Archives Hub feature for February 2024

About Us

Established on the official granting of a Royal Charter in 1969, The Open University turns 55 this year and remains a world leader in distance learning – it is the largest university in the UK by student number. The Open University Archive is housed within the Betty Boothroyd Library on the main university campus at Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, and operates to serve staff, students and external researchers alike.

The collections of The Open University Archive largely delineate into three categories:

• Teaching Materials. Due to its distance learning remit, unlike many other academic institutions The Open University is in the rare position of being able to retain copies of all the teaching material offered to students since the first courses were launched in 1971. This includes: physical module books and units; the original Home Experiment Kits which were issued through the post along with the teaching material; historic audio-visual content originally broadcast on the BBC and other platforms; and most recently the teaching websites on which content is now accessed by students.

• Historical Open University Material. This category covers a wide variety of content – some of it concerned with the governance of the university such as committee papers, and other collections more relevant as social history like the regular newspapers produced for both staff and students. We also retain university serials – both for internal and external publication – a vast photographic archive, and a complete set of OU prospectuses. Outputs from many of the research groups which have been based in the university’s faculties are also retained in our Academic Archive.

• Special Collections. These are collections which have come to us via donation and are usually either focused around unique projects, or are the papers of significant Open University figures. We worked with former OU Chancellor Baroness Betty Boothroyd to accession a collection of her papers, largely covering her time as Speaker of the House of Commons. We also have the papers of Lord Perry of Walton (Walter Perry), the university’s first Vice-Chancellor, and Baroness Lee of Asheridge (Jennie Lee), who as Minister for the Arts was instrumental in the formation of The Open University.

The Open University Digital Archive

The Open University Digital Archive was launched in 2015 in order to make audio-visual and other historic material available (where possible due to copyright and intellectual property restrictions). It contains a growing number of OU television and radio programmes, along with images, texts and graduation ceremonies. Where the content cannot be – or has not yet been – made available, there is usually a metadata entry at least in order to aid researchers, who may be able to arrange to come in to the Archive and view them in person.

There are currently around 1,500 audio or video files publicly-accessible on the Digital Archive, including some of the very earliest Open University TV broadcasts, and around 800 images.

The Digital Archive can also act as a ‘shop window’ for Open University projects, events and people from the past 55 years, and contains both short ‘Featured items’ and longer ‘Exhibitions’ which tell specific stories about the university and related partners using video and audio clips from elsewhere in the collections. For instance, one popular exhibition covers the full life of Jennie Lee – before, during and after her involvement with the OU.

A reasonably recent addition to the Digital Archive is the Sampson Low Collection (selected content is also collected in an exhibition). This collection features over 200 digitised letters from two volumes of letters written to – and kept by – the Victorian bookseller Sampson Low (1797-1886). It includes letters by clients and friends, amongst them Charles Dickens, Florence Nightingale and the Duke of Wellington. Our Digital Archive Developer has created an application which allows readers to view the original digitised letter alongside a text transcript of the content.

Day-To-Day

There is not really any ‘standard’ working day in The Open University Archive. Incoming queries can take us in any direction and it is difficult to predict what researchers are going to ask for permission to see. We do have a dedicated Research Room which allows any in-person researchers to spread the materials out, or refer to content on any number of legacy formats or devices. In most weeks the Archive team has at least one pre-arranged researcher appointment in the calendar, and it can often be several.

Although the variety of requests is wide, the Jennie Lee papers are one of our more frequently-requested collections, and we field a regular amount of Open University alumni asking for information about the content of modules they may have studied in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.

We are a small but busy Archive – when we’re not fielding enquiries or helping researchers, we are usually to be found digitising material or cataloguing new collections.

Matthew Taylor
Digital Archivist
The Open University

Related

The Jennie Lee Collection, 1906-1995

The Walter Perry Collection, 1926-2003

Descriptions of other archives held by The Open University can be found on Archives Hub here: https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/data/GB-2315

All images copyright The Open University. Reproduced with the kind permission of the copyright holders.

Archives Hub feature for January 2024

Thanks to the National Lottery Heritage Fund, the Hallé Concerts Society have the opportunity to interrogate and share their archive collections in ways never before possible. One of those ways is through research and talks. With a generous audience of concert-goers, patrons, members and more, the appetite to learn more about the orchestra they love is ravenous. That got the project archivist, Heather Roberts, thinking. There are so many people who give to the Hallé and so much that the Hallé gives in return. What have been some of the most surprising philanthropic moments in its history? Heather turned to the archive to find out.

Through minutes, photographs, letters, memos, newspaper articles, programme notes and more, the recurring themes of giving are: time and talent, fundraising concerts and awareness raising concerts, instruments, buildings, memories and personal treasures, and sponsorship. But of course, in this modern age, fundraising and the Arts and all that jazz require business support and financial assistance and all sorts. Many businesses have registered charitable status to receive certain funds and to operate within certain spheres of financial and strategic areas. It’s no surprise then, that the Hallé Concerts Society has a large education and community ensembles team – it’s par for the course that community engagement is essential for the modern Arts organisation.

The spirit of giving in the Hallé however, did not start from a strategic business imperative. According to the archive, it started with the man himself, Charles Hallé. An impresario, pianist, conductor and educator of international reputation, his death in 1895 led to large public mourning for the loss of such a generous social staple with 73 wreaths being sent to his grave from admires across the country. So much so, that his obituary in the Guardian is almost one-third filled with anecdotes of his giving nature – not just in financial aid but in using the orchestra and his humanity to support others of greater need such as fundraising concerts for the Railway Servants Orphanage for Fatherless Children, ensuring there were always more affordable seats at any concert to balance out the access to music between those with more and less means etc. This spirit of philanthropy persevered, so much so that when Hallé died, his friends and supporters were quick to gather around and preserve his orchestra and its service to the people of Manchester, creating the Hallé Concerts Society to continue his work supported by guarantors.

In the first 15 years of the Society, 172 people were listed as guarantors, each pledging £100 of their own money against the society to ensure any financial disaster could be swiftly mitigated. This shows a level of trust and faith that seems ludicrous today, equating to roughly £10,000 of personal funds per person. This was especially helpful in the First World War.

The great, the good and the forgotten are named as guarantors but some of the most interesting represent that Mancunian spirit which welcomed and inspired Hallé in the first place. T.C. Horsfall (founder of the Manchester Art Gallery), James Aikman Forsyth (founder of the Forsyth Brothers music shop), Charles E. Lees (Oldham MP, philanthropist and founder of the Gallery Oldham), Margaret Gaskell (founding governor for Manchester High School for Girls), C.P. Scott (journalist and owner of the Manchester Guardian) and more, ensured that the public interest purpose of the orchestra grew and never strayed from its responsibility to the people of Manchester. Most influential was the conductor employed by the Society to carry on Hallé’s work – Hans Richter.

Friend of Wagner and Elgar, internationally respected conductor and pushed boundaries of orchestras and composers throughout his working life. His lesser-known contribution to musicians and their audiences however, was the establishment of the Hallé Pension Fund almost immediately upon his appointment. Akin to the also recently established Mancunian institution, the Musician’s Union, the Fund was a subscription-based service run by the musicians of the orchestra which ensured a pension pay out upon retirement. In the days when there was no state pension, a financial security for musicians administered by musicians was a radical life saver for many.

As well as subscriptions, the orchestra programmed Pension Fund concerts to supplement the pot which were incredibly successful. Donations were sent specifically as gifts for the Pension Fund, to be spent directly on the musicians. For instance, in 1916 the minute book shows £500 (approx.. £30k) was bequeathed by Ida Freund for the players, in memory of her uncle L. Straus, a previous Hallé player; and in 1925 £1000 (approx. £41k) was bequeathed to the fund by Catherine Hankinson in memory of her music teacher and original Hallé musician Sigfried Jacoby. During World War Two, public donations and bequests to the fund increased from £25 6s 6d in 1940, to £299 4s in 1941 and then a huge leap in post-war contributions such as £7241 3s in 1953.

The incredible lifeline of such funds saved families, offered security and inspired loyalty alongside a public recognition of the value of the musicians and their services. And true, while money isn’t everything, it certainly helps.

Other resources that have been given to the Hallé has been in the form of instruments and equipment such as the 1695 Stradivarius violin gifted to the city of Lincoln by a private owner with the explicit instruction that it can only be played by the Leader of the Hallé Orchestra; a building gifted to Charles Hallé by Charles E. Lees in 1893 for his music school the Royal Manchester College of Music; decades of sponsorships and equipment to tour the orchestra all over the world; the Hallé Club run by audience members and fans of the Society’s concerts in 1945 to offer the option for smaller contributions to the Hallé Endowment Fund for those who cannot afford to be Guarantors; free lecture series (now our free pre-concert talks) with musicians about the repertoire to offer musical and historic insight into the performances.

As Heather discovered, the loyalty and love for the Hallé and of the Hallé has manifested in philanthropy both large and small for its entire history. The inspiration continues with an increased number of archival donations of memories and treasures as the archive project continues, people giving their love of the Hallé and entrusting their memories to the archivists. Thanks to the philanthropy of the National Lottery Heritage Fund, they are able to do these memories and gifts the respect they very much deserve.

Heather Roberts
Project Archivist
Hallé Concerts Society

Related

Hallé Archive Collections, 1858-present

Papers of Thomas Coglan Horsfall (held at University of Manchester Library)

Editorial Correspondence of C.P. Scott (held at University of Manchester Library)

Royal Manchester College of Music Archives, 1893-1973 (held at
Royal Northern College of Music Archives)

All images copyright Hallé Concerts Society. Reproduced with the kind permission of the copyright holders.

Archives Hub feature for October 2023

The Women’s Aid Federation of England Archive is housed in the University of Leeds Special Collections and is currently being arranged, catalogued and preserved as part of a Wellcome Trust funded project. This is an incredibly significant collection, documenting the charity’s approaches to tackling domestic abuse from its radical beginnings in the 1970s right through to modern day.  

Our three-year project aims to increase public awareness of the work of Women’s Aid and to provide long-term preservation and access to this unique collection. The work will culminate next year with the completion of an online searchable catalogue that opens up this important history – just in time to celebrate 50 years of the Women’s Aid movement. 

Who are Women’s Aid? 

The Women’s Aid Federation of England is a domestic abuse charity that works as the national co-ordinating body for local refuges and domestic abuse services around England. They provide information, training, and resources, as well as lobbying and campaigning for women’s rights and legislative changes, both in England and further afield. 

Women’s Aid was founded in 1974 as the National Women’s Aid Federation, before splitting into separate federations for Scotland in 1976 and England, Wales, and Northern Ireland in 1978. Emerging out of the Women’s Liberation Movement, they formed as a female-led, activist collective, and were often met with scepticism and suspicion, if not outright aggression.  

As the decades pass, we see a narrative of perseverance and progress. The number of refuges affiliated to Women’s Aid rose at an incredible rate, proving the dire need for women’s services. The Federation gets organised: sending out newsletters, holding national conferences, and building a network of supporters around the country. Today, the Federation is well-established and respected for its expertise, conducting original research, and acting as a consultant to government officials, legal figures, and academics.  

What can you find in the Archive? 

The Women’s Aid Federation of England Archive documents the history of the organisation, from its origins as the National Women’s Aid Federation through to present day. The Archive consists of both analogue and digital records, including paper, photographic, textile, audio-visual, and born-digital records. It covers a range of subject areas with a wealth of research potential. 

More than anything, the Archive is a major resource for understanding the formation, development and running of Women’s Aid. It charts the decisions that shaped the development of the organisation, and how these were communicated and coordinated throughout its national network. For example, the national conference series shows the annual meetings that brought staff, volunteers, and service users together from around the country to debate current issues within Women’s Aid and the wider women’s rights movement. 

Our run of newsletters stretches from 1974 to the 2010s, offering an amazing visual timeline of the development of the organisation through the decades. In the early years especially, they formed a vital line of communication on upcoming campaigns and rallies. The newsletter collection also gives insight into the characteristic wit and humour of the organisation with poems, songs and cartoons peppering the pages. There are also examples of puzzles and colouring pages to help entertain the children who end up moving into refuges with their mothers. 

Our digitised collection of posters, postcards, calendars, and badges have recently gone live on our online catalogue. Often brightly coloured, eye catching and extremely emotive, these items were used to spread the word about domestic abuse, signpost where women could get help, and work to change public opinion. The 1970s calendars are prime examples, showing a range of engaging content brought together by women running, volunteering with, or using Women’s Aid services. Posters from Women’s Aid campaigns highlight the different approaches the organisation has taken over the decades to stand up and be heard, such as working with the police, BBC, and a plethora of celebrities.  

How can you explore the material? 

The examples shown above just scratch the surface of what has already been catalogued in the Women’s Aid Archive, and with the project stretching into 2024 there are still boxes to be catalogued and made available online. Researcher interest has already proven that the Women’s Aid Archive is an invaluable source for learning more about the organisation itself and its role in the domestic abuse movement, but also its contribution to wider health and society, changes in the law, and cultural shifts in attitudes towards domestic abuse.  

As we come towards a celebration of 50 years of Women’s Aid, we look forward to the archive being used to explore what accomplishments have been achieved, and what is still yet to be done. 

You can find the Women’s Aid Federation of England Collection Guide on the University of Leeds Special Collections website. It provides information on key series in the archive and on how to search the catalogue and request the material. The collection level record for the archive is live and is increasingly being populated with more catalogued material. The catalogue will be complete in 2024.

Holly Smith

Archivist, University of Leeds Special Collections & Galleries

Project Archivist, Women’s Aid Federation of England Archive

Related

Descriptions of other archives held by University of Leeds Special Collections can be found on Archives Hub here: https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/data/GB-206.

All images courtesy of Women’s Aid Federation of England.

Archives Hub feature for August 2023

Introduction

The summer months of June, July and August were prime flying season for Laker Airways – though significant discounts were offered to operators in the off-season, too. The man behind this pioneering budget airline was Sir Freddie Laker who recognised the inaccessibility of air travel for the general public, and identified a gap in the market dominated by British Airways and Pan Am. He subsequently founded Laker Airways and its multiple subsidiaries, which allowed tens of thousands of people to fly transatlantic for the very first time. His legacy paved the way for Ryanair, Virgin, and easyJet and today we take the ability to get cheap plane tickets for granted. Now, the archive documenting the rise and demise of the airline is available to the public at West Sussex Record Office.

What’s in the archive?

The archive consists of around 700 files including correspondence, financial records, reports, publicity, and photographs. The other significant part is the vast amount of press cuttings, in fact 135 files of them, spanning 1974 to 1983. These records document the core activities of not just Laker Airways but also its many subsidiaries including the famous Skytrain Holidays and various other business ventures of Sir Freddie’s such as Aviation Traders, TeleTix, and Jaffcom.

But the archive doesn’t just concern Sir Freddie’s core business activities, there are a significant number of personal papers concerning his family, his home, and the management of Woodcote Stud – an animal breeding venture which bridged a hobby and a business for Sir Freddie.

Perhaps for many the most interesting items in the archive relate to the demise of Laker Airways in the early 1980s. There are numerous financial reports, forecasts, legal papers and affidavits concerning the landmark anti-trust lawsuit brought by Laker against British Airways (BA), Pan Am, TWA, Lufthansa, Air France, Swissair, KLM, SAS, Sabena, Alitalia and UTA.

Sir Freddie Laker and Laker Airways

Sir Freddie began his career in the aviation industry in his early twenties by founding Aviation Traders, a business established in 1947 which traded in surplus aircraft and parts which were plentiful after the end of the Second World War. In 1951 he acquired the airline Air Charter. Not content with just that, Sir Freddie also established Colrich Audio Ltd with his wife Joan around the same time, a company which manufactured records in stereo sound.

Air Charter and Aviation Traders were ultimately absorbed into British United Airways (BUA), of which Sir Freddie became its very first Managing Director when it was founded in 1960. By the time BUA was sold off to Caledonia Airways in 1970, Laker Airways had been established for four years. The archive attests to Sir Freddie’s tenacious approach to identifying opportunity during this period.

Initially, Laker Airways worked as a charter airline, meaning that they rented aircraft and recouped the money by selling fares for seats. They acquired their own fleet of planes a little later on. But Laker Airways was the foundation for the most lucrative but most short lived of Sir Freddie’s aeronautical ventures – Skytrain Holidays.

The Skytrain plane was iconic during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Announced in 1971, Skytrain was a wing of the main company and was created to market cheap transatlantic flights between Gatwick and JFK Airport in New York. The archive includes a press release given at the Savoy Hotel in London, along with a press list. However, it took several years to get permission from the Civil Aviation Authority to operate and it wasn’t until 1977 that the first Skytrain flight took place. Sir Freddie understood the importance of branding and publicity, and the archive has many examples such as a tiny souvenir model Skytrain DC-10, model kits of Skytrain A300s, gaudy summer brochures, and a commemorative certificate for the first Skytrain passenger flight.

Fast forward to 1981, and Laker Airways was suffering under the recession. Along with the recession and some poorly constructed financial forecasts, the final blow was the sudden drop in fare prices by competing airlines including BA and Pan Am. Laker Airways collapsed in 1982 and was declared bankrupt. It remains one of the biggest corporate failures in Britain. What followed was a landmark lawsuit through which Sir Freddie accused several of the biggest airlines of predatory pricing, but it was settled out of court.

Conclusion

The archive preserves the legacy of Sir Freddie Laker and Laker Airways, two significant aspects of British cultural heritage and the history of aviation. The archive has previously been used by authors writing books on Sir Freddie and Laker Airways, and it is hoped it will continue to inform researchers at its new home at West Sussex Record Office.

Alice Millard
Project Archivist
West Sussex Record Office

Related

Sir Freddie Laker, 1950-2015

Browse all West Sussex Record Office descriptions available to date on Archives Hub.

Previous Archives Hub features on West Sussex Record Office collections

A polymath’s archive: the Edward-Heron Allen Collection at West Sussex Record Office

The Anna Eliza Bray archive at West Sussex Record Office

All images copyright West Sussex Record Office. Reproduced with the kind permission of the copyright holders.

Archives Hub feature for July 2023

Duden’s Lexicon adopts the classic British proclivity for the understatement in its definition of Vergangenheitsbewältigung: “public debate within a country on a problematic period of its recent history…”. The fact is, however, that the term is commonly understood to mean Germany’s coming to terms (or not) with the Holocaust both collectively and on an individual basis.

There has been a proliferation of literature on the subject in the last couple of decades so much so that the Wiener Holocaust Library (WHL) has a whole section dedicated to it. Publications include scholarly analyses of guilt and shame in entire communities at one extreme to personal memoirs detailing how individual families wrestled with the role of their forbears. No doubt the lapse of time since the events themselves has facilitated this dialogue – in many cases initiated by 2^nd , 3^rd and even 4^th generation Germans.

Whilst WHL holds a number of primary source materials from the point of view of the perpetrator, these take the form of published memoirs and diaries of prominent Nazis and reprinted testimony from defendants and witnesses in war crimes trials. The overwhelming majority of the library’s original manuscript diaries letters and personal documents stem from the families of the victims of Nazi persecution.

A rare exception is one letter unearthed amongst the Wiener Library holdings almost 20 years ago. The very recent discovery of it via a description on the portal, Archives Hub https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/data/gb1556-wl703, has immersed the family of the author in an intense period of soul-searching .

What was for years considered an orphan work bereft of information regarding provenance and custodial history has now been identified as the letter of someone’s father. The full import of the contents sent a shockwave through the  family.

Notwithstanding the absence of any contextual information the letter and its envelope always seemed genuine. The extraneous elements bear all the hallmarks of authenticity: the abbreviated regimental markings, the Sütterlin Schrift, even the paper seem to fit. Then when you read the content one is left with little doubt that this is the real thing.

The letter is written by a teenage rank and file member of an SS cavalry regiment temporarily holed up in a medical facility in an unidentified part of Poland in March 1942 to one of his pals in a town called Rückwerda near Litzmannstadt (Lodz). It is essentially a chatty communication, keeping a friend up to date with what’s going on in his life and referring to mutual acquaintances etc. So far, so unremarkable. Then at the end of the first paragraph the author nonchalantly mentions that whilst he was able to get some rest in the hospital, the experience has had its disadvantages, namely:

“Yesterday I missed out on a really great thing. The company raided 3 villages and shot a whole bunch of Polacks”

He immediately resumes recounting the banalities of his daily existence without a pause for breath.

The statement is shocking on a number of levels not least the casual way it is woven into this chatty catch-up communication: the perjorative term he uses for Poles and the collective noun not appropriate for humans (original German: eine ganze Masse von Polacken) indicates a derisive, superior attitude; the raiding of villages suggests non-combatants; the fact that he regretted missing out on the event; the absence of any empathy for the victims; the naivity of the admission; and the sense that his attitude appears not to be untypical all contribute to  the portrayal of a mindset at variance with what one would expect in a civilised society.

When I catalogued this letter all those years ago, with the help of a colleague we transcribed and translated it. We also attempted to locate the place (Radau?) with the assistance of an academic who has subsequently published a study of SS Cavalry Brigade:

https://wiener.soutron.net/Portal/Default/en-GB/RecordView/Index/89808

The item has been available to readers ever since.

Then out of the blue a couple of months ago I was contacted by the husband of a cousin of the author’s son, who had spotted the catalogue description online. Since the name is relatively rare, Emmerich Menzer [i](subsequently corrected to Emmrich), he felt sure that it was his wife’s relative. I sent him a copy of the original and the transcript – they struggled reading the Sütterlin script.

Once they had fully digested the contents my correspondent reported back:

“The transcription you sent us yesterday has shocked all of us and […….] [ii] in particular he finds it hard to believe that his caring, loving father was able to utter his regret for having missed ‘a really big thing’ which involved shooting tens, if not hundreds of innocent civilians…”.

On reflection, he observed how it wasn’t uncommon for perpetrators to lead parallel lives: behave like normal, loving family members and at the same time perpetrate war crimes and crimes against humanity- one only has to look at the role of concentration camp guards and commandants.

I asked him to supply biographical details and he duly obliged:

“I assume Emmrich grew up in a very conservative to nationalistic household and was certainly influenced very much by his father (the one who bought the weekly NPD newspaper every Saturday after the war). Already in 1934 as a Hitlerjugend member Emmrich was promoted to “Jungzugführer” at the tender age of 9, so joining the Waffen-SS seems to have been the logical path. As you know he was a founding member of the local NPD chapter after the war so he probably still agreed with the Nazi ideology although he didn‘t mention anything to his children. Perhaps he was ashamed of his actions during the war or the felt his attitude would not be welcome in post-war Germany and just shut up. But this is just speculation.”

He had also made the observation that whilst only 17 when he wrote the letter, he was already Oberreiter ie a rank above Reiter which suggests that he had been with the unit for some time. He makes the further point that the riding lessons he is supposed to have undertaken- which he also mentions in the letter – must have been specific to the requirements of the cavalry as he was already an accomplished horseman.

This exceptionally rare survival of an admission to these heinous crimes committed by a Waffen SS Cavalry unit is evidence above all of the power of Nazi ideology on someone who had effectively been groomed from a young age to be one of Hitler’s willing executioners.

Howard Falksohn, Senior Archivist
The Wiener Holocaust Library

[i] Note this article was written with the consent of the Emmerich Menzer’s relative. All other names have been omitted.

[ii] Name withheld.

Related

Menzner, Emmerich, SS Oberreiter: Letter from Poland (1942)

Browse all The Wiener Holocaust Library descriptions available to date on the Archives Hub.

All images copyright The Wiener Holocaust Library. Reproduced with the kind permission of the copyright holders.

Archives Hub feature for June 2023

In 2020 the Cadbury Research Library was successful in our application for funding from the Wellcome Trust to catalogue the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) and Youth Hostel Association (YHA) archive collections. We were awarded £235,791 for a two-year project called ‘Healthy Minds and Active Bodies: the promotion of health and wellbeing by UK youth movement’. Both archive collections provide a fantastic body of material regarding work with young people and their physical and mental health, from the development of gymnasiums and outdoor activities and pursuits to educational and vocational courses.

The project employed two Project Archivists, an Archives Assistant, and a part time Project Manager with the aim of producing an online searchable catalogue, and to undertake preservation activities, for both collections. Work started in July 2021 after our previous Wellcome Trust funded project, on the Save the Children archive, was completed. After two years we are delighted to announce the completion of the project and the launch of the collections’ online catalogues during June which will be found here. 

The YMCA collection

The National Council of YMCAs’ archive collection dates to the foundation of the YMCA in 1844 and continues to the 21st century covering the various facets of work undertaken during the charity’s long history. The archive primarily concerns the YMCA National Council which was formed in 1882 to support the work, and act as a national voice, of the growing network of local YMCA associations. The archive contains committee minutes and governance papers, project papers, publications and magazines, photographs and slides, and audio-visual material and objects.

The collection also contains a vast range of material regarding YMCA local associations across England, Wales, and Ireland, including prospectuses, programmes, publications, and photographs.  Affiliated and associated organisations are also represented within the collection including the YMCA Women’s Auxiliary, formed at the end of the First World War, the YMCA Secretaries Association, and publications from the YMCA World Alliance.

The archive documents the YMCA’s various activities to support young men’s, and later also young women’s, spiritual, mental, and physical health. Their early activities ranged from bible classes, lectures, and educational classes on history, science, and religion.  Physical activity was also important with the creation of gymnasiums and sporting competitions, and in America the YMCA invented basketball. The YMCA also prioritised recreational activities and created holiday centres and hosted classes and clubs for drawings, drama, and debating. The YMCA also supported training and employment initiatives, including British Boys for British Farms’ programme, training colleges and Youth in Industry schemes.

Perhaps the most well-known aspect of YMCA’s history has been their work with the armed forces, and in particular the support they provided during the First and Second World Wars. The YMCA created hundreds of canteens and huts to support the welfare needs of troops, munition workers, civilians and Prisoners of War during the First World War. The archives document this work through the ‘Green Books’ series of photographs which have been digitised and are available to view via the catalogue. During the Second World War the YMCA canteen vans were a common sight providing refreshments, including tea and cake, behind the front lines and on the Home Front during the Blitz.

The YMCA has evolved and adapted over its 179-year history to support the needs of the young people it is trying to help and today supports hundreds of thousands of children, young people, and parents every year.

The YHA collection

The YHA (England and Wales) was founded in 1930, following in the footsteps of the world’s first youth hostel association which was founded in Germany in 1909. The movement was set up ‘to help all, especially young people of limited means, to a greater knowledge, love and care of the countryside, particularly by providing hostels or other simple accommodation for them on their travels’. From its initial foundation, the YHA expanded rapidly. By the end of 1931, there were 73 hostels open to the 6000 members of the YHA. By 1939, membership had reached 83,000.

Although the national council and committees had overall oversight and handled high-level decision making, much of the day-to-day management of the hostels and membership fell to regional groups. The YHA archive includes national and regional governance records, including an almost complete sequence of national council and committee minutes. As well as recording the development and management of hostels and membership, these records chart YHA’s work in countryside management, outdoor education, and the development of city hostels.

The collection also includes a large section of printed material, including YHA handbooks, guides, maps, and posters and leaflets, a large photograph collection, and property records charting the history of individual hostels, of the day-to-day management of the hostels and membership fell to regional groups.

In addition to these official records, the YHA archive includes personal papers and objects collected by YHA staff, wardens, and hostellers, including diaries, hostel log books, and YHA merchandise. These records compliment the other papers in the archive and provide a more personal view of the YHA and its impact on 20th century society.

Matthew Goodwin
YMCA/YHA Project Archivist
Cadbury Research Library, University of Birmingham

Related

Archive of the YMCA (Young Men’s Christian Association), 1838-1996

YMCA Unofficial Papers: Papers of Sydney L. Vinson relating to the First and Second World Wars, early-mid 20th Century

Youth Hostels Association (England and Wales), Records of, 1929-2018

Browse all Cadbury Research Library, University of Birmingham descriptions on Archives Hub.

Previous Archives Hub features on the Cadbury Research Library, University of Birmingham collections:

Comic strips and seaside holidays: unexpected stories from the Save the Children Archive

All images copyright Cadbury Research Library, University of Birmingham. Reproduced with the kind permission of the copyright holders.