Leicestershire Records Office

The Record Office for Leicestershire, Leicester & Rutland played host to two groups of Kickstart participants on 6th and 22nd October 2012.

Adam Goodwin gave an introductory talk on the work of the Archivists and a tour of the building including behind the scenes in the strong room, which houses 10,000 shelves - approx 4.5 miles! Leicestershire falls under the Diocese of Peterborough so many historical records are held there and in Cambridge. Rutland did not begin collecting until the 1960's and with the various political boundary changes over the years their records are now in the Leicestershire storage facility. Annually the archive receives approx 250 new deposits.

The Leicestershire records office began in 1947, originally housed in the building, the basement of which stood where the body of Richard III has recently been discovered.

Wills and parish records are on microfiche, but prior to the mid-1980's parish registeres were produced every day for viewing; Leicester Union Workhouse records exist from 1875. Originally paper was made from rag cloth and Adam showed examples from The Leicester Mercury from 1874 which are in far better condition than those from less than 50 years ago.

The documents available to our group for research included a Quaker marriage certificate from 1860, signed by all member sof the congregation; early village maps of the Rutland area, naming tennants of each field etc. A great seal of Henry II lay alongside the Gretton Family Estates book of lands held, plus a large royal seal of Richard II (the boyking) showing him astride his horse on one side and enthroned on the other.

An original pedigree of the Shirley Family  of Staunton Harold was partially unrolled -at 30 foot long and 13 feet wide, Adam had only seen it unrolled once in its entirety when they took it to the museum at Long walk specifically for the purpose of using the floor space. At that point they had it professionally photographed so you can now view it in sections.

Large poster size letters were on view from 1630's; one Rutland family were ambassadors to Turkey and the letters are signed from Charles II and Oliver P (Oliver Cromwell Protector) - mainly to complain about piracy!

The oldest book on display, believed to belong to Robert, Count of Moulin, was an 1150 copy of an 1107 original book of Town charters, written in Norman French or Latin, giving a grant of rights by the Earl of Leicester at the time of Edward the Confessor, and proves the existence of the Guilds prior to the Norman Conquest, when Freemen ran the town of Leicester.

Generally writers did not start to date documents until after 1290.

Other documents available included Leicester St Martins Church (now the cathedral) Church Wardens accounts written between 1544 and 1647 - a lovely book with metal clasps, the book had been fully restored using paper pulp to reline the paper edges - the accounts were started 60 years after Bosworth , where Richard III was reputed to have died - the document is written in 'secretary hand'.

The Town Hall library collection established in the 16th century at the Guildhall are now with the records office on display from the collection was a copy of John Wycliffes sermons in english.

A book that resembled our modern fascination for altered books was the Sherrand family survey book of the 'Manor of Teigh' - listing the estate properties and tennants in 1597; describing every field strip, tennant name, field name with illustrations and maps. Oxgang was the name given to a strip of land that an ox could plough in a day.  The name Wong referred to enclosed land among open field strips. Each farm may have  enclosures immediately adjoining the farmstead, giving rise to names such as Home Close and Croft.

If you want to take field names further there is a book - English Field names - by John Field.(appropriately).

One of the most recent, but with a very decorative cover was parchment illuminated address from WWI to Thomas Feilding-Johnson a local textile manufacturer.

A map of the manor of Langham was on display from 1624, part of a deposited archive collected form the 1300s that had been stored in 70 tin boxes in a stable,along with the horses.
The Grant of a crest or badge (not  a coat of arms) of the Herick family of Beaumanor Hall from 1590 showed a bulls head, a design common to the area in buidling s and pub signs, sitting alongside the signature of Henry VIII acting in his capacity of Duchy of Lancaster to swap some land ownership in the Beaumont Leys area of Leicester.

Matlock and Lincoln Workshops

Unfortunately our booked artist Diana Syder suffered a family bereavement and was unable to run the first two workshops for us. As it was, due to the nature of the situation, very short notice I decided the only option was to run the workshops myself albeit with no idea what Diana's intentention for the session was.

Taking along my kitchen sink along with everything else I could think of, plus considering the requirements list Diana had provided, everyone was asked to take one small picture, idea, item from the mornings images seen at the archivist, plus either a word, sentence also from the mornings research. We shared the large sheets of paper and using coloured papaers from my stash cut out shapes from the mornings images,  and agreed in groups to place the images appropriately. Everyone then used the balck paint that Diana had suggested and we filled in areas around or over the images, with specific mark making - each individual sticking to the same idea as they moved around, followed by writing the words from the morning.

Everyone moved around and wrote all over everyone else's work! I then added in gold paint - from the illuminated letters and again everyone moved around with a different mark over the black and images. The entire collection was hung (briefly) and then cut up - with everyone getting allotted pieces to continue to work from.

Having been called at such short notice I have to apologise , and/ or thank the recent artist workshops I have attended, whose influences enabled me to do this - including Sarah Burgess, Bobby Britnell and Dionne Swift.

It was a good way of getting to know one another, andproducing something even for those who 'can't draw,' there was no pressure for individual achievment and had an immediacy for the ideas gleaned in the morning. Whether we will see anything in the exhibtion that came from this remains to be seen......

Lincolnshire County Archives 22nd September 2012

 The Lincolnshire archives began in the 1930s gathering photographs; the university had a subject-based archive., whilst the Authority concentrated on area based. Deposits are stored safely and made available to the public.

Currently housed in an old bottle washing plant, they have 6 miles of shelving which carries a huge cost in air handling units, insect monitoring and climate control; there are no water pipes in the vicinity for obvious reasons! The many millions of documents are used for research for dissertations, books, family history etc.

1072 is the earliest document held – a grant to Lincoln Cathedral of land, although the Cathedral keeps much of its old library including illuminated manuscripts.

Coroners, courts and hospitals have to deposit, but most are deposited through good will; very occasionally documents of importance may be purchased but generally there is no budget for this. The Lincoln archive has a laboratory but is only able to contract conservators occasionally.

The Diocese of Lincoln used to extend to the Thames so there is a huge collection overseen by the National Archives, who are leading the world in setting new standards for future data collection and storage. Since the advent of the World Wide Web there is a major change to the way people are looking for and finding documents.

All the documents on display were old, of medieval origin, including fragments of monastic documents – trashed during the Reformation.

Some items have been rebound but many are still in a fragile state, some retaining the original leather or wooden board covers. One book had the edges of all the pages cut off so it would fit the library shelf when it was rebound many years age! Recycling was en vogue back then, one leather cover reused as the cover of an estate inventory.

Administration records from Cathedral laws and customs of the town, sit side by side with deeds, land transactions, documents in Hebrew script, rolls and volumes from 1290. There is even a hymn book in large print!

Medieval music scores, rhyming French texts, medieval Royal pedigrees (propaganda during the Wars of the Roses) parchment, vellum, rag papers, alongside modern wood pulp papers, which arrived in the 19th Century. Strongly acidic wood pulp paper self destructs over time and will not outlive its much older counterpart the rag paper.

Many old documents are written in ink made of old gall, or ground up precious stones and minerals to provide the colours, which because of the expense were only used on Royal or Monastic documents.

A spiked wheel was used to prick lines down the pages to create grid lines for writing, if a mistake was made the writer would scrape the surface off the skin and re-write over; overwriting is a bit more blurred but can clearly be seen on some documents.