Behind the Scenes in Repro!

Everybody is welcome to visit Cheshire Record Office to discover our Archives and Local Studies collections. But did you know we have a copying service for people who can’t make it to the search room in Chester? This is a glimpse behind the scenes of our Reprographics Department. 

‘Repro’, as it’s known, is run by the four Archives Assistants (‘AAs’) who work at Cheshire Record Office, and we do our best to provide copies of almost anything that people ask for, within copyright rules of course. We use a combination of photocopying, digital photography, microfilms, scanning and printing to fulfil orders placed via our online shop or the search room, and there is a huge range of items that can be reproduced: from wills to parish records, maps to newspapers, vehicle registrations and many, many other documents. 

We had over 400 reprographics orders last year, not just from Cheshire but from all four nations of the UK, and around 10% of the orders are from overseas. Nearly one in 20 are sent to the USA and, over the past 12 months, they also went as far afield as Jersey, Spain, Norway, Sweden, Israel, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. 

Some of our most popular requests are for wills, which can help with family history research. We hold thousands of Cheshire wills dating back to the 16th century, and these can usually be photocopied and sent by post. They are charged at a flat rate whether they cover just one or two pages or dozens, so you might get a bargain! We never know until they’re retrieved from storage how long they are, what they include or how beautifully written they might be. Occasionally people decide to order them in large format for display, such as this one from 1806.

Family history enthusiasts can also order copies of parish register entries, where we print and post out the handwritten notes from a church’s baptism, marriage or burial registers from over 100 years ago. These documents also stretch back hundreds of years, and some have been digitised, appearing on family history web site Find My Past as part of The Cheshire Collection.

We get numerous requests for copies from our extensive collection of Cheshire newspapers, and usually use microfilm to produce these. Orders include anything from someone’s own appearance in the local paper; to reports of significant events like the late Queen’s Coronation (these were particularly popular during last year’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations); or back further still to articles from the 19th and even 18th centuries, to help with family or local history research.

Maps and large format prints are a substantial part of our repro work. We can produce copies up to A1 in size (that’s 594 x 841 millimetres!) and copy items up to 72 x 110 cm, but sometimes even this isn’t sufficient to reproduce our extra-large archive documents. In those cases, the AAs try to weave some digital magic to provide you with the best image possible. For instance, one order was for a map so big that it that had to be captured in 9 separate photographs, but we used computer software to stitch them together to send the customer one overall image by e-mail. And copies of old Ordnance Survey or Tithe maps are not just for people to hang on their walls for decoration – we’ve recently done an order for someone using our maps to replant and restore trees in their original locations! 

Vehicle licensing documents are also popular repro requests – they are needed to re-issue original number plates for vintage cars, but we are asked to copy other transport-related records as well. The order below was for an image of an early wagon built by Foden’s of Sandbach. The image in question was an old glass plate negative, but we were able to use digital technology to provide a more realistic image to go with it. 

In addition to regular repro orders, we also deal with bulk orders – these are for large numbers of images which often come from academics needing copies of documents for their research. They can be on any subject but, as an example, we have recently photographed hundreds of pages of 17th and 18th century court documents for a national academic project about the English Civil Wars. 

These are just a snapshot of the many different types of documents that come through the reprographics department. And we don’t just deal with customer orders – we produce material for in-house and partnership events as well. Recent work includes printing photographs for a project celebrating the lives of older people at Storyhouse in Chester; making displays for a Chester Town Hall event celebrating the long friendship between the City of Chester and Poland; and digitising memorabilia from Browns of Chester department store for a series of events in partnership with the University of Chester and West Cheshire Museums. 

Working on repro can bring to light some unexpected items from our collections, and we’ll end with a couple of our favourites. When reproducing some images from an album of photographs of Spanish mines belonging to the United Alkali Company, we found this one showing three men on the night of 7th May 1910 – they were watching out for the passing of Halley’s Comet! And when copying some archives of the village of Bollington, we thought the description ‘photograph of Sunday School’ would be an image of a building, but instead found a lovely photo capturing hundreds of people at a Sunday School event in 1908. 

If you’d like to have a copy of something from the Archives or our Local Studies collections, first head to our online catalogue then click on our online shop – and our Repro team will do the rest! 

All of these items and more can be viewed at Cheshire Record Office in Chester – or ordered from our Reprographics Department!

Volunteer Stories: Records of the Ridge

A ‘stray item from the archives of Merriman, Porter and Long, solicitors of Marlborough’ arrived on the archivist’s desk, transferred to Cheshire Archives from the Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre. The same archivist who, a few months earlier, had run a training session for volunteers embarking on a project to research and locate documentary and physical evidence of quarrying on Cheshire’s Sandstone Ridge. There were quarries marked on this map of Manley – the archivist alerted the group to the new arrival … David Joyce, volunteer with the Ridge, Rocks and Springs project completes the story …

“A tin case containing some old plans of lands seemingly of no use” reads the faded, discoloured, remnant of the original wrapper inside Cheshire Record Office folder D8835. How wrong this was.

The staff at the Record Office had kindly directed us to this treasure and it provides a fascinating insight into the Manor of Manley. The accession contains four maps of Manley. The separate sections are marked north, south, east and west quarters and include instructions how to overlap them to make the complete manor. The heading of the maps is “A Plan of the Manor of Manley belonging to Jocelyn Deane Esq 1777 taken from an original plan for Robert Davies Esq 1722.”

We have been researching Manley as part of the Sandstone Ridge Trust ‘The Ridge Rocks and Springs’ project funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund. The project is looking at quarries, ancient water supplies and historic graffiti along Cheshire’s sandstone ridge.

Previous research suggests that Manley quarry has been in use since Roman times but there are two main quarries in the parish and it is often difficult to distinguish between them when reference is being made to ‘the quarry’. One is usually known as Manley Quarry, and the other one is on Simmonds Hill. These maps clearly show Manley quarry but at that date, the quarry on Simmonds Hill was not marked. There is a sketch of Simon’s Hill (now Simmonds Hill) but no quarry is shown and the area is simply labelled ‘Commons’. In contrast, Manley Quarry is sketched showing the workings and buildings.

But - what was the windmill used for shown next to ‘Croft by the house – tenant Alice Frodsham’? The ‘Moss’ has clear sketch markings but which are hard to interpret –possibly peat cutting? The spelling of many places varies, such as Molesworth Common (now Moldsworth) and the Forest of Dalamere (not Delamere). Lords Well is documented but not Swans Well which was an important landmark on a map of Delamere Forest dated 1813.

As usual with historical research the documents throw up as many questions as answers!

The project has now published its findings online and in a booklet.