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!

Merry Movember!

Movember is an annual event, founded in 2003, to raise awareness of men’s health issues. It encourages men (known as ‘Mo Bros’) to grow moustaches during the month of November to raise money for male cancers and mental health.

Here at Cheshire Archives and Local Studies, we often come across photographs of gentlemen from bygone days who had impressive facial hair. So, in honour of Movember, here are some of our favourites: our Top Ten Mo Bros of the past!

At number 10, our countdown starts with a portrait from a Victorian photo album (ref: 231320). Taken around 1868, we think the moustache is an excellent finishing touch to this man’s smart uniform! 

In at number 9 is a group of businessmen photographed in Wilmslow in the 1910s (Cheshire Image Bank ref: c10067).  Apart from just one clean-shaven gentleman in the centre, it's an impressive range of moustaches - particularly in the back row!

Number 8 is an example of an early police ‘mug shot’. It is taken from police records of criminals charged and convicted in Chester in the 1860s and 70s (ref: ZDPO 2/15) and shows John Williams. He was sentenced to 14 days hard labour in 1870 for stealing an umbrella.

Number 7 is a portrait is of an unknown group, perhaps a family, from the 1890s (Cheshire Image Bank ref: c08811). It’s from our ‘Mystery Images Unresolved’ collection – can anyone help us identify the Mo Bro in the centre?

The image below is from document ZCR 86A/481, a folder containing portraits of staff and students at the University of Chester from 1857 to 1890. We aren’t sure who this man was, but his moustache has made it to number 6 of our countdown!

Number 5 is taken from a photograph album of the Second Cheshire Royal Engineers, also known as the Crewe Railway Volunteers, c.1895 (ref: 230725). Those without facial hair look younger – it may be coincidence, or could a moustache have indicated a more senior rank?

Number 4 is another police mug shot (ref: ZDPO 2/27). It shows Thomas Cross who was sentenced to two months in prison in December 1871 for stealing leather. Read more about him in our blog from April this year, The Thomas Cross Affair: Hard Times in the Chester Leather Industry.

Into the top 3, this is an unknown group of men photographed in Ellesmere Port during the 1910s. An impressive selection of Mo Bros – can anyone shed any light on who they were?

At 2, we love this image of a soldier, taken from the same Victorian photograph album as our friend at number 10 (ref: 231320). Do you think he grew the moustache to match his bearskin hat, or did he choose a profession where the uniform matched his ‘tache?!

Finally, in first place is an image from our Cheshire Fire Brigades collection: it is a formal photograph of Winsford Fire Department (ref: D7474/59) from the early 20th century - a fine group of Mo Bros, we hope you’ll agree!

We hope you like this small selection. Do let us know if you have a favourite - and we wish you a Merry Movember!

All of these images and more are available to view at Cheshire Record Office in Chester.

Explore Your Archive: Archive Extremes!

Explore Your Archive is an annual celebration of archives and the collections held in them. This year’s event runs from 20th to 28th November, with themes for each day including ‘small’ and ‘big’. Inspired by this, here are some contenders for not just the smallest and biggest items held at Cheshire Archives and Local Studies, but also the oldest, heaviest, longest, brightest and oddest!

Smallest

Some of our smallest items are diaries from the Swindells of Bollington collection. These three on the right, belonging to mill owner Frederick Swindells, have pages measuring less than 9cm x 6cm and are full of tiny writing giving an account of each day. In collection D8714 we have some miniature notebooks by Chester artist and illustrator Randolph Caldecott, dating from 1855, that are full of practice sketches.  And in the Baker-Wilbraham family collection, there is a wooden box measuring 9cm x 7cm x 4cm, full of small deeds dating from the 13th to 18th centuries, some complete with seals.

 

Oldest

Our oldest royal charter is almost 850 years old, dating from around 1175. It is a City of Chester Charter (ref: ZCH 1) relating to matters outside the city, in which King Henry II “re-affirmed trading rights enjoyed by the burgesses of Chester in Dublin since the time of Henry I”, and still has its seal. 

Amongst several centuries worth of deeds in our oldest family and estate collections, are even older documents from the early 1100s. They usually don't include a date - this can be narrowed down based on what we know about the transaction and the people involved.

Our Local Studies department holds many collections of photographs, including some taken by pioneering Cheshire photographers Thomas Davies and W.H. Hanmer, dating from the 1850s. This early photograph from a Hanmer album is of children at a school in Wincham run by Charles Hanmer, presumed to be the photographer’s father. And on the right is a self-portrait of Thomas Davies – a very early selfie! They are not the oldest items in our collections, but they are our oldest photographs.

Biggest

Many of our maps are on the large side. To give an idea of the scale, this one measures around 9 feet or 2.7m on its shortest side and was photographed on the floor next to our staff member Heather - she is just under 5 feet 2 inches tall, or 1.56m. We tried taking the photo standing up, but our ceiling was too low! 

One of the longest maps we hold is a 1721 map of the River Weaver from Frodsham Bridge to Winsford Bridge, which measures 75cm x 3.35m. The image below left has been stitched together digitally from the 10 individual images we had to take to capture the whole map. This 1564 pedigree (below right) is even longer than the River Weaver map, and measures around 55cm x 4.2m. It shows three generations issuing from the marriage of Sir Randle Brereton of Malpas, who died in 1530, to Eleanor Dutton of Hatton. 

Brightest

Our archives are stored carefully in seven large strong rooms at Cheshire Record Office in Chester, and also offsite at a salt mine storage facility in Winsford. Until we open a box, folder or roll, we don’t know what the item inside will look like, and we’re often taken aback at how vibrant some very old documents still look. The pedigree above is a good example of how well the colours have lasted, but this one, of the Eyton family of Denbighshire dates from 1674 and the colours, including the touches of gold paint, look as bright as a much newer document. It is also over 5m long!

Heaviest 

We thought a contender for the heaviest item would be a City of Chester Assembly Minute book, ref: ZAB 1. It is frequently requested in our search room, and is very large and heavy to handle. But its 11kg weight and 43x32x14 cm dimensions pale in comparison to this wages and holiday pay book from Brunner Mond & Co Ltd’s Lostock works, from 1913 (DIC 9026/1). Measuring 58x50x12cm, it weighs in at a whopping 25kg. 

Just a couple of kilos lighter is our Thomas Hughes collection of copper engraving plates, dating from c.1810 to c.1860. The 44 plates in the collection weigh a total of 23kg - this one features an engraving of the Dee Bridge railway disaster.

Oddest 

We certainly have some unusual items in our collections – from some coffin plates removed from a vault in Malpas church (DCH/WW/24), to a lady’s single riding glove containing a calling card from 1680 (D5154/30), and a single brick that arrived with our collection from Foden (DFO) commercial vehicle manufacturers. 

But arguably the most unusual, or oddest, are locks of people’s hair. There are several – including one within a collection of late 17th century correspondence of the Arderne family of Alvanley (DAR/A/89) - but the one pictured below is from the collection of Colonel Hugh Robert Hibbert of Macclesfield, who served in the Crimean war. It is contained in a small envelope inscribed ‘Hugh’s hair, April 4th, 1854. Cut off at Manchester the evening before he left’ for the Crimea. 

So these are some of our Archive Extremes – the smallest, oldest, biggest, brightest, heaviest and oddest in our collections. Can you think of any others we should add? 

We’re featuring the themes of Explore Your Archive on our social media – check out @CheshireRO on Twitter and cheshire_archives on Instagram to see more. All these items are available to view at Cheshire Record Office – information about visiting can be found here.

Every Picture Tells A Story

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.

When Cheshire Record Office is open, our Local Studies department works with volunteers to sort, catalogue and improve storage of the Local Studies Visual Collection, and make it available to the public at our search room and online. Since we have been closed, a team of Archives Assistants and a Conservator have continued this work by using an online data editing system at home to add photographs and information to the Cheshire Image Bank.

The Image Bank is a collection of over 30,000 digital images created from original material - photographs, postcards, print slides and negatives – and can be viewed and searched online at CheshireImageBank.org.uk. It also offers over twenty Popular Collections to browse, including the First and Second World Wars, Royal Visitors, Fashion and The Salt Industry. Image Bank content covers anywhere that lies or once lay within the Cheshire county boundary.

This lockdown project has involved writing a brief description of each of the photos assigned to us on the data editor; doing online research to provide further information about each image; adding key words to ensure they will appear in an online search; and providing standardised details of the location, title and date of the images. We have also added extra information to a small number of photos that already appeared on the Image Bank. The Local Studies staff have been adding more key word options to make it easier for people to search the site, and also had the task of moderating our work to ensure accuracy and consistency.

So far, 500 extra images have been added to the Image Bank as a result of this work. A wide range of themes has been covered: industrial, with hundreds of images from George L. Scott & Co and Wolverhampton Corrugated Iron Works, both based in Ellesmere Port; and military, such as a Cheshire Royal Engineers photo album from the 1890s. There is an early album of buildings, people and landscapes by amateur photographer George Davies, who lived in Alderley and took numerous photographs of the surrounding area, and some photographs are of the Duke of Westminster’s Eaton estate; there is a large collection of images from the village of Disley; and some from Macclesfield cover the celebrations of Queen Victoria’s 1887 Golden Jubilee. There are others showing places of interest across Cheshire.

Some of the photographs that have captured our attention include a busy street scene at Chester Cross (c13284) where the buildings are still recognisable but the horse-drawn trams are long gone.

Another is a murder stone from the 1820s (c13248). These were historic markers erected at the site of famous murders to commemorate the victim or warn of the consequences of committing such acts. And this photograph of Disley Golf Club (c08283) was already on the Image Bank but has had further information added - it was taken at the official opening of the club in 1889 and there were 47 pro golfers present when it was taken. 

 

On the industrial side, c13186 shows a group of steelworkers moving a stack of flat iron sheeting with an overhead crane system at an ironworks in the 1920s, and c13164 is of a woman using machinery at an engineering company in the 1950s. Additional information provided on the Image Bank tells us she was using a ‘stator notching machine’, and that George L. Scott Ltd. was an electrical steel stampers company with offices and warehouses in Ellesmere Port. The business later became a general engineering company.

Work on the next two images is almost complete, and they are due to be put online shortly. The first shows the Cheshire Yeomanry in the 1890s, assembling for annual exercises at the Roodee Racecourse in Chester (c13348), and the second is a street parade from around 1895 showing massed uniformed ranks of the Second Cheshire Royal Engineers, who were also known as the Crewe Railway Volunteers (c13213).

In the very early days of photography, equipment was cumbersome and photographers were usually limited to studio settings, but with the invention of film in the 1880s it became easier and we started to see the rise of amateur photographers like George Davies of Alderley. We have many of his photographs taken from the 1870s to 1890s, including buildings like churches, mills, country houses and pubs; landscapes around the eastern border of Cheshire; and agricultural scenes from ploughing to harvest work. A small selection is shown below.

         

            

This project has posed a few challenges along the way. As well as an unexpected technical issue early on, it has sometimes been difficult to identify the images - so some will have to remain hidden from view until we can do some more research with the originals at the Record Office. There are both opportunities and challenges with the Visual Collection more widely: the collection is constantly being added to with new donations, and there is a large number of uncatalogued photographs in storage yet to be looked at. Potentially, there are thousands more images that could be added to the Image Bank in the future, but it is also a time-consuming and costly undertaking.

Nonetheless, this lockdown work has enabled us to add more images to our Popular Collections section on the Cheshire Image Bank, particularly those on the First World War, Fashion, Eaton Hall and Little Moreton Hall. Some of the newly digitised images will be showcased in the All New Images section, as well as on social media.

The next steps of the project will be to identify entries already on the Image Bank that may require further information (then researching and adding it) and we also have data from more volunteers’ spreadsheets to match to the relevant images online. There is plenty to keep us busy!