Foote's notes from history

Over a series of blog posts we will be sharing with you what we have been doing whilst working from home, and giving you an insight into some of the interesting collections and items we have come across whilst the Record Office has been closed.

As shown in our previous blog, one of the things we have been doing is updating our online catalogue, starting with our "D" paper lists. One of the interesting collections in the D listings is the Foote Gower Papers (D 4784).

This collection contains letters received by the Cheshire antiquarian Foote Gower (c.1726-1780) from his peers. The listings for these letters offer a fascinating insight into the development of his most famous work and its ultimate abandonment.

Gower made extensive collections of documents for a proposed history of Cheshire that “would be infinitely superior to any history yet existing of any county". He outlined this project in "A Sketch of Materials for a New History of Cheshire" which was published anonymously in 1771 (D 4784/1). 

The Sketch was re-issued in 1772 together with an Address to the Public (D 4784/3,4), resulting from the enthusiasm generated by the Sketch. It contained a more detailed plan of the proposed work and asked for subscribers to donate ten guineas towards the anticipated cost of 4,000 guineas.

Gower started work in 1775, and initially received much encouragement, as can been seen in a letter from fellow antiquary George Allan of Darlington asking to be added to the list of subscribers (D 4784/29).

Ultimately however, the required number of subscriptions were not forthcoming, and interest in the project dwindled.

By 1776 the project was all but abandoned. Indeed, the engraver James Calveley, who had been commissioned in 1773 to produce illustrations for the History, wrote in a letter to Gower dated 27 March 1776 (D 4784/28), that he was too busy to work much for him. He further remarked that “the people of this country have almost given up thoughts of your history, as so little has been said of it as late”.

It seems that the project suffered other setbacks too. A letter from Edward Harwood of Chester, dated 18th May 1776, commiserates over a fire at Gower’s house and the loss of papers of his History (D 4784/31).

Upon his death in 1780, Gower’s work passed to Dr. J. Wilkinson and then William Latham, who, in 1800, republished the Sketch with additions (D 4784/2). Unfortunately, Latham was unable to finish the project due to ill health. The manuscripts were passed back to Wilkinson and later disposed of by auction, some going to the British Museum and others to the Bodleian Library.

In the end only one volume of text for the History, dealing with Cheshire history from prehistoric to Norman times, was produced.

However, Foote Gower's greatest legacy was arguably in documenting the sources of valuable extant manuscripts for Cheshire local history. His work was a key influence on the later work of George Ormerod, whose History of the County Palatine and City of Chester was first published in 1819 and remains a standard history of the county.

A final interesting tidbit from D 4784 comes from Richard Gough, the prominent antiquarian, who served as director of the Society of Antiquaries of London from 1771 to 1791. 

In a letter to Gower dated 16th December 1770, he spoke highly of Cheshire’s Archive, and was of the opinion that London’s record offices at that time compared "unfavourably with Cheshire" which “had a Castle and Archives of its own”.

Our collections have expanded greatly since then, and as they continue to do so, we’ll continue to undertake projects like the D listings which update and improve the catalogue for our users. I’m sure Messrs Gower and Gough would have approved!

Medieval Deeds Project

Searching the word ‘deed’ on our online catalogue brings up over 1500 results. Each of these results could relate to a single item or to an entire collection of numerous boxes.

Due to the vast amount of deeds we have, we decided to make them more readily accessible to researchers. The plan was to digitise the deeds and improve the description of them, with the resulting output then added to our catalogue. Catalogue searches would be more effective and show up more detailed results. The catalogue could direct users to exactly the right deed and also provide a digital image of it- perfect for people who can’t make it into the search room. Having the deeds digitised also reduces the need to produce the original, and reduces the handling of these items when in a number of cases a digital surrogate is enough.

The plan was to digitise the deeds and improve the description of them.

The decision was taken to start the process with our Medieval Deeds. These are mostly written in Latin, so extracting key pieces of information from them would be of most benefit to the average user with little to no knowledge of the language. 

DCH_J75_2 one of our first completed deeds.

Due to the specialist knowledge needed to read and understand Latin and the writing style (palaeography) we decided to seek out people with this skill. To enable as broad an array of people as possible to help us with this, we decided to use a digital platform, from which we created a digital collaboration project. A fully digital project allows people to volunteer from their own home and in their own time.

After some research, we chose Trello to build our project on. Trello is a free online tool designed to assist collaborative working; assigning members of the team different tasks which can be seen by all. It allows multiple people to log in simultaneously from wherever they are. The layout is similar to a Kanban board, where you move items to the right as they progress through the workflow (far left is items pending, far right is items completed). This fit in well with our plan for the project.

Current screenshot from the project.

If you want to see this platform in action please watch our YouTube video. We are still relatively early on in this process and looking for more volunteers to help to push it forward.

The particular deeds in this project are characterised by the fact that they are made of parchment (stretched and scraped animal skins) and display a variety of seals and seal attaching techniques. They are primarily written in iron gall ink. The longevity of parchment documents means that they survive today in remarkable condition however extra care needs to be taken with the sometimes brittle and fragmented wax seals.

Close-up of one of the seals from the DCH Collection.

The Medieval Deeds digitised for this project are taken from our DCH collection, “Title deeds and leases, Cheshire and elsewhere, 12th century - c1900”, specifically DCH/J- Deeds relating to various Townships. 

Before digitising, any folded deeds were flattened and restored where necessary by our in-house conservation department. We have now digitised around 500 of the Medieval Deeds in our collection.

Currently, all these deed images are uploaded to Trello and our volunteers can choose from them and allocate one to themselves. The volunteer then translates the key sections of the deed and moves it onto the next stage. We don’t ask for a full transcription- just for essential information to be extracted and translated into English. This mainly consists of names, dates and locations but also costs involved and relationships between named people.

At this point, a different volunteer takes over and quality checks the description and adds their comments if required. The information is then checked a further time before being passed over to our in-house Latin specialist for final verification. When a batch of deeds has been completed, we will upload the images and results of the project onto our catalogue. This will be done intermittently until all deeds are finalised.

If you have a thorough understanding of Latin and feel that you could help us, please get in touch for more information at recordoffice@cheshiresharedservices.gov.uk

All you require is an email address; computer and internet access to get started. Some of our volunteers even visit their local library to get internet access and assist us! All work is undertaken at a time and place convenient to you. There is no minimum number of hours required to help out.

In time, this will make the whole of DCH/J easier to search and increase the value and knowledge which can be gained from these manuscripts.

Want to know more about this project? See more:

On YouTube:
Discovering Deeds Playlist 

On our blog:
Deeds Indeed

Deeds Indeed

Miranda Lennon is working on a one year traineeship as part of The National Archives Transforming Archives scheme. In this blog she gives an update of her experience so far.

As my third week draws to a close I can reflect that the past five days have been very productive indeed.

I have adopted the role of ‘deeds detective’ by beginning work on my first project, to explore and digitise medieval deeds, including helping to trace a number of deeds back to their original locations. I have been discovering and learning more information about the deeds collection, focusing specifically on a number of deeds concerning the village of Bunbury, Cheshire. I find I am enticed by the mystery and antiquity of the documents and it fascinates me to consider the journey that they have endured over eight centuries, prior to being deposited at Cheshire Archives and Local studies. 

The deeds are indeed things of great beauty. They are inscribed with intricate Latin and French calligraphy on delicate parchment, and often have attached a splendid wax seal with a unique imprint. A number of deeds have a wavy or zag-zag indenture edge, which adds to the aesthetic appeal of these historic artifacts. 

Example of a medieval deed from the collection 

Example of one of the larger wax seals from the collection 

A lot of my week was spent familiarising myself with the reprographics equipment by photographing, editing and uploading the first selection of deeds. This has helped me to understand some of the practical and technical methods for digitising archival material, as well as giving me more of an insight into the project specifics.  I feel my previous IT and photography skills in Fashion Communication have come in handy during this first digitisation task, and I have so far enjoyed utilizing these skills within a new context. 

Another of my tasks was to link the medieval deeds project to ‘Explore Your Archive’, an annual campaign to promote archives across the UK. I have been wracking my brains to come up with an innovative and creative idea to promote the project to a wider audience, and ways in which I can use my creative background in design and fashion to contribute something fresh and different. I had a few inspirational eureka moments and all shall be revealed for the Explore Your Archives campaign launch in late November (I fear I have given myself a lot work to do!), but for the moment it is a secret I intend to keep! 

Please follow the links below to enjoy browsing Explore Your Archives and Cheshire Archives and Local Study’s Twitter and website to find out more and to keep updated about the launch week!

@explorearchives 

http://www.exploreyourarchive.org/ 

@CheshireRO 

http://archives.cheshire.gov.uk/home.aspx