Msc spring newsletter

Issue 2/2016

INSIDE: Grand Tourists and Others: Travelling Abroad Before the 20th Century Keep calm and carry on exploring The Nottingham Blitz Fond farewell to Caroline Kelly

DISCOVER The University of Nottingham’s Manuscripts and Special Collections

Welcome

From the Blitz to the boilerhouse...

Welcome to the second edition of Discover, The University of Nottingham Manuscripts and Special Collections Newsletter.

We were very pleased to receive a number of complimentary comments for the first issue, so do continue to let us know what you think about the newsletter, or even better consider contributing a short article about your research or discoveries in our collections for a future edition. Please pass the newsletter on, or forward it to friends and colleagues, and details of how to be added to the mailing list can be found elsewhere in the newsletter.

This edition includes news of recent acquisitions, information on the upgrade of our Manuscripts online catalogue and eclectic articles ranging from the Nottingham Blitz to the University’s boiler house chimney.

Our previous exhibition, in collaboration with Boots Archives, on the No7 brand has been a

great success and we are already enjoying the Grand Tourists and Others: Travelling Abroad before the 20th Century.

With this exhibition we are delighted to be part of a wider Grand Tour partnership programme involving Nottingham Contemporary, Chatsworth, the Harley Gallery and Derby Museum and Art Gallery amongst others, so I hope you will take the opportunity to visit both our exhibition and events at the Weston Gallery, Nottingham Lakeside Arts, and those of some our partners (www.thegrandtour. uk.com).

Since the last edition we have said farewell to two colleagues.

Firstly to Ben Veasey, our Digital Strategy Officer, who in his year with us has produced a Digital Preservation and Access Policy and a Digitisation Strategy which will lay firm foundations for future work. We wish him all the best in his new post.

More recently, after 23 years’ sterling service, Senior Archivist, Caroline Kelly has decided to retire; this edition looks back on her time at the University. During the last few years Caroline’s major achievements have been to direct our exhibition programme in the Weston Gallery. Over the last year she has also led our application for Archives Accreditation, which entailed a huge amount of work.

Lastly she has been working on a Manuscripts and Special Collections iBook, which we will be launching later in the year, to showcase our amazing collections. I would like to thank her for her dedication and hard work and wish her well in her wellearned retirement.

If you’d like to find out more about these activities or any other aspect of our work please do not hesitate to contact me. Meanwhile I hope you enjoy reading Discover.

Mark Dorrington Keeper of Manuscripts and Special Collections

Where to find us

Opening hours

Get in touch

Manuscripts and Special Collections is based on the University’s King’s Meadow Campus on Lenton Lane, just five minutes from University Park by hopper bus. Anyone can visit and use the collections.

Our dedicated exhibition space, the Weston Gallery, is based in Nottingham Lakeside Arts on University Park Campus. The gallery is open 11am to 4pm Monday to Friday and 12 noon to 4pm at weekends.

To suggest items for inclusion in future issues or if you’d like to write a piece about your research or discoveries in our collections, contact Hayley Cotterill.

The reading room is open 9am to 6pm Monday to Thursday and 9am to 5pm on Fridays.

e: hayley.cotterill@nottingham.ac.uk t: 0115 951 4565 To join our newsletter mailing list: e: mss-library@nottingham.ac.uk

News

Caroline in various guises.

And it’s goodbye from me... Caroline retires The 24th of September 1992 turned out to be a life-changing day for me because that was when I accepted the position of Assistant-Keeper (job-share) with the Department of Manuscripts at The University of Nottingham. On 1 November I arrived in Level 1 of Hallward Library, eager and ready to serve. I stayed for the next 23 years.

Some things were very different then; draft letters were handwritten and then passed to the secretary, to be deciphered and typed. Staffing levels were much smaller – just seven of us.

We had no website and no electronic finding aids. We didn’t have a Locations Guide, the resident staff just knew where everything was – tricky for the new kid on the block!

Although we have always promoted our holdings through exhibitions, in the 1990s we had no adequate exhibition space readily available. The opening of

the Weston Gallery in 2001 was highly significant, allowing us to share our collections with a wider audience.

Our inaugural exhibition, DH Lawrence – A Literary Legacy, opened on 27 September 2001, ran for 13 weeks and attracted 2,967 visitors. Since then more than 165,000 visitors have enjoyed the exhibitions in this delightful space.

In 2006, having completely outgrown the available space in Hallward, we moved to King’s Meadow Campus.

What a task it was, making the new place (formerly a television studio) fit for purpose, planning how and where everything would go – the collections, the kit, the staff, so that we would be able to find it all again (okay – it wasn’t 100% perfect, but it probably was 85%!).

The move began on Monday 5 June and took seven weeks during which

time we moved, without mishap, 3,000,000 manuscripts, 40,000 rare books, 19 members of staff and equipment, Reading Room furniture, the East Midlands Collection and assorted office paraphernalia. It was an amazing experience – such co-operation, good humour, professionalism and hard work from everyone involved, and yet just 12 months before, we had no idea this was going to happen.

In 1992, the terms and conditions of my employment stated “the AssistantKeeper of Manuscripts will normally retire from the service of the University on reaching the age of 65”. At that time the thought of being 65 was scarcely imaginable, but in February 2016 it became an incontrovertible fact.

I have spent 8,502 days working with wonderful collections and inspiring colleagues – how lucky am I? Caroline Kelly

Exhibition news

Tourists in a Venetian gondola, from an album of topographical photographs associated with Prince Leopold 1st Duke of Albany, c.1884.

Manuscript Collection MS 317

Grand Tourists and Others: Travelling Abroad before The 20th Century.

Get in touch Are you an academic, archive or local business interested in working with Manuscripts and Special Collections to host an exhibition in the Weston Gallery? If so please contact Hayley Cotterill. e: hayley.cotterill@ nottingham.ac.uk t: 0115 951 4565

This exhibition (29 April-7 August 2016) takes the visitor on a journey through the history of travel since the 16th century, drawing on The University of Nottingham’s rich archives.

Beginning with the elite ‘Grand Tour’ of the 17th and 18th centuries and ending with the more commercial tourism of the mid-nineteenth century, the exhibition explores the travels of local families (from Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire) and others throughout Europe and beyond.

The Grand Tour embodied a particular style of travel which was fashionable among the British aristocracy from the end of the sixteenth century onwards. The Tour was dominated by young men (typically in their early 20s) who travelled across the continent for up to two years. They were accompanied by tutors, considerably older men who tried to keep them in check and also to teach them about the countries they visited.

They often did not succeed and their charges got into debt and often worse difficulties. Although women travelled less frequently than men, there

are a considerable number of items on display authored by women.

The classic Grand Tour came to an end during the French Revolutionary period when it became increasingly dangerous to travel. After 1814, travel began again in earnest, but over the next couple of decades it changed in character, becoming accessible to the middle classes.

Steam ships and railways soon made the physical process of travel quicker and rather less boring, and a whole tourist infrastructure of hotels, restaurants, travel agents and the like came into being.

Throughout the period covered by the exhibition, roughly 1650 to 1900, people travelled for education and pleasure, to buy and sell things, to escape pressures at home, and much more besides. The trips of men and women, girls and boys, servants and even pets are recorded. Many places across Europe and some beyond feature among the exhibits, with a special focus on Italy

EXHIBITION EVENTS A series of special events will be held to accompany the Grand Tourists exhibition.

All talks will take place in the Djanogly Theatre, Nottingham Lakeside Arts, 1-2pm.

Places are limited. Please book in advance with Lakeside box office on 0115 846 7777.

FREE TALKS The Grand Tour of the Fanshawe Sisters in 1829 14 June 2016 In this richly illustrated talk, Professor Charles Watkins and Dr Ross Balzaretti will focus on the Fanshawe sisters who ‘did Europe’ in 1829. Using surviving sketches, letters and poems, this talk sheds light on the difficulties and pleasures of early 19th century travel.

Danger and the Grand Tour 14 July 2016

which became and remained the country most people were keen to see.

Drawing on the Chaworth Musters, Mellish, Newcastle, Ossington, Portland and Wrench manuscript collections as well the printed Special Collection, exhibits include passports, diaries and journals, sketches, bills, prints, photographs and guide books, objects which are still familiar now when we travel abroad. We are delighted that Nottingham Castle Museum has loaned a marvellous watercolour by local artist Richard Parkes Bonington, painted on his 1826 visit to northern Italy.

A number of events associated with the exhibition will investigate it in greater depth. Lunchtime lectures will explain about the history of travelling, the tours of the Fanshawe sisters, whose sketches and letters are displayed, and the dangers associated with travel and how travellers may have enjoyed as well as feared them.

The screening of Roberto Rossellini’s classic film Journey to Italy (1954) raises issues about the emotional effects of travel, and features stunning images of objects in the National Archaeological Museum, Naples, which Grand Tourists travelled to see.

The workshop for young people takes inspiration from some of the exhibits which were produced by or for child travellers (diaries and picture books) to enthuse children of the present with the travel bug.

ABOVE: The Blue Grotto at Capri, Italy. From an album of European travel photographs collected by Carrie S. North, c.1891.

Manuscript Collection MS 183

BELOW: ‘Italy’, from The World in Miniature (London, 1825).

Briggs Collection LT210.G/W6

Mountain precipices, erupting volcanoes, battles, malaria and the ever-present danger of social failure: travel on the 18th-century Grand Tour could be unpleasantly hazardous.

Join Sarah Goldsmith (University of York) to explore why Grand Tourists risked such dangers. Could these perils ever be more than a dangerous nuisance?

FILM SCREENING Roberto Rossellini’s A Journey to Italy (1954) Thursday 19 May, 7.30pm (97 minutes) £5 (£3 concs), Djanogly Theatre Introduction and post screening discussion

by Dr Ross Balzaretti (Department of History) and Sarah Lutton (BFI London Film Festival Programme Adviser, co-editor Roberto Real) Rossellini: Magician of the Real One of the most important films you’ve never seen! Starring Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders, it follows a disconnected couple from England, visiting Naples to sell off an inherited villa, as their unfamiliar and enforced intimacy starts eating away at the fabric of their union. A powerful and existential portrait of time, place and emotion, heralded on its release as a ground-breaking modernist work.

WORKSHOP FOR YOUNG PEOPLE The Art of Travel Saturday 23 July, 10.30-13.00 11-13 yrs, £8 Make art inspired by your travels and your imagination with local artist Pilar ChamorroPascual and Ross Balzaretti, exhibition curator.

Spotlight

Blitz THE NOTTINGHAM

2016 marks the 75th anniversary of the bombing of Nottingham during the Second World War. Shortly after midnight on the night of the 8-9 May 1941, Nottingham suffered a terrifying air raid by the German Luftwaffe.

By the time the all-clear siren sounded at about 4.30am, more than150 people had been killed in the Nottingham Blitz with several hundred more injured and many more left homeless.

The attack by the German Luftwaffe began shortly after midnight with eleven separate waves of bombers targeting the city’s factories and industrial sites, including Raleigh and Boots.

For the Nottingham residents who emerged from their shelters into daylight not knowing whether friends and family were safe or what remained of their homes, the impact must have been devastating. Terrible as it was, the damage could have been considerably worse without the Starfish decoy system at Cropwell Butler. Starfish sites were areas of countryside designed to divert night-time enemy incendiary attacks from the real target. After the first wave of bombers, the decoy sites would be set on fire to mimic a burning town, which the subsequent aeroplanes would, hopefully, hone in on.

The decoys worked, and many of the 400 or so bombs dropped that night fell in the Vale of Belvoir. Since 1940, staff and students from University College Nottingham (the forerunner to The University of Nottingham) had volunteered for regular fire-watching duties at both their city centre and University Park campuses, keeping an all-night vigil in readiness for any incendiary and explosives bomb attacks. That attack came in the early hours of the 9th, when the buildings on Shakespeare Street took a direct hit. Two

of the fire-watchers on duty suffered minor injuries but carried on their duties with ‘steadiness and coolness’, according to UCN’s Annual Report. They were incredibly fortunate to have escaped lightly: a direct hit to the Co-Op bakery on Meadow Lane killed 48 employees and a member of the Home Guard, and injured 20 others who had sought refuge in the air raid shelter in the basement.

The photographs here were taken by University College to record the damage.

Parts of the Gothic Revival building were in rubble; the windows were shattered and roof tiles blown off from the force of the blast; and any walls still standing were covered in cracks and craters where shrapnel had hit. The West Wing bore the brunt of the bombing and the Mining and Textiles Departments, including the laboratories, were destroyed. The rest of the building was, in the words of the University Council, ‘scarred and heavily shaken’. Looking at the extent and severity of the damage it is remarkable that within a week the building had been repaired and restocked enough that classes could resume.

Despite this disruption, the only student in the Mining Department scheduled to sit his final exams in summer 1941, 23-year old Frederick Boam, passed and was awarded his BSc (Engineering) Mining.

Images: UMP/2/1/42/2, UMP/2/1/42/7, UMP/2/1/42/5, UMP/2/1/42/4, UMP/2/1/42/6, Extract from the Report of the Senate, Annual Report for 1941 (Not U Periodicals), Extract from the Report of the Council, Annual Report for 1941 (Not U Periodicals)]

Spotlight

In the February 1, 1968, issue of University of Nottingham student newspaper The Gongster there appeared a riddle: “What am I?” it teased. Even more excitingly, it suggested that if you were to aid this forgetful soul in establishing its identity then “a reward may well be given”.

The riddle’s clues were, for the most part, fairly matter of fact. For example, “I am triangular,” it said. “I prevent blue haze”. Then it described its diet of gravel, sand, cement and porcelain bricks. While this may sound unappealing, it certainly hadn’t stunted its growth, as revealed when it coquettishly declared its measurements: a floor span of 12ft, and 43.5yards tall (“and still growing fast”). If those clues weren’t enough, it divulges: “Mr Swanson looks after me”. Sadly, though, even Mr Swanson couldn’t stop the bullying: “I am told that I am hideous”.

What tragic being could this be referring to?

What poor unfortunate was under attack? And just what is “blue haze”? (Google informs me that it is either a type of marijuana or a Miles Davis’ album. Thanks, Google.) Although it was 47 years too late to claim the Gongster prize, my curiosity had been piqued.

Thankfully my burning quest for truth was satiated in the next issue of Gongster, where Mr JR Prince was revealed to have the winning answer. “Dear Sir,” he wrote, “You are a bloody great hump of chimney sticking out of the central heating station.” If that wasn’t rude enough, he then went on to slag off its blue haze prevention abilities.

(Apparently recreational drugs and hard bop jazz aren’t for everyone.)

At first I couldn’t think I’d ever been anywhere near this chimney. Then, seeing a photograph of it, towering over the science buildings on University Park, I realised how often I’d noticed it and then instantly forgotten it. Is it really true that nobody has any love for it?

Time to investigate.

I started going through our material here at Manuscripts and Special Collections. The University’s annual report for 1966-67 (EMSC Periodicals Not U) refers to the boiler house being adapted for the installation of a fourth boiler, with the inclusion of a new chimney. Due to be completed by March 1968, the report boasts the structure will “rival the Architecture building and the

Pages from The Gongster, 1 February 1968, p3, and

Trent Building tower in height” (p.15). There would be no hiding for this chimney.

Our holdings of the University’s Council and Senate minutes proved disappointing, with only a very brief mention to the building works, but the University Estates team were much more helpful. They were able to tell me that although the chimney was originally built for a coal-fired plant, for as long as anyone can remember the boiler house has used a gas-fired heating plant. They also very kindly let me see some of the original plans of the chimney, which prove to be resplendent technical drawings, dynamic and intricate, ignorant of the bullying the chimney would receive once built.

Meanwhile, a plea for anecdotal evidence turned up a glutton of rumours from my fellow staff members: “They built it facing the wrong way which is why it never worked properly”; “a maintenance worker once got into difficulty when a gust of wind caused his ropes to tangle and he had to be rescued”; “the black smoke is caused by burning students who wouldn’t pay their library fines.” Citations needed all round.

Unfortunately, tracking down any more concrete information on the chimney seems next to impossible. Facts elude me, disappearing from view in the murky (blue) haze of hearsay. We may never know who Mr Swanson was, for example. Or why everyone seemed to take against the chimney’s existence quite so vehemently. All we know is that this is a chimney unloved by all.

Except, wait… That’s not quite true.

For BBC Radio Nottingham’s John Holmes, a Mining Engineering student at the University in 1968, the chimney’s construction is a source of happy memories. “We used to leave the Buttery [student bar] at closing time,” he says, “and after saying goodbye to girls would meet at the top at midnight.”

By climbing up the scaffolding John was able to take these photographs from the chimney’s impressive height. “I still smile when I see it,” he says.

Turns out there is some love for an ugly chimney with an identity crisis after all.

With thanks to Mark Bonsall and John Holmes.

Nicholas Blake, Library Assistant.

Boiler house chimney construction drawing (courtesy of Estates) overlaid on an image of the chimney covered in scaffolding during construction in June 1968. (ACC 2170/5) Photo by John Holmes.

Ugly, belittled and ignored, this towering presence still has some admirers

News

Introducing

CalmView Our Manuscripts Online Catalogue has had a facelift. You can still search over 250,000 records describing our rich manuscript and archive collections. But our CalmView website brings together searching, browsing, information, help and advice. We hope you find it easier and more enjoyable to use.

CalmView is the successor application to DServe, which we used to present our online catalogue since 2005. Both products are supplied by Axiell, which is the supplier of our cataloguing system, Calm for Archives. Now that our new catalogue is up and running, it seemed a good time to explain how to get the best out of it.

The catalogue can be searched or browsed. To find out what kind of collections we hold, go to ‘Browse the Catalogue’, and choose the category which interests you. This brings up an overview of relevant collection-level records, giving very brief information in the Title and Dates Of Creation fields. To see more details, click on the hyperlinked ‘Document Reference’ number alongside.

The new catalogue has a much better hierarchy browser than the previous catalogue, and displays the full contents of a collection in ‘tree’ form. You can expand each series one at a time to see the titles of all the records contained there. It is the electronic equivalent of browsing through a traditional paper catalogue to see the full scope of the collection. You can access the hierarchy browser by clicking on the highlighted Document Reference number in any full catalogue record and waiting for it to generate (it takes longer if the collection is

very large). Once in the hierarchy browser, clicking on any of the titles will take you to the full catalogue record for that document.

Alternatively, you can ‘Search the Catalogue’. You will get the biggest number of hits if you put something into the ‘Free text search’ box, but there are many other fields available which you can choose to use to narrow down your search. An initial search brings up an overview of results.

The Title field is a very brief introduction to the contents of the document, and there is normally more information available in the full catalogue record: click on the hyperlinked ‘Document Reference’ number to see more.

Two further options available are to ‘Search the name index’ and ‘Search the place index’. Not all of our collections have been indexed – this is a very labour-intensive process, and is normally only done at item level if the cataloguing of the collection is part of a specially-funded project.

The indexes are particularly rich in the Newcastle, Portland, Denison, Buchanan and Archdeaconry collections.

However, it is always worth trying a name index search, because the search results give the surname, forename, known dates and further descriptions of the person involved, for example, where he or she came from. This makes them a useful tool in determining whether the ‘Smith’ you have found is the one you are looking for.

The name index also holds records of companies/organisations.

The name index is the only way to find particular names from Marriage Bonds, churchwarden Presentment Bills, and Penances in the Archdeaconry collection.

Similarly, using the place index helps you quickly find records which are specifically about a certain place. Do remember to do a free text search too, just

to be sure that you have found everything of relevance!

The Manuscripts Online Catalogue can still be found via the ‘green’ button on our website, by clicking on http://mssweb. nottingham.ac.uk/catalogue, or at its direct web address, http://mss-cat. nottingham.ac.uk/CalmView/Default. aspx?

Recent acquisitions

06-3073m NPE 3-264-1 9( top)06-0331m UMP 2-3-30

Park life Our recent acquisitions have mainly involved accruals to our existing collections.

One such accrual is programmes for events and annual meetings of the Nottingham Medico-Chirurgical Society (1950s-1990s), and minutes of trustee meetings from the 1990s. The society was founded in 1828 with the intention of establishing a medical lending library, and is believed to be the second oldest medical society in the country. The society’s library of some 1,600 medical rare books was acquired by Manuscripts and Special Collections in the 1970s. Society records trace its fascinating history from its birth in 1828, with this acquisition bringing the story up to the end of the 20th century.

Another venerable Nottingham institution has also added to its collection in recent months – Nottingham’s Park Estate.

The Nottingham Park Estate Residents' Association brought in a collection of committee minutes and papers for 19791986 (covering the period when the estate management was taken over from Oxford University). Amongst other things, the files cover arrangements for maintenance of the wonderful gas-fuelled street lighting,

and the implementation of street parking restrictions. They also donated a nearly complete set of association newsletters to augment our existing series within the Nottingham Park Estate Collection (NPE).

These newsletters are a wonderful source of information about the estate’s history and development, and give an insight into residents’ daily lives. They complement our official records collection, which includes detailed property plans that are regularly consulted by their current occupiers.

The University’s archive continues to grow. It includes newspaper cuttings, programmes and team sheets relating to Sport (including squash and canoeing), photos relating to the Mining Engineering Department and the Mining Society from the 1920s to the 1990s, photos of the Technical Committee and Electrical Engineering students at the University and a University of Nottingham Visitor Book 1964-1966, which includes a list of those attending the British Association Meeting, 1–7 September 1966.

The University’s Campaigns and Alumni Relations Office have transferred photographs and newsletters to our

archives. A placement student creating a box list from this content has discovered some wonderful photos from Karnival, the largest student-led fundraising organisation of its kind in Europe, which has been running for over 60 years.

Finally we have received a collection belonging to Lena Filsell (married name Sills), of West Bridgford, who was a lifelong member of Friary Congregational Church.

Her collection (MS 975) includes hymn sheets for Sunday School Anniversary services at Trent Boulevard Wesleyan Church and Friary Congregational Church for 1917-1924, and a school exercise book from 1912, into which Lena copied extracts from poems and pasted in drawings and postcards. This collection enhances our existing collection of records from the Friary Congregational Church itself (Fy).

Such acquisitions are a wonderful example of how donating a collection does not mean it is ‘static’ or ‘complete’. Many people and organisations continue adding to their collections. It is thanks to the support and generosity of our donors that the collections in our care continue to grow.

Contact details Manuscripts and Special Collections The University of Nottingham King’s Meadow Campus Lenton Lane Nottingham NG7 2NR e: mss-library@nottingham.ac.uk t: +44 (0)115 951 4565 w: www.nottingham.ac.uk/manuscriptsandspecialcollections

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