A Moving Story - What We Did In August
August has been an exciting time in the life of Cheshire Archives as we received the keys to the new centre in Chester from the building contractors. Colleagues have already been for a couple of orientation visits, and we held our very first team meeting in the new centre.
The space is looking amazing and has been transformed now that the furniture and fittings are in. The team won’t move in until autumn this year after the big collections move so we are using the time in-between to familiarise ourselves with the new space, hold test events and activities, recruit new posts, and undertake essential training.
With around six weeks to go until the collections move out of their home at Duke Street, we are continuing apace with collections work. To enable a smooth transfer of records from the old site into the new centre we need to ensure that records are described clearly, packaged appropriately, allocated to the correct site, and barcoded and scanned. It’s a mammoth job and up to this point we have sorted, barcoded and scanned 20,313 containers and 181,106 items, and an astonishing 577 bays of records have been processed from our seven strongrooms.
Lots of us have a long association with the Duke Street building so it is with some sadness that we start to say our goodbyes, and we will feel this once the collections go in October. It feels quite fitting that during our work on the collections this month we came across a document relating to Duke Street. It is a compulsory purchase order for housing along Duke Street and is dated 1963. This building is shown on the plan as a ‘warehouse’.
I also came across a log book from Lostock Gralam Manchester Road Infants school which closed its doors in 1984 and it notes that on the last day the children were given a Ladybird book of the Lord’s Prayer and then the last entry reads ‘last day in the life of the school at which I have been very happy.’
Our Conservator Angela has been busy sorting through and packaging boxes of slides and came across some wonderful ones in the Frank Simpson collection. Frank Simpson was an authority on the history of Chester and a keen amateur photographer. You can find his photographs in our collections along with his diaries and manuscripts detailing local events and history. In his spare time, he obviously combined two great passions - animals and photography.
Continuing a theme of ‘animals in the archives’ we also came across a miscellaneous folder of sketches, photographs and papers relating to the Vaudrey family. The Vaudrey collection includes the usual genealogical papers and records for a family that originated in Cheshire and particularly for John Clough Vaudrey who was the City Engineer to Birmingham Corporation. His job would have demanded a high level of skill at technical drawing. Artistic prowess obviously ran in the family with a picture of an elephant drawn by a younger member of the family and inscribed ‘From E Vaudrey to father’. I am constantly surprised by the unexpected items that you find in the archives!
One of the more unusual finds this month included photographic memorabilia with a box of Johnsons photo tints discovered among records we were sorting. Johnsons were manufacturing chemists based in Finsbury and produced these tints to colour postcards, prints and lantern slides. The small bottles still contain the remains of the tints inside.
Away from collections work we have also appeared at various events round the county. We were at the Crewe Heritage Centre as part of the Crewe Summer Festival of Fun with our ‘Pop Up Apothecary’ event. We were very busy with over 200 families taking part in making healing potions, smelling and identifying traditional remedy ingredients and learning about the use of plants in historic medicines.
It’s been a hectic month in the archives and I thought I would finish on a relaxing note. Our social media team have been very busy this month and among their posts are a couple of reels titled ‘Archives Unwind’ in the style of ASMR videos. ASMR stands for Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response! It’s all to do with relaxing sounds and visual images. You can join us for a mindful moment or two by following the links:
Archives Unwind - The Will of William Hales
Archives Unwind - Into The Strongroom
On that relaxing note, that is all for this month. Join us again in September and catch up on all the news from around the team.
By Kate Tobias-Buick, Archivist
