Joel's Record Office Resumé

This blog was written by one of our work experience students, Joel, who spent a week with us over the summer.  Thank you for your work Joel! 

Being at the Record Office for four days, I learnt a lot of different things, from research skills to conservation, as well as what goes on behind the scenes. The tour of the building right at the start of my time there really gave a good insight into the various jobs that happen in the archives, as well as allowing me to enter one of the strong rooms where all the records are kept. I also attended two Microsoft Teams meetings in which the new archive buildings were discussed and upcoming events were planned out. In total I worked on three big projects for the archives.

The first main project I worked on was looking at a scrapbook made by the various mayors of Chester between 1936 to 1979. Continuing where Archie left off, [Archie's Archives Experience blog can be found here] I looked at the entries made between 1947 to 1957. One of the most interesting things I found was that there was a great difference in the entries, including a letter relating to the death of King George VI, menus and table plans for luncheon at the Grosvenor Hotel, Christmas Cards, an invite to a Turner exhibition in the Town Hall, a programme for the presentation of new colours to the Cheshire Regiment and (perhaps most strangely) an invite to the 51st Annual Conference of the Llay Angling Society on Northgate Street. 

 

The randomness of these events is fascinating to me, and they give a really good indication of the duties undertaken by the mayor of Chester. The work on the scrapbook also gave me the opportunity to have a go at the conservation process and learn how the Record Office preserve their archived materials.

As well as the scrapbook, I was also given the chance to work with the Local Studies team. My work for them involved looking at photographs of Chester and seeing whether or not they were on the online image bank. For those that were not, I was given the task of creating online descriptions and catalogues for them. Some of these included photos of The Church of St. John the Baptist in Guilden Sutton, The Suspension Bridge by the Groves from the 1920’s, The Blue Bell on Northgate Street, King Charles Tower and Children in Fancy Dress from the 1910’s. Seeing how the city has changed over time (and how things have stayed the same) was really interesting to me.

The third and final of my projects was related to the Parkside Asylum, which was located in Macclesfield. The first part of it involved using Zooniverse, which gives you a case note to answer questions on. Though it was tricky to begin with (due to handwriting being difficult to read) I soon got the hang of it. After finishing the Zooniverse tasks, I began to look at Parkside case notes on the online catalogue in order to log the diagnosis of individuals (death, transfer, recovery etc) and to see if the case notes came with a photograph of the individual. Seeing photographs of real patients brought a greater connection between me and the work.

One of the highlights of the four days was the people working and volunteering at the records office, all of whom were passionate about what they do. They were also extremely helpful and happy to answer any questions I had or to talk to me about what they were all doing.

In the future, I wish to be a historical researcher for television, films, and video games, and I believe the skills that I have acquired at the Record Office will help me with this aim.

The documents and photographs Joel worked with are available to view at Cheshire Record Office in Chester. 

Archie's Archives Experience!

This blog post was written by one of our work experience students, Archie, who spent a week with us in June. Thanks for all of your work Archie!

During my work experience at Cheshire Record Office, I discovered plenty of new and genuinely interesting things I didn’t know existed.

On my first day I was able to sit in on a staff meeting and learn about how Cheshire Archives and Local Studies were partnering with local communities, finding them photos, documents and anything else they wanted so that they could hold their own events about themselves. 

I spent some time reading, cleaning and documenting the Mayors Scrapbook from 1936-1979. Not only did I learn about how to properly take care of precious archives and how to keep them in the best condition so other people can view them later on, but I was able to read these small snippets of history, whether they were simple invites to tea from the Mayor and Mayoress in 1941, or a New Year’s card with a quote hoping for peace and an end to the war. It felt like I was there, experiencing it myself. Even just small things told a story, like a letter from the Royal household explaining that the Mayor and his wife wouldn’t be able to get a congratulations letter for their Golden Jubilee for their marriage, which was received on December 25^th.

I also helped to check photographs and see if they were on the Cheshire Image Bank or not. If they weren't on the site then I indexed them onto a spreadsheet, and did some research around the people, places and events photographed. Looking at a photograph of a local blacksmith taken in the 19^th century, it can only make you wonder who those people were, what they’d experienced themselves and what they did after the photo was taken. These small bits of history, which in the greater scale of things didn’t mean much, represented normal people who lived, grew up and died well before I was born, like a window into the past.

I also used Zooniverse, a website where you can transcribe articles and documents from hundreds of subjects. I was moving information over from patient records from the Parkside Asylum. Stuff like this can be used for studies relating to anything, and could help countless people in research. (You can get involved in the Parkside Asylum project here!)

The people who work at the Record Office are genuinely some of the most dedicated people I’ve met, you can see that they have a huge interest in what they do, and that they want others to be able to know about what they do and use the records they hold.

A student's virtual experience at Cheshire Archives!

We always enjoy playing host to work experience students during the summer holidays, and last year we were disappointed not to be able to offer any placements as a result of the pandemic. This year,  equipped with a lot more experience of remote working, we were able to offer our first ever online work experience placements!  Read on to hear what student Noah thought of his placement...

As someone who loves history, my work experience with the Cheshire Archives has been a great experience. I have had a chance to contribute to the archives which has been quite rewarding and it has also left me with a few questions and ideas that I can now go away and consider.

My week started with indexing Parkside Asylum cases and noting down any interesting cases that I came across. The main challenge here was deciphering the handwriting. For each new page there was different handwriting and so each case took some time to figure out what the letters were in the different scripts. On top of this, some of the spelling was questionable at times. However, after some time I did get used to this new style of writing and became much more efficient at understanding what was being said. Many of the cases were sad to read because it was clear that the majority of the people had mental health problems and were by no means “lunatics”. Some had depression, or as they termed it “melancholia”, others had delusions about religion amongst other things.

One of the cases that stood out to me was that of 19-year-old Thomas James Lloyd. His “attack” as they called it had been going on for “several years” which would make him younger than me when he began to experience problems. I think that the text speaks for itself:

"Had in his hand a small horn which he said was sanctified. Continually blowing it (sounding the Bugle as he termed it) and he was struggling to win all nations for Queen Victoria's sake. Had a plan for poisoning the Devil. That he had sanctified the school his bed and bedclothes. That the Lord had told him by trances and wisdom what to do. Moses Samuel Brickhill, one of the Labor Masters who informed me that he would suddenly leave his work move a few paces, tear the grass and lift it high: implacing a blessing upon it. That he put a chamber utensil on his head and poured its contents down his back."

Photograph of Thomas James Lloyd

Extract of Thomas James Lloyd's case notes, reference NHM 8/2/6/124a-e.
View the full case notes here.

As with many of the cases that I saw, though with this one in particular, I wondered what caused this to happened and what their life was like after being in the asylum. Whilst they are given names, I could not necessarily get an understanding of what they were like as a person. This is perhaps therefore a limitation of records such as these. As with a lot of history, maybe these questions that I have about who that person was may go unanswered.

Chester: River Dee, Queens Park Bridge. Ken Evans. Copyright 2020 Chester Chronicle. 

The second project that I did was sorting out photographs taken by Ken Evans, a photographer for the Chester Chronicle. The photographs covered a long time period, from the late 1940s to the 1990s. My first job was to date as best we could the photograph. I went about this by looking at the clothes, the age of people if they were known and looking at the whole image with a holistic approach to get an idea which decade it was from. This was made easier if on the back of the photograph (this was accessible by the photograph’s accession number) there was further information. The accession number also helped with my next job which was to title the image. For this I had to find out where it was and who was in the photograph if anyone. Sometimes this was virtually impossible because the background was some unidentifiable building or trees. However, this was a very fun part of this project. If there were some unique buildings, say a church, I could Google “churches in x” and various images would come up and I would be able to cross-reference the photograph with other photographs. Moreover, I could go onto Google Maps and find out what orientation the photograph was in which led me to walk about Chester on Google street view.

Chester: River Dee, 1953. Ken Evans. Copyright 2020 Chester Chronicle.

The next job was to write a brief description of the photograph. This could be one line or several, depending on how much was going on in the photograph. However, a rough guide to this was to describe people, places and events. After this I needed to find out some further information on what was going on in the photograph. This needed to be generally related to Cheshire and fortunately if it was a famous person, for example Prince Charles, I could look up other photographs of them in the Cheshire Image Bank and look at what other people wrote about them. My final two tasks were to note if the photograph could be put in a popular collection (I had a few royal visitors) and to write down any keywords that related to the photograph. This would make it easier for people to find a picture on a particular topic, say the Groves.

Chester: The Cross and Eastgate Street. Ken Evans 1951. Copyright 2020 Chester Chronicle.

With that, that was my final task. Some parts of the work experience were easier than others, though I had to always be conscientious knowing that whatever I wrote had to be accurate in order to be able to be useful.

Some questions that this experience has left me are:

• What are the limitations and positive attributes of different types of documents?
• How have the terms used to describe mental health problems changed over time?
• How can we work with the fact that we do not have access to all information?

I would like to finish by thanking all those working at the Cheshire Archives who put this together despite the coronavirus!

Thank you Noah for all of your hard work during your placement!

A Week in the Archives - Work Experience

This blog post was written by work experience students Ben and Laura from Christleton High School. 

Repackaged Hartford Parish Council records. 

"On our first day at the Cheshire Archives and Local Studies office, we learnt how to properly package, catalogue and conserve documents of varying types and ages; for example, using linen wraps and non-acidic boxes to stop them from decaying so they will keep for longer, or how to properly handle old photographs. We spent most of the day cataloguing Hartford Parish Council records from 1833 to 1982, including minutes from a meeting discussing triangular fields and trees.

On the second day, we catalogued photographs from a man named George Haswell’s album, dating from around 1900-1909. This involved transferring them to protective sheets and trying to work out where the pictures had been taken. While the majority of photos included villages, churches and his family, others were more unusual, such as a shrunken head and melted metal statue. 

Items from the George Haswell collection. 

Donald Insall photograph. 

We also began transferring architectural photo slides to more protective plastic wallets so they would not be damaged. These photo slides were taken by Donald Insall when Chester was under refurbishment, and give a glimpse of what the city was like during the 1960s and 1970s.

On the third day, we finished transferring the slides to their new sleeves, and then began work on cataloguing duties on land values from Macclesfield and Sutton. We finished two of 32 folders in two and a half hours. Over the final two days of our placement, we finished cataloguing these documents, and transferred maps to more conservation friendly housing for use in another project.

In our final afternoon, we did some back ground research into William George Haswell, in order to understand who he was. We found out that he was one of many masons in his family that worked on the Chester Cathedral, and was a master mason. George was a member of the United Grand Lodge of England Freemasons, becoming initiated on 1^st October 1891. 

Advert for William Haswell, Mason. 

He spent his life working on different architectural projects around the country, but stayed living in Chester, running his family’s business. George was also an active member of the community, serving on the Chester Town Council between 1900 and 1903 in Trinity Ward. 

As the head of “Haswell and Son architectural ecclesiastical craftsmen”, he assisted in the refurbishment of the Chester Cathedral in 1918-1932, and the Birkenhead Priory in 1897-98. 

He was born in 1862, and died in September 1938, after retiring in 1934. He married his wife Mary Elizabeth Haswell in 1888 and had a son called Frank Terrey Haswell in 1889. Frank was a sculptor and served in the Royal Navy Reserve during the First World War."

1911 census entry for William Haswell, his wife Mary Elizabeth and his son Frank.