The Collections Story - Drawers of Treasure! — Cheshire's archives: a story shared

Our (petite) Local Studies librarian has been tackling the contents of a wooden map cabinet larger than herself, finding long-overlooked treasures on the way. The Violet Cabinet is filled with Local Studies material and housed in Violet Strongroom (hence the name!)

Only a handful of these items were listed on our catalogue, and many required storage improvements from our conservation team. Fellow librarians and archivists assisted, and our big map table in the Searchroom was requisitioned for the purpose of spreading out the entire contents of ten drawers. Our first task was to sort everything into format: photographs, prints, archive material, ephemera, newspapers and periodicals, and maps and plans, as well as removing any unnecessary duplicates or anything unrelated to Cheshire.

With each format being looked at in turn, the work began to identify, catalogue, repackage and re-home where necessary.

A favourite photograph rediscovered during this work was one of three Chester City librarians taken in the 1950s. Our three Cheshire Archives librarians couldn’t resist recreating the photograph.

One of our favourite photographs from Violet Cabinet: three librarians in Chester in the 1950s...

And our three Cheshire Archives librarians in Chester today!

This work is ongoing, with photographs and prints currently in progress and is just one small part of our task to prepare everything for moving to our new centres.

A very large, mounted photograph, identified as Reginald Potts (the first Clerk of Cheshire County Council), with our Local Studies Librarian for scale (she’s 5ft 2)!

A large photograph of Empire Day, 1909, as celebrated by Great Barrow School. The Headmaster, Dennis Ruscoe, can be seen on the right of the photograph, alongside teachers and children with flags.

A gorgeously illustrated calendar for 1936, produced for members of the Ellesmere Port & District Co-Operative Society.

A bird’s-eye view of Chester, following the River Dee from the Irish Sea to the city’s harbour. We were quite taken with the illustrations of ships, and the train complete with puff of smoke!

By Heather Vernon, Local Studies Librarian