions had the master copy of their own data. We are increasingly keen to work cross-platform, using the data in different applications. This requires the data to be consistent, and therefore we wanted to have a central store of data so that we could work on standardising the descriptions.
The Hub team spend a substantial amount of time processing the data, in order to be able to work with it more effectively. For example, a very substantial (and continuing) amount of work has been done to create persistent URIs for all levels of description (i.e. series, item, etc.). This requires rigorous consistency and no duplications of references. When we started to work on this we found that we had 100’s of duplicate references due to both human error and issues with our workflow (which in some cases meant we had loaded a revised description along with the original description). Also, because we use archival references in our URIs, we were somewhat nonplussed to discover that there was an issue with duplicates arising from references such as GB 234 5AB and GB 2345 AB. We therefore had to change our URI pattern, which led to substantial additional work (we used a hyphen to create gb234-5ab and gb2345-ab).
We also carry out more minor data corrections, such as correcting character encoding (usually an issue with characters such as accented letters) and creating normalised dates (machine processable dates).
In addition to these types of corrections, we run validation checks and correct anything that is not valid according to the EAD schema, and we are planning, longer term, to set up a workflow such that we can implement some enhancement routines, such as adding a ‘personal name’ or ‘corporate name’ identifying tag to our creator names.
These data corrections/enhancements have been applied to data held centrally. We have tried to work with the distributed data, but it is very hard to maintain version control, as the data is constantly being revised, and we have ended up with some instances where identifying the ‘master’ copy of the data has become problematic.
We are currently working towards a more automated system of data corrections/enhancement, and this makes it important that we hold all of the data centrally, so that we ensure that the workflow is clear and we do not end up with duplicate slightly different versions of descriptions. (NB: there are ways to work more effectively with distributed data, but we do not have the resources to set up this kind of environment at present – it may be something for the longer term).
We concluded that the distributed model was not sustainable, but we still wanted to provide a front-end for contributors. We therefore came up with the idea of the ‘micro sites’.
What are Hub Micro Sites?
The micro sites are a template based local interface for individual Hub contributors. They use a feed of the contributor’s data from the central Archives Hub, so the data is only held in one place but accessible through both interfaces: the Hub and the micro site. The end-user performs a search on a micro site, the search request goes to the central Hub, and the results are returned and displayed in the micro site interface.
Brighton Design Archives micro site homepage
The principles underlying the micro sites are that they need to be:
As part of our aim of ensuring a sustainable and low-cost solution we knew we had to adopt a one-size-fits-all model. The aim is to be able to set up a new micro site with minimal effort, as the basic look and feel stays the same. Only the branding, top and bottom banners, basic text and colours change. This gives enough flexibility for a micro site to reflect an institution’s identity, through its logo and colours, but it means that we avoid customisation, which can be very time-consuming to maintain.
The micro sites use an open approach, so it would be possible for institutions to customise themselves, by manipulating the stylesheets. However, this is not something that the Archives Hub can support, and therefore the institution would need to have the expertise necessary to maintain this themselves.
The Consultation Process
We started by talking to the Spokes institutions and getting their feedback about the strengths and weaknesses of the spokes and what might replace them. We then sent out a survey to Hub contributors to ascertain whether there would be a demand for the micro sites.
Institutions preferred the micro sites to be hosted by the Archives Hub. This reflects the lack of technical support within UK archives. This solution is also likely to be more efficient for us, as providing support at a distance is often more complicated than maintaining services in-house.
The responders generally did not have images displayed on the Hub, but intended to in the future, so this needed to be taken into account. We also asked about experiences with understanding and using APIs. The response showed that people had no experience of APIs and did not really understand what they were, but were keen to find out more.
We asked for requirements and preferences, which we have taken into account as much as possible, but we explained that we would have to take a uniform approach, so it was likely that there would need to be compromises.
After a period of development, we met with the early adopters of the micro sites (see below) to update them on our progress and get additional requirements from them. We considered these requirements in terms of how practical they would be to implement in the time scale that we were working towards, and we then prioritised the requirements that we would aim to implement before going live.
The additional requirements included:
Search in multi-level description: the ability to search within a description to find just the components that include the search term
Reference search: useful for contributors for administrative purposes
Citation: title and reference, to encourage researchers to cite the archive correctly
Highlight: highlighting of the search term(s)
Links to ‘search again’ and to ‘go back’ to the collection result
The addition of Google Analytics code in the pages, to enable impact analysis
The Development Process
We wanted the micro sites to be a ‘stand alone’ implementation, not tied to the Archives Hub. We could have utilised the Hub, effectively creating duplicate instances of the interface, but this would have created dependencies. We felt that it was important for the micro sites to be sustainable independent of our current Hub platform.
In fact, the Micro sites have been developed using Java, whereas the Hub uses Python, a completely different programming language. This happened mainly because we had a Java programmer on the team. It may seem a little odd to do this, as opposed to simply filtering the Hub data with Python, but we think that it has had unforeseen benefits. Namely, that the programmers who have worked on the micro sites have been able to come at the task afresh, and work on new ways to solve the many challenges that we faced. As a result of this we have implemented some solutions with the micro sites that are not implemented on the Hub. Equally, there were certainly functions within the Hub that we could not replicate with the micro sites – mainly those that were specifically set up for the aggregated nature of the Hub (e.g browsing across the Hub content).
It was a steep learning curve for a developer, as the development required a good understanding of hierarchical archival descriptions, and also an appreciation of the challenges that come from a diverse data set. As with pretty much all Hub projects, it is the diverse nature of the data set that is the main hurdle. Developers need patterns; they need something to work with, something consistent. There isn’t too much of that with aggregated archives catalogues!
The developer utilised what he could from the Hub, but it is the nature of programming that reverse engineering of someone else’s code can be a great deal harder than re-coding, so in many cases the coding was done from scratch. For example, the table of contents is a particularly tricky thing to recreate, but the code used for the current Hub proved to be too complex to work with, as it has been built up over a decade and is designed to work within the Hub environment. The table of contents requires the hierarchy to be set out, collapsible folder structures, links to specific parts of the description with further navigation from there to allow the researcher to navigate up and down, so it is a complex thing to create and it took some time to achieve.
The feed of data has to provide the necessary information for the creation of the hierarchy, and our feed comes through SRU (Search/Retrieve via URL), which is a standard search protocol for Internet search queries using Contextual Query Language (CQL). This was already available through the Hub API, and the micro sites application makes uses of SRU in order to perform most of the standard searches that are available on the Hub. Essentially, each of the micro sites are provided by a single web application that acts as a layer on the Archives Hub. To access the individual micro sites, the contributor provides a shortened version of the institution’s name as a sub-string to the micro sites web address. This then filters the data accordingly for that institution, and sets up the site with the appropriate branding. The latter is achieved through CSS stylesheets, individually tailored for the given institution by a stand-alone Java application and a standard CSS template.
Page Display
One of the changes that the developer suggested for the micro sites concerns the intellectual division of the descriptions. On the current Hub, a description may carry over many pages, but each page does not represent anything specific about the hierarchy, it is just a case of the description continuing from one page to the next. With the micro sites we have introduced the idea that each ‘child’ description of the top level is represented on one page. This can more easily be shown through a screenshot:
Table of Contents of the Walter Greenwood Collection showing the tree structure
In the screenshot above, the series ‘Theatre Programmes, Playbills, etc’ is a first-level child description (a series description) of the archive collection ‘The Walter Greenwood Collection’. Within this series there are a number of sub-series, the first of which is ‘Love on the Dole’, the last of which is ‘A Taste of Honey’. The researcher will therefore get a page that contains everything within this one series – all sub-series and items – if there are any described in the series.
Page for ‘Theatre Programmes, Playbills, etc’ within the Walter Greenwood Collection
The sense of hierarchy and belonging is further re-enforced by repeating the main collection title at the top of every right hand pane. The only potential downside to this approach is that it leads to variable length ‘child’ description pages, but we felt it was a reasonable trade-off because it enables the researcher to get a sense of the structure of the collection. Usually it means that they can see everything within one series on one page, as this is the most typical first child level of an archival description. In EAD representation, this is everything contained within the <c01> tag or top level <c> tag.
Next Steps
We are currently testing the micro sites with early adopters: Glasgow University Archive Services, Salford University Archives, Brighton Design Archives and the University of Manchester John Rylands Library.
We aim to go live during September 2014 (although it has been hard to fix a live date, as with a new and innovative service such as the micro sites unforeseen problems tend to emerge with alarming regularity). We will see what sort of feedback we get, and it is likely that we will find a few things need addressing as a result of putting the micro sites out into the big wide world. We intend to arrange a meeting for the early adopters to come together again and feed back to us, so that we can consider whether we need a ‘phase 2’ to iron out any problems and make any enhancements. We may at that stage invite other interested institutions, to explain the process and look at setting up further sites. But certainly our aim is to roll out the micro sites to other Archives Hub institutions.
The Swords into Ploughshares project encompasses the cataloguing of two peace organisations’ archives, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) and the Fellowship of Reconciliation: London Union (FOR). Both organisations were formed during the First World War and have a strong history of actively campaigning for world peace, disarmament and supporting individuals affected by war. Cataloguing these collections gives peace movement researchers the opportunity to access important material documenting the history of pacifism and disarmament. The project was made possible by funding from the National Cataloguing Grants Programme for Archives.
Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom
WILPF was formed in 1915 when the International Women’s Congress met in The Hague, resolving to start an organisation to promote peace and campaign for an end to the First World War. Over 1,000 women, representing both belligerent and neutral countries, attended the Congress which saw Jane Addams, an American campaigner for female suffrage, elected president. Only three British women attended as the British government prevented 180 women from travelling by denying passports and closing the North Sea to shipping. However WILPF branches quickly formed in Britain once Congress resolutions were publicised.
WILPF/2009/18/2 – WILPF delegation to the King of Norway, 1915
Following the Congress WILPF embarked their campaign for an end to the war, and a delegation featuring British member Chrystal MacMillan met with the King of Norway. Jane Addams had a meeting with the American President Woodrow Wilson, who was greatly impressed by WILPF’s proposals to end the conflict.
Following the end of the First World War WILPF decided that campaigning should continue as worldwide peace and disarmament still needed to be achieved. In 1930 WILPF launched a disarmament petition under the slogan ‘War is renounced – Let Us Renounce Armaments’. The petition was to be presented to the League of Nations World Disarmament Conference in Geneva in February 1932.
WILPF/22/1 – British WILPF’s disarmament petition arrives in Geneva, 1932
British WILPF played an active role in promoting the petition with members attracting signatures by wearing banners calling for disarmament; one had the slogan ‘Big Guns and Tanks Are Forbidden to Germany Why Not Abolish All Round.’ Shop fronts were taken over with displays in windows encouraging people to ‘Sign Up Here Against War.’
By February 1932 British WILPF had collected over 2 million signatures. A delegation carrying the British petition travelled by train from Victoria station to Geneva and a large crowd gathered to see them off with Margaret Bondfield, the first female cabinet minister, giving a speech highlighting the importance of disarmament. Once in Geneva the several crates containing British signatures were met by international WILPF members, later they marched through Geneva with posters stating ‘Japanese bombs are falling on Chinese cities. What will you choose: War or Disarmament?’
Fellowship of Reconciliation: London Union
FOR formed in 1914 when Henry Hodgkin (a British Quaker) and Friedrich Siegmund-Schultze (a German Lutheran) attended a Christian pacifist conference in Germany. As they bid farewell to each other at its conclusion and seeing war as inevitable, they pledged that “We are one in Christ and can never be at war”. Back in Britain, Hodgkin spread the message to Christian groups and the Fellowship of Reconciliation was formed, with public meetings calling for an end to the war a regular occurrence – some attracting supporters of the war with ugly scenes occurring. London branches joined together in 1916 to form the London Union.
FOR has a long history of supporting conscientious objectors in their decision not to undertake military service. During both world wars FOR provided advice and guidance to those conscripted into the army on the arguments they should deploy to prove they were a genuine conscientious objector. This was extended when National Service continued after the Second World War with FOR calling for an end to the scheme.
A scrapbook compiled by First World War conscientious objector Frederick Bradley is held in the archive. Following conscription being introduced in 1916 men were required to appear before Military Service Tribunals when requesting exemption. Bradley appeared before the Tribunals four times, he was granted exemptions initially as his Father argued he was needed to run the family business. The local press followed the case and the headline ‘Third Time of Asking’ gives an indication of local feeling. At the fourth tribunal Bradley stated ‘he absolutely refused to take life’ and he was allowed to undertake non-combatant service. Bradley was sent to Dartmoor prison work camp where a dietary chart reveals prisoners received fewer rations than the civilian population.
COLL MISC 0456/7/3 – Dietary chart for male convicts in convict prisons, c.1916-c.1918
Conscientious objector and FOR employee, Stella St. John, was imprisoned in Holloway in 1943. On her release she wrote a fascinating account of her experience, revealing that prisoners were generally tolerant about her beliefs some saying ‘Good luck to you, I don’t hold with this war, but I wouldn’t get put in here for it.’ Stella writes about all aspects of prison life and is particularly scathing when describing food, writing the following about porridge “I had it the first day but never again, it tasted of mould and decay!”
Carys Lewis
Swords into Ploughshares Project Archivist
The Anti-Apartheid Movement – Archives held at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford
Boycott South African Goods poster, AAM Archives, ref: po001.
For over three decades the Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM) campaigned for a boycott of apartheid South Africa and support for all those struggling against it. Founded in 1959 as the Boycott Movement, the AAM grew into the biggest ever British pressure group on an international issue.
What was Apartheid?
Apartheid was a unique system of racial segregation and white supremacy in South Africa. For nearly three centuries Africans were dispossessed and exploited by Dutch and British colonists. In 1948 apartheid (‘apartness’) became official policy. The National Party, elected by an all-white electorate, extended and formalised separation and discrimination into a rigid legal system.
Most of the land was allocated to whites, and Africans were confined to barren overcrowded ‘homelands’. Black workers in so-called white areas were required to carry passes at all times. They lived in townships outside the city centres and were paid below subsistence wages.
Health and education facilities were segregated and those for blacks were hugely inferior to those for whites. The system was kept in place by a battery of repressive laws, under which people could be detained indefinitely without trial.
The Anti-Apartheid Movement in the UK
Some of the most compelling material held in the AAM archive at the Bodleian library has been included in a new website ‘Forward to Freedom: The history of the British Anti-Apartheid Movement, 1959–1994’ at http://www.aamarchives.org.
This site features selected video, photographs, posters and documents from the AAM’s archive at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. Highlights are footage of the Wembley stadium Nelson Mandela tribute concert in 1988, iconic posters from campaigns to save the Rivonia trialists from the gallows in 1964 and to stop the Springbok cricket tour in 1970, and letters from Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher arguing against sanctions on South Africa. London demo poster (1982), AAM Archives, ref: po065.
Also included are more than 50 interviews with former anti-apartheid campaigners including musician Jerry Dammers, actor Louis Mahoney, Lord David Steel, (AAM President in the 1960s), and grassroots activists who tell what motivated them to get involved.
It shows the wide range of interest groups who took action against apartheid, from students who campaigned for universities to disinvest in the 1970s to British trade unionists who supported resurgent South African trade unions to church groups who campaigned for South Africa’s withdrawal from occupied Namibia.
Other archives related to the Anti-Apartheid Movement
The Anti-Apartheid Movement in the UK had many affiliate branches, partner groups and organisations working alongside them towards their shared aim of ending Apartheid. Some of these also have their archive descriptions included in the Archives Hub.
The Anti-Apartheid Movement in Scotland
Branches supporting the AAM organisation existed in Glasgow and Edinburgh through the 1960s, with 1976 seeing the establishment of the Anti-Apartheid Movement Scottish Committee.
The object of the Scottish Committee was to further the work of the Anti-Apartheid Movement, especially in Scotland, being responsible for the recognition of local Anti-Apartheid groups in Scotland and their admission into membership of the Anti-Apartheid Movement.
Activities in Scotland incorporated a number of specific areas that were the focus of international campaigning on South Africa, including sports, cultural, retail and academic boycotts, campaigns against nuclear and military collaboration, loans to South Africa, and for oil sanctions. The Movement’s work was not limited to South Africa. It was one of the first organisations to highlight the “unholy alliance” between apartheid South Africa, the racist regime in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), and Portuguese colonial rule in Africa.
This archive is held at Glasgow Caledonian University and belongs to Action for Southern Africa Scotland – their site can be found here: http://www.actsascotland.org.uk/.
Lawyers against Apartheid
Also held at the Glasgow Caledonian University site is the archives for Lawyers Against Apartheid. Lawyers Against Apartheid was formed following a legal conference in December 1986 to mobilise the support of the legal community in Great Britain for the liberation struggles in South Africa and Namibia. Membership was open to all members of the legal community in Britain, including practitioners, academics, students and legal workers. The group was affiliated to the Namibia Support Committee, London, and the Anti-Apartheid Movement.
The first official meeting of the group was in London in January 1986, where it was decided that their aims were to include exposing the nature and illegitimacy of the apartheid regime to the British legal community, campaigning for anti-apartheid policies and practices within the British legal community, and providing advice and assistance to the local anti-apartheid groups. The group challenged the established ideas of the South African legal system, especially the myth of impartial hearings from an independent tribunal, and also promoted the issue of Prisoner of War status for captured freedom fighters and supported the campaign for Namibia’s independence following South Africa’s illegal occupation.
Lawyers Against Apartheid met quarterly, usually in London, and had sub-groups working on specific issues such as Prisoners of War, Domestic Legal Support, International Law, and Trials & Punishments, until their disbanding in 1996.
The original deposit, which consisted mainly of books, pamphlets, serials, and posters, has been supplemented with two additional deliveries of predominantly archive materials.
Paul Flieshman
Mimas Development Officer
Collections
A selection of the collections relating to apartheid on the Archives Hub: Free Nelson Mandela rally poster (1980), AAM Archives, ref: po059. Records of Anti Apartheid Movement Scottish Committee, pressure group, Glasgow, Scotland. 1965-1994 (predominant 1976-1994). http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb1847-aams
We are very pleased to announce that the Archives Hub has joined forces with The University of Brighton Design Archives for an exciting new project, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, ‘Exploring British Design’. The project is funded as one of ten new ‘Amplification Awards’ from the AHRC.
We will be working with Catherine Moriarty, Curatorial Director of the University of Brighton Design Archives and Professor of Art and Design History in the Faculty of Arts. Catherine, myself and others on the project aim to provide you with updates and insights through the Archives Hub blog over the next 12 months.
* * *
The project will explore Britain’s design history by connecting design-related content in different archives. A collaboration between researchers, information professionals, technologists, curators and historians, the aim is to give researchers the freedom to explore the depth of detail held in British design archives.
We will be working with researchers to understand more about their use of archives and methods of archival research within design history. We aim to answer a number of research questions:
1. How can we link digital content and subject expertise in order to make archival content more discoverable for researchers? How can we increase the discoverability of design archives in and beyond the HE sector?
2. How can connected archival data better recover ‘lost moments of design action’? (Dilnot 2013: 337)
3. How might a website co-designed by researchers, rather than a top-down collection-defined approach to archive content, enhance engagement with and understanding of British design? How can we encourage researchers, archive and museum professionals, and the public, to apprehend an integrated and extended rather than collection-specific sense of Britain’s design history?
4. How can the principles of archive arrangement/description be made meaningful and useful to researchers? Are these principles sometimes a hindrance to public understanding, or can they be utilised to better effect to aid interpretation?
We want to use this opportunity to explore ways of presenting archival data beyond the traditional collection level description. We will be working with three main sources of data:
1) We will be utilising and enhancing the data within the Archives Hub, starting with the descriptions of the collections held at Brighton Design Archives, but also utilising other descriptions of archives held all across the UK, covering manufacturing history, art schools, personal perspectives and professional contexts, so that we make the most of the diversity of the archives described on the Hub.
2) We will be creating archival authority records, using the EAC-CPF XML format for ISAAR(CPF) records
3) We will be working with the Design Museum and looking to integrate their object-based data into our data set
We will also be working to integrate other sources of data into our authority records.
We aim to provide a front-end that demonstrates what is possible with rich and connected data sources. Our intention is to be led by researchers in this endeavour. It will give us the opportunity to explore researcher needs and requirements, and to understand more about the importance of familiarity with interfaces compared to the possibilities for ‘disruptive’ approaches that propose more radical solutions to interrogating the data.
We are grateful to the AHRC for giving us the opportunity to explore these important questions and take digital research to another level.
The Archives Hub contains a range of material linked with dance – dancers, choreographers and teachers, schools and companies, ballet, contemporary and other styles of dance. This feature highlights some of these collections.
Dancers and Choreographers
Jack Cole Scrapbook Collection, 1910s-1970s, dancer and choreographer. He was known for his unpredictability and originality, grafting on elements from Indian, Oriental, Carribean, Latin American, Spanish, and African-American dance. He worked on Broadway and in Hollywood as both dancer and choreographer, being popularly remembered for his choreography for Marilyn Monroe. http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb71-thm/106
Ram Gopal Collection, 1930s-2004, dancer, choreographer and teacher. Gopal was trained in classical Indian dance forms of Kathakali, Bharatra Natya and Manipuri. He wanted Eastern and Western dance forms to work together and taught Indian folk dance at the Harlequin Ballet Company. http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb1975-ram
Papers of Diana Gould, 1926-1996, dancer. Diana Rosamund Constance Grace Irene Gould was a British ballerina. Early in her career Sergei Diaghilev spotted her and invited her to join his Ballets Russes but he died before this could be arranged, events said to have been fictionalized in the film ‘The Red Shoes’. Diana married Sir Yehudi Menuhin in 1947. http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb2228-dpdg
Papers relating to the career of Bruce McClure, 1925-1989, dancer and choreographer. Bruce McClure trained as a dancer and worked as a dancer at the Citizens’ Theatre among other places. In the 1960s he moved on to choreography including for television. http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb247-stabmc
Collection of material relating to Margaret Morris, 1891-1980, ballet dancer and choreographer. She established the first national ballet company for Scotland, developed a modern dance technique and a system of movement therapy. http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb247-stabq1
Harry Relph (Little Tich) volumes, 1881-1974, dancer. Known on stage as Little Tich (he was 4 foot 6 inches tall), Harry Relph became one of Britain’s most popular music-hall and variety acts. One of his best known routines was called ‘Big Boots’, which had him dancing in boots that were 28 inches long. http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb71-thm/326
Dance schools, companies and educational organisations
Tap dancing class in the gymnasium at Iowa State College, 1942. Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ppmsc-00250.
Papers relating to the Pushpalata Dance Company, 1991-2005. The company focuses on Odissi and Kathak dance practices, but also performs in a number of collaborations with Western dance forms, most notably investigating the point at which Flamenco and Kathak dance meet. http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb1975-pu
Philip Richardson Archive Collection, Royal Academy of Dance, c1900-1963; c1760-1780; c1800-1900. Richardson’s interest in the history of dancing led him to become an avid collector of rare books on the subject. His personal library collection was bequeathed to the RAD after his death in 1963. http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb3370-rad/pjsr
The Mimi Legat Collection, The Royal Ballet School, White Lodge Museum, 1900-1970. Papers relating to the Russian ballet dancers Sergei Legat, Nicolas Legat, and Nadine Nicolaeva-Legat. http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb3208-rbs/mim
Marie Rambert collection, Rambert Dance Company, 1890s-1980s. Collection of films, costumes, photographs, correspondence, diaries, programmes, press cuttings, personal papers, autobiographical notes, awards and medals owned and collected by Dame Marie Rambert throughout her life as well as papers relating to her death and memorials. http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb2228-mr
Laban Collection, Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, 1918-2001. Papers and other material relating to Rudolf Laban: teacher, philosopher, dancer, choreographer, author, experimentor and the father of modern dance. http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb1701-lc
Ballet
Dance scrapbooks (ballet), c1951-1978. Containing newspaper cuttings of national and international ballet companies and dancers including Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev. http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb1701-lz
Ekstrom Collection: Diaghilev and Stravinsky Foundation, 1902-1984. Letters, financial records, and telegrams, which give a unique insight into the day-to-day running of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb71-thm/7
Russian Ballet Collection, 1911-1914. Programmes of the Russian Ballet’s seasons at the Theatre du Chatelet, Paris, held by the University of Exeter. Included are many colour illustrations of costume designs, as well as photographs and illustrations of various dancers and text about various ballet productions. http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb29-eulms158
Records of Scottish Ballet, 1952-1999. Programmes, photographs, leaflets, periodicals, press cuttings, posters and other papers relating to the Scottish Ballet and Western Ballet Theatre. http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb247-gb247stasbetc
Valentine Gross Archive, 1700-1960s. Valentine Gross, a.k.a. Valentine Hugo (1887-1968), was a French art ballet enthusiast, illustrator, researcher and painter and still a student at the time of 1909 Saison Russe in Paris. http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb71-thm/165
Contemporary dance
Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance logoBonnie Bird Choreography Fund Archive, 1981-2001. The Bonnie Bird Choreography Fund was established in 1984 to support and promote innovative choreographers and dance writers in Britain, Europe and America. http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb1701-d25
Contemporary Dance Trust Archive, 1957-1998. Consists of papers relating to the running of the Contemporary Dance Trust which incorporated the London Contemporary Dance Theatre and the London Contemporary Dance School. http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb71-thm/22
Independent Dance at the Holborn Centre for Performing Arts Archive, 1989-1999. Independent Dance is an artist-led organisation which provides specialist training to contemporary dance artists. It was established in 1990 and has the longest running daily training programme in the UK. http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb1701-d17
Bob Lockyer Collection, 1970-1995. Photographs and scripts from various dance programmes produced for the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) by Bob Lockyer. http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb1701-d8
Dorothy Madden Collection, 1912-2002. Dr Dorothy Gifford Madden, former Professor Emerita of the University of Maryland, United States of America who was responsible for bringing American modern dance practice to the United Kingdom. http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb1701-d23
Transitions Dance Company Archive, c1985-2009. Established in 1983, Transitions Dance Company was among the first graduate performance companies in the United Kingdom. http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb1701-d24
Clubs, societies and other dance-related collections
Dance theatre programmes collection, c1950-1999. A collection of over 3,000 dance theatre programmes from over 500 national and international dancers and dance companies. http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb1701-ld
Papers of the Foundation for Community Dance and predecessors, 1984-2011. Papers of the Foundation for Community Dance and its predecessors the Community Dance and Mime Foundation and the National Association of Dance and Mime Animateurs. http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb3071-d/036
Henry Rolf Gardiner: Letters to Margaret Gardiner, 1921-1960. 34 letters from Gardiner (businessman and author) to his sister Margaret Gardiner, on his time at Cambridge. Topics include folk-dancing, morris-dancing and work on a dance-book. http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb012-ms.add.8932
Sadler’s Wells Theatre Archive, c1712-2012. The Sadler’s Wells site has been occupied by six different theatres since 1683. The current theatre, which opened in 1998, is dedicated to international dance. http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb1032-s/swt
Peter Williams Collection, c1950-1980. Williams was the editor of the journal Dance and Dancers. The collection includes c40,000 black and white photographs of dancers and dance companies from all over the world. http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb1701-d11
We’re delighted to announce that we now have more than 250 UK institutions and organisations contributing to the Archives Hub! That amounts to:
* over 26,000 collection-level descriptions
* over 350,000 lower-level descriptions
Our contributors include universities, businesses, local authorities, museums, cathedrals, charities and other organisations. The wide range of archives covered by the Hub is demonstrated by the latest descriptions, received from:
Barclays Group
Barclays Group Archives is one of the principal financial and business archives in the UK. The parent company, Barclays PLC, has been providing banking services continuously since 1690, with records dating mainly from the early 1700s onwards. Collections include: Barclays Bank, Lombard Street (London): board, management and head office records (1896-1985) and Goslings and Sharpe: private bankers, Fleet Street (London): branch records including customer ledgers (1717-1972). http://archiveshub.ac.uk/contributors/barclays.html
Doncaster Archives, Local Studies and Family History
The Archives and Local Studies services collect, preserve and provide access to a comprehensive collection of historical and contemporary information relating to the town of Doncaster, its metropolitan district and some adjacent areas. Collections include records of the Yorkshire Archaeological Society: Doncaster Group (1948-1986). http://archiveshub.ac.uk/contributors/doncaster.html
Feminist Webs Archive
Set up in 2008 by a group of young women, their female youth workers and allies, the Feminist Webs Archive is held at Manchester Metropolitan University. It is both a physical resource and an online resource. The collection is ever-growing with contributions from older feminist youth workers and consists of photographs, banners, leaflets, magazines, oral “her-stories” with older feminist youth workers carried out by young women, and various other documents that are related to feminist youth work with girls and young women. http://archiveshub.ac.uk/contributors/feministwebsarchive.html
Marks and Spencer
Marks and Spencer Company Archive logo
Marks & Spencer began in 1884 when Michael Marks set up a market stall in Leeds. In 1894 he went into partnership with Tom Spencer and a famous high street name was born. Based in Leeds, the M&S Company Archive collects, preserves and utilises material relating to all aspects of the history and development of the company. The Company Archive contains a range of materials from 1884 onwards, including written records, staff publications, photographs and films, garments and household products, design and advertising material. http://archiveshub.ac.uk/contributors/marksandspencer.html
National Jazz Archive
Founded in 1988, the National Jazz Archive is the specialist repository for the history of Jazz in the UK, in addition to the USA and Europe. The collection, comprising mainly 20th century material, includes 2,500 books from 1914 onwards, over 600 periodicals and journals dating from 1927 photographs personal papers, ephemera and a small number of objects. http://archiveshub.ac.uk/contributors/nationaljazzarchive.html
National Railway Museum
The library and archive collections at the National Railway Museum form one of the largest resources of railway and transport history in the world. Collections include technical archives containing drawings of locomotives, carriages and wagons; business records of large companies such as the North British Locomotive company, the Pullman Car Company and The General Electric Company; personal and business papers of prominent railway individuals such as George and Robert Stephenson and their families; railway ephemera and semi-published material including advertising, publicity and design records. http://archiveshub.ac.uk/contributors/nationalrailwaymuseum.html
Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art
The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art is an educational charity set up to promote original research into the history of British art and architecture. http://archiveshub.ac.uk/contributors/paulmelloncentre.html
Queen Square Archive
The Queen Square Archives are housed in and managed by the Queen Square Library. They comprise the archives belonging to the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery (named The National Hospital for the Paralysed and Epileptic during the period covered by the Archive) and those of UCL Institute of Neurology. Collections include: 1500 bound volumes of case notes, including many examples of early medical photography (1863-1946); administrative records for the Hospital (1859-1946); employment records (1860-1946); patient admission registers and other health records; approximately 3000 photographs. http://archiveshub.ac.uk/contributors/queensquarearchive.html
Rambert Dance Company
Rambert Dance Company logo
The Rambert Archive holds significant collections documenting the evolution of British dance via the development of Britain’s oldest dance company as we moved from pure classical ballet, through embracing modern American influences, into the future of dance. Collections include: Arts Theatre Ballet (1930s-1941), Company History (1900s-2000s), Marie Rambert Collection (1890s-1980s) and Rambert Dance Company Archive: Productions (1920s-2010s). http://archiveshub.ac.uk/contributors/rambert.html
Royal Ballet School
The Royal Ballet School Collections trace the activities of the institution from its founding in 1926 as the Academy of Choreographic Art to the present day. The Collections include School records; collections relaing more broadly to the development of British Ballet, with substantial collections of lithographs, periodicals, programmes, press cuttings and books; personal collections of international significance, such as Ninette de Valois, the Founder of The Royal Ballet School and Companies, and the class notes of the great teacher, Vera Volkova, among whose students were Margot Fonteyn, Erik Bruhn and Rudolf Nureyev. http://archiveshub.ac.uk/contributors/royalballetschool.html
Royal College of Nursing
Royal College of Nursing logo
Founded in 1916 the Royal College of Nursing has evolved into a successful professional UK-membership body and union. The Royal College of Nursing Archives’ collects across all fields of nursing in the UK and some overseas. The largest and most significant archive is that of the College itself. Other archives include: 30 deposited nursing archives dating back to the 1880s; over 700 personal archives dating from 1815; photographic and postcard collections from the 1880s onwards and 28 handwritten letters written by or addressed to Florence Nightingale (1830-1862). http://archiveshub.ac.uk/contributors/royalcollegeofnursing.html
Salvation Army
The Salvation Army is a worldwide Christian church and registered charity. Founded by William Booth in East London in 1865, The Salvation Army now works in 126 countries. In the United Kingdom, The Salvation Army is one of the largest providers of social services. The Salvation Army International Heritage Centre is the repository for the official records of the organisation’s International and Territorial Headquarters. Collections include: William Booth College (1883-2012), The Salvation Army International Headquarters (1875-2013), papers relating to Catherine Booth (c1847-1995) and The Musical Instrument Factory (1893-1972). http://archiveshub.ac.uk/contributors/salvationarmy.html
In January 2013 the Archives Hub became the UK ‘Country Manager’ for the Archives Portal Europe.
The Archives Portal Europe (APE) is a European aggregator for archives. The website provides more information about the APE vision:
Borders between European countries have changed often during the course of history. States have merged and separated and it is these changing patterns that form the basis for a common ground as well as for differences in their development. It is this tension between their shared history and diversity that makes their respective histories even more interesting. By collating archival material that has been created during these historical and political evolutions, the Archives Portal Europe aims to provide the opportunity to compare national and regional developments and to understand their uniqueness while simultaneously placing them within the larger European context.
The portal will help visitors not only to dig deeper into their own fields of interest, but also to discover new sources by giving an overview of the jigsaw puzzle of archival holdings across Europe in all their diversity.
For many countries, the Country Manager role is taken on by the national archives. However, for the UK the Archives Hub was in a good position to work with APE. The Archives Hub is an aggregation of archival descriptions held across the UK. We work with and store content in Encoded Archival Description (EAD), which provides us with a head start in terms of contributing content.
Jane Stevenson, the Archives Hub Manager, attended an APE workshop in Pisa in January 2013, to learn more about the tools that the project provides to help Country Managers and contributors to provide their data. Since then, Jane has also attended a conference in Dublin, Building Infrastructures for Archives in a Digital World, where she talked about A Licence to Thrill: the benefits of open data. APE has provided a great opportunity to work with European colleagues; it not just about creating a pan-European portal, it is also about sharing and learning together. At present, APE has a project called APEx, which is an initiative for “expanding, enriching, enhancing and sustaining” the portal.
How Content is Provided to APE
The way that APE normally works is through a Country Manager providing support to institutions wishing to contribute descriptions. However, for the UK, the Archives Hub takes on the role of providing the content directly, as it comes via the Hub and into APE. This is not to say that institutions cannot undertake to do this work themselves. The British Library, for example, will be working with their own data and submitting it to APE. But for many archives, the task of creating EAD and checking for validity would be beyond their resources. In addition, this model of working shows the benefits of using interoperable standards; the Archives Hub already processes and validates EAD, so we have a good understanding of what is required for the Archives Portal Europe.
All that Archives Hub institutions need to do to become part of APE is to create their own directory entry. These entries are created using Encoded Archival Guide (EAG), but the archivist does not need to be familiar with EAG, as they are simply presented with a form to fill in. The directory entry can be quite brief, or very detailed, including information on opening hours, accessibility, reprographic services, search room places, internet access and the history of the archive.
Fig 1: EAG entry for the University of East London
Once the entry is created, we can upload the data. If the data is valid, this takes very little time to do, and immediately the archive is part of a national aggregation and a European aggregation.
APE Data Preparation Tool
The Data Preparation Tool allows us to upload EAD content and validate it. You can see on the screen shot below a list of EAD files from the Mills Archive that have been uploaded to the Tool, and the Tool will allow us to ‘convert and validate’ them. There are various options for checking against different flavours of EAD and there is also the option to upload EAC-CPF (which is not something the Hub is working with as yet) and EAG.
Fig 2: Data Preparation Tool
If all goes according to plan, the validation results in a whole batch of valid files, and you are ready to upload the data. Sometimes there will be an invalid file and you need to take a look at the validation message and figure out what you need to do (the error message in this screenshot relates to ‘example 2’ below).
Fig 3: Data Preparation Tool with invalid files
APE Dashboard
The Dashboard is an interface provided to an APE Country Manger to enable them to administer their landscape. The first job is to create the archival landscape. For the UK we decided to group the archives into type:
Fig 4: Archival Landscape
The landscape can be modified as we go, but it is good to keep the basic categories, so its worth thinking about this from the outset. We found that many other European countries divide their archives differently, reflecting their own landscape, particularly in terms of how local government is organised. We did have a discussion about the advantages of all using the same categories, but it seemed better for the end-user to be presented with categories suitable for the way UK archives are organised.
Within the Dashboard, the Country Manager creates logins for all of the archive repositories contributing to APE. The repositories can potentially use these logins to upload EAD to the dashboard, validate and correct if necessary and then publish. But at present, the Archives Hub is taking on this role for almost all repositories. One advantage of doing this is that we can identify issues that surface across the data, and work out how best to address these issues for all repositories, rather than each one having to take time to investigate their own data.
Working with the Data
When the Archives Hub started to work with APE, we began by undertaking a comparison of Hub EAD and APE EAD. Jane created a document setting out the similarities and differences between the two flavours of EAD. Whilst the Hub and APE both use EAD, this does not mean that the two will be totally compatible. EAD is quite permissive and so for services like aggregators choices have to be made about which fields to use and how to style the content using XSLT stylesheets. To try to cover all possible permutations of EAD use would be a huge task!
There have been two main scenarios when dealing with data issues for APE:
(1) the data is not valid EAD or it is in some way incorrect
(2) the data is valid EAD but the APE stylesheet cannot yet deal with it
We found that there were a combination of these types of scenarios. For the first, the onus is on the Archives Hub to deal with the data issues at source. This enables us to improve the data at the same time as ensuring that it can be ingested into APE. For the second, we explain the issue to the APE developer, so that the stylesheet can be modified.
Here are just a few examples of some of the issues we worked through.
Example 1: Digital Archival Objects
APE was omitting the <daodesc> content:
<dao href=”http://www.tate.org.uk/art/images/work/P/P78/P78315_8.jpg” show=”embed”><daodesc><p>’Gary Popstar’ by Julian Opie</p></daodesc></dao>
Content of <daodesc><p> should be transferred to <dao@xlink:title>. It would then be displayed as mouse-over text to the icons used in the APE for highlighting digital content. Would that solution be ok?
In this instance the problem was due to the Hub using the DTD and APE using the schema, and a small transformation done by APE when they ingested the data sufficed to provide a solution.
Example 2: EAD Level Attribute
Archivists are all familiar with the levels within archival descriptions. Unfortunately, ISAD(G), the standard for archival description, is not very helpful with enforcing controlled vocabulary here, simply suggesting terms like Fonds, Sub-fonds, Series, Sub-series. EAD has a more definite list of values:
collection
fonds
class
recordgrp
series
subfonds
subgrp
subseries
file
item
otherlevel
Inevitably this means that the Archives Hub has ended up with variations in these values. In addition, some descriptions use an attribute value called ‘otherlevel’ for values that are not, in fact, other levels, but are recognised levels.
We had to deal with quite a few variations: Subfonds, SubFonds, sub-fonds, Sub-fonds, sub fonds, for example. I needed to discuss these values with the APE developer and we decided that the Hub data should be modified to only use the EAD specified values.
For example:
<c level=”otherlevel” otherlevel=”sub-fonds”>
needed to be changed to:
<c level=”subfonds”>
At the same time the APE stylesheet also needed to be modified to deal with all recognised level values. Where the level was not a recognised EAD value, e.g. ‘piece’, then ‘otherlevel’ is valid, and the APE stylesheet was modified to recognise this.
Example 3: Data within <title> tag
We discovered that for certain fields, such as biographical history, any content within a <title> tag was being omitted from the APE display. This simply required a minor adjustment to the stylesheet.
Where are we Now?
The APE developers are constantly working to improve the stylesheets to work with EAD from across Europe. Most of the issues that we have had have now been dealt with. We will continue to check the UK data as we upload it, and go through the process described above, correcting data issues at source and reporting validation problems to the APE team.
The UK Archival Landscape in Europe
By being part of the Archives Portal Europe, UK archives benefit from more exposure, and researchers benefit from being able to connect archives in new and different ways. UK archives are now being featured on the APE homepage.
Certificates for Cocoa, Chocolate and Sugar Confectionary Manufacture, 1960 and 1962. Two City & Guilds of London Institute certificates presented to Hubert Walter Graham. http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb2110-lsbu/lsbu/3/14/1
Handrawn Valentine’s card sent to Pontecorvo from his students at the University of Glasgow, 14 February 1950. Included in the papers of Guido Pellegrino Arrigo Pontecorvo (1907-1999: geneticist and Professor of Genetics, University of Glasgow). http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb0248-ugc198-9?page=1#gb-0248-ugc-198-9-1-3
Papers and correspondence of Robert William Ditchburn, 1903-1987. Chair of Physics at Reading University, Ditchburn was instrumental in forming the De Beers-supported international Diamond Research Committee which he chaired from its inception in 1956 until 1982. http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb006-ms4621:ditchburn
Will you be my Valentine? Drawing
[undated]. Papers of André Charlot Archive. The drawing includes the name “Joan Charlot”, Charlot’s daughter. http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb71-thm/336
Valentines of Dundee Ltd, 1896-1975.
Established in 1851, the firm began as early exponents of photography, became pioneers in the postcard industry and later developed the production of greetings cards, novelties, calendars and illustrated children’s books. http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb227-ms38562
Barclays Group Archives is a living business archive, with material being managed, made available, interpreted, and added to, by a small team of in-house archivists. We encourage external access to our collections, where possible, bearing in mind any necessary restrictions imposed by customer, commercial and third-party confidentiality.
Some history…
Today Barclays PLC is one of the world’s largest financial services providers, offering banking services to customers in over 50 countries. It has come a long way from its foundation in 1690 by two goldsmith bankers, John Freame and Thomas Gould, in Lombard Street, London. In 1736 James Barclay entered the partnership, and the Barclay name has been a presence in the business ever since. In 1896, 19 smaller banks (all but two being private country partnerships) joined Barclays to form a new joint stock bank – Barclay and Company Limited.
David Barclay the Younger
Many of the founding banks had been established by families who were members of the Society of Friends (also known as Quakers). As a result, a business and social network already existed between several of the banks, one that was strengthened by marriage ties. Their Quakerism also helped to contribute towards the success of their banks, as Quakers were renowned for their sobriety and trustworthiness. David Barclay (1728-1809) epitomised the Quaker banker with a social conscience, being active in the anti-slavery movement.
The businesses from which the country banks had developed included brewing, iron trading, shipping and shop-keeping, but the most common route to a successful country bank was via the textile industry. The Gurneys, who had founded their first bank in Norwich in 1775, had originally been woollen merchants. Their banks were spread across East Anglia and accounted for eight of the twenty firms that took part in the 1896 amalgamation.
Similarly, the Backhouses of Darlington established their bank in 1774 on wealth accumulated in linen manufacturing. It was the Gurneys and the Backhouses, together with Barclays, who formed the driving force behind the new bank.
In 1896 Barclays had 182 branches and 806 staff. The next 20 years saw a spectacular series of takeovers, such that by 1920 Barclays was ranked third amongst Britain’s ‘Big Five’ clearing banks and with a national branch network. The new bank was organised into a network of Local Head Offices based on the old head offices of the original partnership banks. This helped to ensure a degree of continuity for customers and the retention of local knowledge and experience built up by local staff and partners.
Barclays’ ambitions also lay beyond home shores. Under the chairmanship of Frederick Goodenough Barclays acquired the Colonial Bank, with branches in the Caribbean and West Africa; the Anglo-Egyptian Bank; and the National Bank of South Africa. In 1925 these were brought together to form a new international subsidiary – Barclays Bank (Dominion, Colonial and Overseas). Subsequently Barclays established itself in North America and Western Europe, and in more recent decades has expanded into fresh international fields, with a major presence in Asia and the Gulf.
Advert for the fourth of six prototypes of the world’s first through-the-wall cash dispenser,1967
Barclays has been in the forefront of innovation, introducing the UK’s first cash machines, credit and debit cards; was the first bank to order a mainframe computer for customer accounts, and more recently has pioneered contactless card payments and mobile banking.
Recent decades have seen two major domestic acquisitions. Martins Bank, acquired in1968, was itself the result of a 1918 amalgamation between Martins Bank of London, which traced its history back to Elizabeth I’s financial agent Sir Thomas Gresham, and the Bank of Liverpool, a new joint stock bank founded in 1831. In 2000, Barclays acquired The Woolwich, a former building society founded in 1847.
In 1986, Barclays established an investment banking operation, which has since developed into Barclays Capital, a major division of the bank that manages larger corporate and institutional business.
Martins partners’ letter books, 18th century (mentions South Sea Bubble)
Goslings of Fleet Street: customer ledgers, 1717-1900s: one of a handful of surviving complete banking ledger sets for the 18th-19th centuries
Private banking partnership agreements and papers, 18th-19th centuries
Gurney/Barclay letters: social, political and banking life, c1770-c1870
Complete runs of company minute books from the early days of joint stock banking
Langton letters (Bank of England and the financial crisis of 1837)
Bank amalgamation records, 1896 onwards
Visit and inspection reports, UK and overseas, 19th-20th century
Staff magazines and internal communications, 20th century
Photographs of bank premises (including interiors), many showing high street views, over a period of 100 years
Barclays’ main branch and local head office in Canterbury, c1939 (mid-left); the photo also shows St. George’s Street before it suffered extensive bomb damage in the blitz, 1942
Photographs of overseas bank premises, including views of pioneering bank operations in overseas territories, early 1900s onwards
Woolwich: one of a handful of readily accessible building society archives, 1847 onwards
Research potential…
As well as contributing to the documentation of British banking over three centuries, the archives offer potential for the following broad fields of research:
economic history
company and organization history
local and community history
accounting history
investment
biography
commercial architecture
government regulation
colonial and post-colonial development
social history
employment, training and equal opportunities
family history
One interesting recent use of the archives has been by two local historians who have for the last few years been examining the income and expenditure of the earls of Warrington during the late-18th and early-19th centuries, contained in our best surviving set of customer ledgers.
Since the archives service was put on a professional footing in 1990 the collections have been used for a broad variety of research, either wholly or as part of wider projects:
Women in banking and as investors
Architecture and building history for Buildings of England series
Furniture commissioned by Clive of India
Account of Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll, author of Alice in Wonderland)
Clients of Alan Ramsay, 18th century Scottish portrait painter
History of agricultural finance
Quaker business and family networks
Decolonisation and post-colonial development in Africa
Development of English building societies
Account of Edward Gibbon, historian
The usury laws in the 1830s
Banking philanthropy, 1870-1912
Banking elites
Emergence and development of professional accountancy in Libya
Employee casualties in World War One
Wallpaper makers, suppliers and their clients, 1700 – 1820
Evidence for women using heavy machinery, early 20th century
Terms of business and commercial bank lending in UK, 1885-1925
International financial regulation and supervision, 1960-1980
Financial crises at the outbreak of the two World Wars
Marriage bar in UK employment history
The public debate about Barclays’ presence in apartheid-era South Africa
History of commercial advertising
Further information and resources…
Detailed database catalogues are available to consult in person, and bespoke catalogues may be generated on request.
In 2013 BGA has become a contributor to The Archives Hub, and intends to add collection-level descriptions, suitably indexed, to supplement its own detailed database catalogues and indexes.
Official published histories of the Group:
M Ackrill & L Hannah, Barclays: the business of banking 1690-1996 (Cambridge University Press 2001); this volume won the Wadsworth Prize for business history
A W Tuke & R J H Gillman, Barclays Bank Limited 1926-1969 (Barclays 1972)
P W Matthews & A W Tuke, History of Barclays Bank Limited: including the many private and joint stock banks amalgamated and affiliated with it (Blades, East & Blades 1926)
Sir J Crossley & J Blandford, The DCO Story: a history of banking in many countries 1925-71 (Barclays 1975)
[R H Mottram, comp] A Banking Centenary: Barclays Bank (Dominion, Colonial & Overseas) 1836-1936 (Barclays, private circulation [1937])
anon., A Bank in Battledress: being the story of Barclays Bank (Dominion, Colonial & Overseas) during the second world war 1939-45 (Barclays, private circulation 1948)
G Chandler, Four Centuries of Banking: as illustrated by the bankers, customers and staff associated with the constituent banks of Martins Bank Limited (Batsford 2 vols. 1964, 1968)
B Ritchie, We’re with the Woolwich 1847-1997: the story of the Woolwich Building Society (James & James 1997)
see also: J Orbell & A Turton, British Banking: a guide to historical records (Ashgate 2001)
Barclays’ history and archives web pages include:
Woolwich Equitable Building Society advert, 1945
summary histories of the Group including major acquisitions – Martins Bank and Woolwich Building Society
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