Today is December 21st, Midwinter day and also the traditional date of the feast of St Thomas, which sees winter traditions continuing all over Britain, Europe and further afield.
In York, the longest night and shortest day heralded the ancient custom of the Yule Riding and the beginning of Christmas festivities. During the reign of Elizabeth I, in around 1570, an anonymous balladeer wrote Yule in Yorke, a broadside ballad describing the Riding. [1] The custom included a disguised couple carrying a leg or shoulder of lamb and a cake of ‘purest meale’, the playing of music and the throwing of nuts by the following crowds. The full text of this ballad and many others like it has been made available through the Bodleian Libraries Ballads Online project, which brings together a rich collection of often unique printed songs, satires, news and moral advice.
The ballad of Yule in Yorke, shared under Creative Commons licence.
This pious representation of the celebration links (sometimes rather tenuously) each part of the festivities to the birth of Jesus. A rather different view of St Thomas’ Day and ‘the very old, gray bearded Gentleman called Christmas’ is shown in a satirical passage printed in London in 1645, which describes a Bacchanalian Father Christmas enjoying, food, drink and gambling amongst other activities!
Printed by the festively named Simon Minc’d-Pye and Cissely Plum Porridge. Thewhole document can be read at Early English Books Online
One can imagine that it was celebrations more like these that prompted the 1572 letter written to the Mayor and Aldermen of York decrying the city’s ‘verie rude and barbarouse’ Yule Riding. Recorded in the Act Book of the High Commission, the letter bemoans the profaning of the holy day and despairs at the crowds of people drawn from otherwise divine services to watch (and presumably participate in!) the spectacle.
HC.AB.7 f41r
HC.AB.7 f42v
Transcribed, the letter reads as follows:
13 November 1572
After our hartie commendacions, whereas there hath bene heretofore a verie rude and barbarouse custome mainteyned in this citie, and in no other citie or towne of this realme to our knowledge,
that yerelie upon St Thomas Daie before Christmas two disguised persons called Yule and Yules Wief should ryde thorow the citie verey undecentlie and uncomelie, drawinge great concurses of people after them to gaise, often times committinge other enormities, forasmuche as the said disguysed rydinge and concourse afforesaid besydes other enconvenientes tendeth also to the prophanynge of that daie appointed to holie uses and also withdrawethe great multitudes of people frome devyne service and sermons, we have thought good by thes presents to will and require yow & nevertheles in the Quenes Majesties name and by vertew of hir highnes commission for causeis ecclesiasticall within the Province of Yorke to us & others directed, straitlie to charge and commaunde yow that ye take order that no such ryding of Yule and Yules Wief be frome hencefurth attempted or used, and that yow cause this our preceipte and order to be registred of recorde and to be duelie observed not onelie for this yere but also for all other yeres ensueng, requiringe you hereof not to fale as our truste is you will not and as ye will answere for the contrarie. Fare you hartelie well atYorke this XIIIth of November 1572
Your lovinge frendes
Edm. Ebor Matth. Hutton[2] John Rokbye Thomas Eymis Will. Stryckland Chrisofer Asheburne
[To the] Maior and aldermen of Yorke
The letter was signed by Edmund Grindal, Archbishop of York (previously Bishop of London and later Archbishop of Canterbury). Upon his appointment two years earlier, he had already found that “many superstitious practices remained” amongst the people of York and he recommended that the boisterous Yule festival be banned ‘for all other yeres ensuing’. When read to the council, it was agreed that “no disguysed persons called Yule and Yule’s wif … shall ryde this yere nor any yere hensforth, on Saynt Thomas Day before Christmas”.
But do not despair! Although the Yule Riding was banned in 1572, to this day the York Waits process from Micklegate Bar around the city on Midwinter night, accompanied by traditional Tudor instruments and a crowd of followers. Maybe if you’re out after dark, you’ll be able to hear the sounds of Elizabethan York in the ancient streets once more.
[1] Broadside ballads were printed on large sheets of paper and sold from street-corners, or stuck up in pubs, by travelling ballad singers. [2] Then Dean of the Minster and later Archbishop himself.
Sources
R. Davies, Municipal Records of the City of York, 1843. F. Drake, Eboracum, 1736 A. F. Johnston, Records of Early English Drama, Vol.1, No.1. 1976
We’re now coming to the end of a project which started life in October last year to conserve, digitise and make available online the Registers of the Archbishops of York 1225-1646. The project – generously funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation – will also develop new tools and resources to allow us to add index data to the Register images, opening the content of many of the Registers for the very first time.
When I came back to the Borthwick in June 2014, I’ll admit that my direct experience lay more with old title deeds, Police records and local authority minute books than the day to day dealings of an Archiepiscopate.
The oft-quoted description of the Registers is that they are an ‘administrative record of the business of an Archbishop’, which – let’s face it – doesn’t immediately sound like the most exciting source on the planet. Knowing what I know now, I wouldn’t agree with that description – they’re a largely unexplored record of how we came to be who we are; filtered through the eyes of the church. They’re the evidence of attitudes to morality and immorality, life and death, love and hate, war-making and peace-making.
I’ve spent some time over the last couple of days considering what some of the highlights of this project have been from my own (entirely selfish) point of view. In no order whatsoever, I’ve settled upon:
Register 1 unrolled
Register 1 (split into parts A + B) doesn’t take the form of a bound volume – they’re both rolled examples and a crucial first step in the process of developing Episcopal Registration at York. They’re also very, very long – over 21 metres in length (or 70 feet), when taken together. Being able to stand at the top of the Reg 1A, seeing it unravelled into the distance and knowing that not many people will see (and will have seen) a sight such as this was one of those moments of ‘temporal vertigo’ that we’re lucky to experience on occasion when working on projects such as this.
Reg 1A and 1B unrolled
The story of Thomas de Whalley
As part of the preparation for the Summer Institute held in July, I spent some time searching out interesting – and challenging – content for our students to work on. came across a visitation of Selby Abbey by Archbishop Wickwane, dated January 1279/80. I have honestly never had a more entertaining working afternoon than the one I spent translating the various misdeeds of Thomas de Whalley (the then-Abbot of Selby). He didn’t teach, didn’t preach, didn’t observe the rule of St. Benedict; was never out of bed to hear Matins (a service before dawn); as well as having a predilection for the gatehouse keeper’s daughter. The final straw was, it seems, the fact that a brother’s body was found in the river Ouse, and de Whalley tried to remedy this via the use of a ‘Wizard’. He was, as you may expect, excommunicated.
Visitation of Selby, 1279/80, Abp Reg 3, f. 27 r
Summer days (and nights)
The whole of the Summer Institute was a highlight for me. The Borthwick hadn’t run anything like this for some time and I could fill a whole blog post with individual moments of brilliance. One that always springs to mind was seeing the students (who were all experienced researchers on their way to a PhD) really enjoying working with the texts, seeing how they could link them to their research interests, and seeing them really dive into the possibilities in the source. At the end of the course, one student outlined how he’d been encouraged not to apply at one point, but had done so anyway. Later in the Summer Institute we shared a moment of discovery when he happened upon an entry relating to the person he was researching – a special moment, illustrating the potential in the records we were working with and his own development of his skills in reading medieval handwriting which I’d been teaching him the week before!
Students working with the Registers at the Summer Institute
The unstitching debate
An afternoon spent with the Keeper of Archives, wrestling with a fundamental dilemma – to unstitch, or not to unstitch? In some of the earlier Registers, supplementary documents are either stitched or bound in, giving some folios the appearance of a flip-book of small parchment items. As part of the preparatory work, we had to consider strategies for dealing with these along with the Project Conservator and ask ourselves, carefully, if we had the justification to undertake this kind of invasive work. It took thought, careful consideration and time. Was it right to interfere, in this way, with a document? By doing this, did we change its meaning? How much did the fact an item was in a particular position mean, and if we moved it, would we change the interpretation? Did it need to be done, or was there another way? In the end, we made the decisions we needed to make, but the time we spent really considering the ethics of this kind of digitisation was a really valuable part of the process.
Parchment inserts, Abp Reg 4 f 18 v
Questions, answers and discoveries
This, I think, has been one of the ongoing highlights – challenging what we think we know about the Registers. Even something as simple as looking at the ordering of the original quires within a volume has raised so many questions about the order and creation of the volumes – were they always in that order? Did it change? We’ve worked with projects looking at the DNA and protein structures of the parchment in the Registers – does the nature of parchment give us an idea of where the folios were created and used? Working with the Canterbury Registers at Lambeth Palace raised a question – were they opened from the front, or the back? Who decided what content went into a Register, and why? Allied to that question – can we work out what was left out? To me, it has been a case of picking away at the threads of what we know, and divining useful, vital research questions for the future.
13th century hunting scene found in the margin of Abp Reg 4
The future
In some ways, I now need look less at what’s been done and more at what’s to come – seeing and hearing about people using the Registers, getting out on the road in 2016 to talk about them and advocate for their use by a whole range of researchers; and in developing the projects ahead to make use of the tools, techniques and experience we’ve developed. We already have two projects on the go that will provide index data for the Registers 1570-1650, and 1304-1306, with more projects under development.
The fantastic images we have created will be available online (and free of charge) from the end of the year, with index data being added as 2016 progresses. This feels like a long first step. The combination of the tools we’ve developed and systems behind it have laid the ground for an exciting journey into our shared past – and we’d love you to join us along the way.
Written by Sally-Anne Shearn, Genesis Project Archivist
In 1975 a portion of the archive of the Christian Faith Society (CFS) was transferred to the Borthwick Institute from Lambeth Palace. The transferred records concerned the manor of Brafferton in Yorkshire, which had been purchased in 1694 as a landed endowment by the trustees of what would later become the CFS. The Brafferton papers contain many of the items you might expect to find in such an archive; deeds, surveys, rentals and other papers detailing the business of the estate and the development of Brafferton village. However included among them are three documents that highlight a surprising link between this small Yorkshire village and the history of America in the 17th and 18th centuries; one which gave a name to a colonial college building in Virginia and set a legal precedent in a groundbreaking court case following the American Revolution.
The CFS was created through the charitable bequest of Robert Boyle. Born in Ireland in 1627, Boyle was the youngest son of the Earl of Cork and a celebrated natural philosopher, chemist, and physicist in his own right, with a keen interest in theology. He financed the publication of an Irish language bible in the 1680s and donated money to various missionary societies working in the East where he himself had interests as a director of the East India Company.
The Shannon Portrait of the Hon. Robert Boyle, F.R.S. (1689). Reproduced with permission of The Chemical Heritage Foundation
Boyle died in 1691 and in his will he directed that £4,000 from his estate be used for the advancement ‘or propagation of the Christian religion amongst infidels.’ His trustees, which included the Bishop of London, used the bequest to purchase Brafferton and in 1693 a large portion of the annual income of the estate was awarded to the newly founded College of William and Mary in Virginia, America.
Copy of enrolment of bargain and sale of the manor and advowson of Brafferton, in trust for the propagation of the Gospel in Virginia, 31 August 1695 (CFS 39)
The choice was not as strange as it might appear. At this time Virginia was still a British colony under the spiritual authority of the Church of England, as vested in the Bishop of London. It was his commissary in Virginia, Reverend Doctor James Blair, who travelled to England in 1691 to petition King William III and Queen Mary for the establishment of a college in the colony and there heard of the Boyle legacy. Blair appealed to the Bishop of London and the money was duly granted to the new College – it was perhaps in deference to the Boyle bequest that the college pledged in its 1693 foundation charter to propagate the Christian faith ‘amongst the Western Indians, to the glory of Almighty God.’
In keeping with this pledge, and Boyle’s wishes, the College established an Indian School where, in return for annual payments from the Brafferton estate, they would keep ‘Indian children in Sicknesse and health, in Meat, drink, Washing, Lodgeing, Cloathes, Medicine, books and Education from the first beginning of Letters till they are ready to receive Orders and be thoughts Sufficient to be sent abroad to preach and Convert the Indians.’
Excerpt from an appeal to the Lord Chancellor from Masters and Professors of the College of William and Mary, Virginia, against the Bishop of London and Mayor and corporation of the same concerning timber at Brafferton, 1773 (CFS 13)
The governor of the colony enlisted Indian traders to take the news to the local tribes, but they proved resistant to the offer of European education until 1711 when Governor Spotswood offered to remit the tributes they owed if they sent their male children to the school. As a result of this policy, the Indian School had 20 native boys by the summer of 1722, including members of the local Pamunkey, Nansemond and Chickahominy nations. The students were taught English reading and writing, arithmetic and catechism, as well as drawing, for which they were said to have a ‘natural’ and ‘excellent genius.’
Initially the boys were housed in the town and their classes were held in temporary quarters, but in 1723 the income from the Yorkshire estate was used to build The Brafferton, a two storey brick ‘House and Apartments for the Indian Master and his Scholars.’
The Brafferton c.1907. P1979.1051, University Archives Photograph Collection, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library, College of William and Mary
Classes were held downstairs, with the boys sleeping in dormitories on the first floor. Despite this improved accommodation, student numbers soon dropped again and would remain low for the remainder of the life of the school. Without coercion, native tribes remained unwilling to part with their children. In 1744 an Iroquois speaker declined one such invitation to provide students, saying ‘we love our Children too well to send them so great a Way,’ while other children who were sent to the college simply ran away, or completed their education only to return to their own people and take up their previous way of life – to the great frustration of the colonists. From the 1750s onward the school could only maintain an enrollment of between 3 and 5 students.
The outbreak of war between the American Colonies and the British Crown in the 1770s brought an end to the college’s Indian School and to the Boyle endowment they had enjoyed for some eighty years. At first the war had merely disrupted payments from Brafferton, but after America declared its independence from Great Britain in 1776 the College attempted to reclaim its lost rents, with the accumulated arrears, prompting Bielby Porteous, then Bishop of London, to challenge their claim in the Court of Chancery. It was a pioneering legal case. As the bishop himself later wrote, ‘the question was, whether they, being now separated from this kingdom, and become a foreign, independent state, were entitled to the benefit of this charity. It was the first question of the kind that had occurred in this country since the American revolution, and was therefore in the highest degree curious and important.’
Chancery eventually ruled against the College and the income from the Brafferton estate was instead diverted to the conversion and religious instruction of enslaved people in the British West Indies, a particular cause of Bishop Porteous.
‘The township of Brafferton…the Estate of the Society for the conversion and religious instruction of the negro slaves in the British West Islands, by John Tuke, 1796’ (PR/BRAF/44.1)
With its principle source of income severed, the Indian School had ceased to function by 1777 and in 1785 The Brafferton building was repurposed by the College. While it is hard to see the Indian School as anything but a failure for its colonial founders, it was not always so for the native students who were sometimes able to use the language skills and the knowledge of British culture they acquired to serve as interpreters between their own people and the colonists.
The Brafferton estate was broken up in the 1950s. Today the Christian Faith Society continues to direct its income to the training and religious instruction of clergy and laity in the West Indies. Meanwhile the estate’s namesake, The Brafferton, is still standing. Having had much of its wooden interiors torn out for firewood and fortifications in the American Civil War, it was extensively restored in the 1930s and is now the second oldest building to have survived at the College of William and Mary, housing the offices of the college president and provost.
The Brafferton today (courtesy of Wikimedia commons)
Sources
Helen C. Rountree, ‘Pocahontas’s People: The Powhatan Indians of Virginia Through Four Centuries’ (Oklahoma, 1990).
Margaret Connell Szasz, ‘Indian Education in the American Colonies, 1607-1783’ (Nebraska, 2007).
Irvin Lee Wright, ‘Piety, politics, and profit : American Indian missions in the colonial colleges. A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Education Montana State University’ (Montana 1985).
‘The Indian School at William and Mary’ (http://www.wm.edu/about/history/historiccampus/indianschool/index.php).
In August 2015 three members of Borthwick staff travelled across land and sea to present papers at the annual Archives and Records Association conference in Dublin. The theme of the conference was ‘Challenges, Obligations, or Imperatives? The moral and legal role of the Record Keeper today’. The three sessions that our staff presented demonstrate a range of ethical concerns that exist within the worlds of archives and conservation, but also offer a glimpse into the inner workings of these two relatively little-known professions.
Screen shot from Tracy’s presentation ‘Why do you do what you do to me? Conservation Prioritisation and Collaboration in the Digitisation of the Retreat Archive’.
Tracy Wilcockson was the opening speaker for the conservation strand on the second day of the conference with her presentation ‘Why do you do what you do to me? Conservation Prioritisation and Collaboration in the Digitisation of the Retreat Archive’. Tracy’s talk addressed her role in preparing material for the digitisation of the Retreat archive, which is a part of the wider ‘The Asylum and Beyond’ project funded by the Wellcome Trust. The depth and breadth of Tracy’s knowledge of conservation theory and practice enabled her to discuss the nature of digitisation as ethically problematic, while still clearly explaining the practical implications and processes that have affected the digitisation of the Retreat Archive. I was particularly struck by the application of digitisation to the ‘balance triangle’ that she described from Chris Caple’s book ‘Conservation Skills’, which demonstrates how every conservation process can be expressed by a balance between preservation, investigation and revelation. The talk also highlighted several examples of collaborative responses to digitisation problems between the Conservation and Digitisation teams, such as the use of light boxes for the image capture of receipts, so that they do not need to undergo the time-consuming process of removal from the documents that they are attached to.
Tracy’s talk was very well received, and generated a number of enthusiastic and complimentary tweets from listeners. The presentation has also resulted in some excellent contacts with a number of other organisations running digitisation projects, and the potential for further collaboration. Colleagues are interested in further information regarding how the Borthwick project has been managed, equipment and techniques that have been used, problems that have arisen and how they have been overcome. It will be exciting to see where this goes next.
My presentation ‘The Archbishops’ Registers of York: A case study of ethical dilemmas in conservation and digitisation’ was directly after Tracy’s, and also used a digitisation project as a case study, this time to study the role of the conservator as an arbitrator of ethical problem-solving and decision-making. One of the points I addressed was the tension that can exist between the available research into materials (which may recommend against certain treatments) and the need to access or digitise an archive (which may need treatment to enable access).
Working with magnets on the ‘York’s Archbishops’ Registers Revealed’ project. For more information visit: www.york.ac.uk/borthwick/projects/archbishops-registers/
As an example I talked about the ethics of removing creases from parchment using solvents. Although I only had time to briefly outline the technique I finally used in the project, I had set up a demonstration volume for the delegates in the adjoining room, along with a selection of magnets and magnetic material to try. In the coffee-break after the first session I chatted with a stream of colleagues, discussing the materials and the technique, as well as other applications. The magnets generated a flurry of discussion comparing the many different ways that they are currently being used in conservation workshops around the country: in exhibitions and displays; for restraint of parchment during treatment; wrapped in blotters for restraint and drying of local repairs; for construction of boxes and book rests; and one enterprising department are using them as very effective darts… I was pleased that a presentation that had aimed to highlight the importance of communication and collaboration had generated so much productive discussion.
After lunch the conservation, digital preservation and archive strands merged into a hot-pot of workshops, panels and break-out sessions. Gary Brannan, our Access Archivist, was running a workshop entitled ‘From Filth to the Future: Reviewing the ARA training offer’. The session was based heavily upon the ARA Northern Region’s 2013 Filth conference, and was designed to get delegates thinking about the role that ARA could – and perhaps, maybe even should – have in supporting members dealing with difficult, disturbing and legally dubious collections.
The exercises were based on real experiences sent in by ARA members and featured issues including I still sometimes find myself picturing the photograph from a Coroner’s notebook showing the image of a man who had been murdered by having his head nailed to a tree and Male reader requesting (repeatedly) access to 1950s photographs of schoolgirls in gym clothes. Delegates were asked to sort the issues provided into those which they felt they needed emotional support to deal with, and those which may be helped by practical advice and training. Some of the results were surprising – for instance, much unease at processing and making available content that may upset third parties, and a desire for training in dealing with requests from customers for embarrassing (but not legally exempt) data. However, the greatest need came in the desire for both training and support in dealing with content and imagery related to death and inquests.
Gary’s session received considerable interest and encouragement from delegates, and provided a supportive outlet for frank discussions in a profession whose members often work in small teams or in isolation. The subject matter and style of delivery really embodied the theme and aims of the conference as a whole: addressing relevant issues amongst our peers, sharing experiences and exploring practical solutions. Talking to Tracy and Gary on our journey home I was struck by how much we had taken away from the conference – new ideas and perspectives, new contacts – and for myself a renewed motivation for the job that I do and respect for the colleagues that I work alongside, both within the Borthwick and without. The overlapping worlds of archives and conservation might not be very well known – but they are passionately appreciated by those that know them well.
Written by Sally-Anne Shearn, Genesis Project Archivist.
In March 1915 an application was made for two little girls to be admitted to St Stephen’s Orphanage in York. Contrary to its name, those admitted to St Stephen’s were not necessarily orphans in the accepted sense of the word, the rules of admission required only that girls had lost at least one parent, that they could supply a baptism certificate, and that someone was willing to pay a weekly sum for their care.
The rules for admission to St Stephen’s, as printed in the application form of Winifred Brooks.
In this case their father Albert Brooks made the application, undertaking to pay 4 shillings and sixpence a week for each of his daughters. The application forms are otherwise perfunctory; both girls were examined and found to be in good health, six year old Winifred had previously suffered from measles, four year old Hilda had not.
The application of Winifred Brooks
In many cases an application form, and perhaps a baptism certificate, are all that survives for the residents of St Stephen’s. However, for Winifred and Hilda a particularly tragic set of circumstances has left what amounts to a small family archive among the orphanage papers that tell of the impact that war and disease could have on an ordinary York family in the early years of the twentieth century.
The children’s applications were accompanied by two letters of support which provide a succinct account of the difficult situation faced by the Brooks family in March 1915.
‘The case of the Brooks is a sad one,’ the vicar of St Lawrence in York, Reverend Hutchings, wrote to the orphanage, ‘the wife quite young died of consumption and left the 2 children.’ Another supporter attests to the children’s good character, ‘I knew their mother and visited her for 2 years before her death and constantly saw the children, who are nice & well behaved, and are very bright.’ Both give a positive account of Albert and his wife, one writing of the ‘great regard’ they held for Mrs Brooks, and the other calling Albert ‘a decent fellow’, although he didn’t know ‘where he works or what his work is.’
A letter sent in support of the application by an ‘R. Birch’ of St Saviourgate, York.
Fortunately the St Stephen’s papers answer this question, including as they do Albert’s marriage certificate which describes him as a ‘confectioner’ as well as a later letter signed by D. S. Crichton, head of the Social Department at the Cocoa Works, the chocolate factory set up by the Rowntree family on Haxby Road in York. It was perhaps there that Albert met his future wife Jane, or ‘Jennie’ Wytcherley, who was employed in the factory’s Cream Department. The notice of their marriage appears in the firm’s Cocoa Works Magazine, dated 27th March 1907. 24 year old Albert Brooks of the packing and stores department was presented with a ‘beautiful over-mantel’ to mark the occasion, while 22 year old Jennie received the firm’s wedding gift, their fellow workers wishing the couple ‘much happiness and long life.’
They were married three days later at St Lawrence Church. In March 1908 their daughter Winifred was born, followed by Hilda two years later in November 1910. The 1911 census finds the small family living at 5 Apollo Street; 28 year old Albert, a ‘confectionery packer,’ 26 year old housewife Jane, 3 year old Winifred and the infant Hilda.
Sadly this happy family life was not to last. By 1912 Jennie was already suffering from the tuberculosis that was to kill her. The York Tuberculosis Dispensary, later York Chest Clinic, opened its doors in 12th December 1912 and its records show that Mrs Jane Brooks of 5 Apollo Street applied for treatment for the disease just four days later. She was treated by ‘open air ward’, possibly at Yearsley Fever Hospital which had opened in January of that year, but sadly died in February 1915 at only 30 years of age.
On the 22nd February Albert paid for the interment of his wife at York Cemetery in a burial plot that would later be shared by her parents. The burial certificate recording the grave number and cost is included among the orphanage papers.
The certificate issued by York Public Cemetery for the burial plot of Jane Brooks.
Exactly one month later, on the 22nd March 1915, Albert placed Winifred and Hilda in St Stephen’s Orphanage. It’s possible he enlisted in the army immediately afterward, certainly by November he was a Private in the 4th Battalion of the Grenadier Guards stationed in France.
We do not know if Albert wrote to his daughters at the orphanage or visited them during the following year, the minute book of the orphanage committee covering the years 1911-1918 has unfortunately not survived. However we do know that Albert’s army career, like that of so many others, ended at the Somme.
The orphanage records include an official notice from the War Office stating that Private A. Brooks of the Grenadier Guards was posted as wounded and missing after the engagement ‘at Overseas’ on the 25th September 1916.
The notice stating that Albert Brooks had been reported ‘wounded and missing’ in action in September 1916.
Further enquiries were evidently made, at least in part by D. S. Crichton at the Cocoa Works, and the resulting letters, kept by the orphanage, allow us to piece together what may have happened. “I was told by [Private] Brake, 4th Company, 4th Grenadier Gds. that he saw [Private] Brooks wounded at Les Boeufs on September 25th on the way over,’ wrote Private Adams of the 4th Battalion in April 1917, a reference to the principal offensive in the capture of the French village of Les Boeufs that took place on that day, resulting in heavy casualties.
The reply to D. S. Crichton at the Cocoa Works reporting the account given by Private Adams.
It seems likely that Albert was shot during his battalion’s initial advance. In a letter dated March 1917 a Private H. Weekes described how the Grenadier Guards made a charge on the 25th and ‘when we had got half way over, I saw Albert Brooks making his way back to the dressing station with a bullet wound in the arm.’ Whether he made it to dressing station or not, Private Weekes couldn’t say, ‘the Germans were shelling very heavily at that time.’ Poignantly, he added, ‘I am very sorry indeed to hear that he is missing as we were the best of pals right from our early soldiering up to the afore said date.’
Page 1 of Private Weekes’ letter.
Page 2 of Private Weekes’ letter.
‘I fear that this must be one the many cases,’ read a subsequent response from The Red Cross enquiry department to D. S. Crichton, ‘where a second and fatal casualty has occurred on the way to a dressing station.’ As this letter was still being written a final typewritten note came in from a Corporal Shenton that appeared to confirm his theory. It said simply, ‘At Ginchy he was killed by a shell in the communication trench. I was told this by a stretcher bearer who was a man who had just joined us from a Labout Batt[allio]n.’
The report passed on to D. S. Crichton by the British Red Cross in 1917.
Albert’s body was never found and his name is now commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial in France, one of the 72,000 soldiers who were lost, presumed dead, at the Somme before March 1918. More than 90 per cent of that number died, like Albert, between July and November 1916. At home in York he is commemorated in the King’s Book of York Heroes, one of the 1,443 men (and two women) from the city who were killed in the First World War.
Private Albert Brooks in The King’s Book of York Heroes. Copyright Chapter of York: Reproduced by kind permission.
What then became of Winifred and Hilda? The lost minute book means we do not know when or what they were told about their father’s fate, although they, like so many families, received an official memorial from Buckingham Palace.
The next reference to the girls comes two years later, in 1918, and brings us full circle back to the Cocoa Works where the story of their family began. A bundle of correspondence sets out arrangements for the trustees of Rowntree’s Death Benefit Scheme to pay Albert’s pension fund over to St Stephen’s for the maintenance of the two girls. A further £50 was also given on the condition that the trustees of the scheme were permitted ‘at any time to see the children’ and to receive yearly reports of their progress; reports which we know, from a later entry, were duly forwarded ‘from time to time.’
In 1920 Mr Crichton wrote again on behalf of Rowntree to offer payment for the continued education of Winifred, an offer that was gratefully received, and in 1925 another lump sum was paid by Rowntree ‘for the Brooks children’ out of the Rowntree War Memorial Fund.
Sadly, Hilda disappears from the orphanage records after this date, but ‘Winnie Brooks’ appears again in June 1926 when she was taken on as a staff ‘probationer’ at St Stephen’s. However her ambition was not to remain at St Stephen’s and in the same entry it is added that ‘Miss Marshall also said that Winnie Brooks much wished to become a missionary and she hoped that Messrs Rowntree would give assistance for her training.’ Perhaps they did, for in March 1927 the committee minutes note that she had left to begin her training at St Brigid’s and staff were pleased to hear ‘excellent accounts’ of her progress over the following year.
The story of the Brooks family, as told by the orphanage records, appears to end there. Spanning twenty years in all, it is just one example of the many thousands of personal stories that can be found in the Borthwick’s collections, and one of millions in archives across Europe that tell of the human cost of the First World War. If you would like to explore the records of St Stephen’s for yourself, the collection is fully open to the public (although records that are less than 100 years old are subject to data protection). Alternatively, perhaps you know what happened to Winifred and Hilda Brooks after they left St Stephen’s? If so, we would love to hear from you. Our contact details can be found on our website.
Many thanks to Mr and Mrs Poole for their help in searching the York Public Cemetery records.
Saturday 19th and Monday 21st September 2015 will see us undertake one of our yearly highlights – the annual University Open Day. Aimed primarily at students thinking of applying to study here in the near future, Open Day provides us with an opportunity to show off some of the fantastic archives we hold on site – so, we thought we’d give you a bit of a taster of what we have on show for the 2015 Open Days!
We’ve got Archbishops’ Register 10A – the entries on this page date from the period of the Archbishop William Zouche and the Black Death (May 1349, in this case). Each entry records the ordination of a new applicant to various levels of the clergy (Deacons and Subdeacons, in this case). Each individual is replacing another member of the clergy – at the time, almost certainly victims of the plague, clergy being the front line of support for sufferers in pastoral comfort, taking confessions, and preparing them for the afterlife.
A page from the register of Archbishop William Zouche showing the lists of new clergy ordained in the wake of the Black Death
The University of York was established in 1963 – but efforts to get a University established date back much further. Here’s a copy of a 1647 petition campaigning for the establishment of a University in York, stating that without a place of learning, ‘the blind lead the blind, and both shall fall into the ditch”
A 17th century copy of a petition for the establishment of a university in York
Great estates – such as that of the Halifax family – created great appetites. Here we have an example of an 18th century recipe book from our Halifax Archive. Anyone for pickled mushrooms and pigeon?
Entries from a recipe book of the Wood family, later Earls of Halifax
Tales of nautical derring-do abound in this log book of Admiral Robert Fairfax (1665-1725). Latterly MP and Lord Mayor for York, the entries here document his time aboard the Cornwall between the 19-21 September 1697. Sadly, it seems the weather off Cork harbour wasn’t particularly clement, Fairfax noting the drizzly rain, strong winds, bad gales and generally stormy weather.
Page from the logbook of Admiral Robert Fairfax
Bringing us into the 20th century, the records of the first Earl Halifax are a fantastic resource for students of modern political history. On display, we have the notes of conversations between Lord Halifax and Adolf Hitler in 1937. The passage here presages many later developments in the war and is a fascinating record of a conversation – in tone, firm and assured – between two political heavyweights on the eve of War.
Extract from Lord Halifax’s report of a conversation with Adolf Hitler in 1937
This is just a small sample of what we have on offer – we also have medical case books, items from the Sir Alan Ayckbourn archive, Wills, Rowntree’s advertising material and records relating to 18th century slavery. In addition, we’ll display some great items from Special Collections – including a rare record of fire in York Minster in 1829 (along with some salvaged wood from the timbers made into something quite special)
The documents will be on display between 12pm-2pm on Saturday 19th and Monday 21st September in the Yorkshire Room, located in the Raymond Burton Library. Staff will also be on hand to advise you too. And, although the day will be aimed at prospective students, everyone is more than welcome to pop in and say hello – and don’t forget, our Microfilm Room will be open until 10pm as usual on both days.
Sunday 13th September saw the presentation of the British Comedy Society’s Living Legends of Comedy Award to the writing partnership Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran. Often thought of solely as comedy writers, the Marks and Gran Archive held at the Borthwick illustrates their wider work in the development of television comedy; and especially their ground-breaking work in the ‘comedy drama’ genre.
Born in north London, Maurice Gran (1949) and Laurence Marks (1948) initially met at a Jewish youth club in Finsbury Park, North London in the 1960s, though their creative partnership would not spark into like until they began attending ‘Player-Playwrights,’ a scriptwriting club that met at the British Drama League offices in Fitzroy Square.
A chance meeting between Marks and comedy writer Barry Took led to an opportunity for Marks and Gran to write for The Frankie Howerd Show. They continued to submit scripts and in 1980 their sitcom, ‘Holding the Fort,’ was commissioned by London Weekend Television and ran for two years.
Their comedy-drama ‘Shine on Harvey Moon’ was a success, running for three years in the 1980s before being revived in 1995. The duo followed up this success with popular sitcoms such as ‘The New Statesman,’ 1987–92, ‘Birds of a Feather,’ 1989–98, and ‘Goodnight Sweetheart,’ 1993–99. ‘The New Statesman’ won an International Emmy Award in 1988 and a BAFTA for best comedy series in 1991.
In 1989 Marks and Gran set up their own production company, Alomo Productions. The company’s first production was ‘Birds of a Feather’. Subsequent Alomo productions include ‘Get Back,’ 1992-93, featuring Ray Winstone as a victim of the economic recession, ‘Goodnight Sweetheart,’ and comedy drama ‘Love Hurts,’ which ran from 1992-1994. In 1992 Marks and Gran were awarded the prestigious BAFTA Writers’ Award.
Marks and Gran (left) with the cast and production team of Birds of a Feather
In 1996 they were commissioned by Channel 4 to write ‘Mosley,’ a mini-series telling the story of the British fascist leader Oswald Mosley. In 1993 a meeting with playwright Sir Alan Ayckbourn led to Marks and Gran their first play, ‘Playing God,’ a comedy about a dying rock star that premièred at Ayckbourn’s Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, in 2005.
In 2006 they followed this with ‘The B’Stard Project,’ a stage adaptation of their New Statesman sitcom which toured the UK until 2007 and enjoyed a run in the West End, and in 2010 their play ‘Von Ribbentrop’s Watch’ premiered at the Oxford Playhouse, based on their 2008 Radio 4 drama of the same name. In 2012 they co-wrote a ‘Birds of a Feather’ stage show which subsequently toured the UK before the show’s revival on television in 2014.
In 2008 Marks and Gran were invited to write the script for a new musical, ‘Dreamboats and Petticoats,’ based on a popular compilation album.
In addition to writing for stage and screen, both Marks and Gran are Visiting Lecturers at the University of York, running student workshops in the Department of Theatre, Film and Television.
Stretching over 35 boxes of diverse material, the Marks and Gran Archive (ref MGRA) presents the researcher with a unique archive of drafts. scripts, audio-visual recordings, correspondence and background research material that give a unique insight into the duo’s creative process.
Fourth draft script of Relative Strangers, 1986
The Archive includes items related to Birds of a Feather, Shine on Harvey Moon, the Frankie Howerd Show, The New Statesman (both stage and screen) and Goodnight Sweetheart (again, both stage and screen versions). The archive also contains a wealth of supporting materials (including research, drafts and correspondence) enabling the researcher to get inside the creative process – the tensions, the successes and creative precision which brings a production to life. Additionally, there are scripts for projects which, for one reason or another, never saw the light of day, including scripts and a rare recording of Still William, excerpts of which will be shown on Sunday as part of the British Comedy Society presentation.
Although the collection is still in the process of being fully listed, a detailed box list is available. The Archive was deposited with us as part of the Samuel Storey Writing and Performance collection, which includes the archives of Sir Alan Ayckbourn, David Storey, Charles Wood, Julia Pascal, Peter Whelan and Barry Took.
Written by Tracey Wilcockson, Conservation Volunteering Co-ordinator
Understanding the condition of an item is the first concern of a conservator when faced with a new object. A range of tools can be utilised to compliment the conservator’s knowledge of materials and degradation in this undertaking. Historically, microscopes, magnifying glasses and loupes have been used to take a closer look at the surface layers and media of an item. Today, USB digital microscopes are becoming an ever more common tool in the modern conservation tool kit, as the fast pace of technological development sweeps us along into the future.
Such devices offer an increased flexibility for microscopic analysis; these highly portable, hand held devices can work on both vertical and horizontal surfaces, and allow us to take images and video of an item at the touch of a button. This technological shift allows us to take, use and share images with far greater ease. In the conservation studio at the Borthwick Institute for Archives we have been trialling the use of the Dino-Lite digital microscope in a number of projects and on a range of archive items.
AB 7/33B – Barclay’s Bank, Norwich, 1925
The Dino-Lite can be an excellent educational tool and we are currently using it to help our new intake of conservation volunteers observe the material they will be working with on a microscopic scale. Our conservation-volunteering programme has entered its fourth year, and our new volunteers will join our established group to clean the plans of the Atkinson Brierley Architectural Archive. With six new recruits to train, the conservation team is harnessing the power of the Dino-Lite to help the new volunteers understand both the condition of the plans prior to cleaning and the problems that interventive conservation treatments such as cleaning, can cause.
The pictures below show a cleaned plan, dirt on the surface, and ingrained dirt.
The condition and material of the plans within the Atkinson Brierley Architectural Archive is varied; it is consequently vital to establish an appreciation of how abrasion and damage can occur on a microscopic level before our new volunteers get started. The connection between media and the substrate of the plan can be illustrated using a Dino-Lite to show the mottled, tangled surface of fibres which make up its surface, and how inks flow and penetrate the substrate of paper whilst graphite pencil lie on its top; such phenomena allow us to properly appreciate the consequences of cleaning and how it may disturb the material and media in a way which isn’t immediately noticeable with the naked eye.
Pictures above show damage to fibers, fragile pencil and ink penetrating the substrate of paper. Pictures below show pigment displacement due to water damage, abraided pen and fabric fibers at risk of further loss and staining both in and on the surface of the fabric fibers.
The Dino-Lite images will help the volunteers understand the damage the plans have already endured, and how they will affect them as they carry out cleaning treatments. It will also allow the volunteers to understand the different materials they will encounter. Some plans are on a waxed fabric paper, designed to go on site during building works: whilst others are late nineteenth or early twenty century watercolour paper, covered in graphite pencil, pen and watercolour paints, the volunteers will shift between these very different materials suddenly, and it will stretch their analytical skills and judgement as they decide how to proceed. They will need to appreciate how the strength of the paper can be understood through the length and flexibility of the fibres which comprise it – the Dino-Lite will allow us to show that and hopefully allow them to act appropriately. The dirt on the plans is also varied, with all the dust, soot and dirt of a building site and coal heated rooms settling on them, with our Dino-Lite we can see how this dirt can be sharp and abrasive or comprised of soft, fine particles and show how one may scratch the surface whilst another settles deep into the substrate of the paper.
We have a variety of methods for surface cleaning the plans, which allow us to minimise the risk of damage to the plans during treatment. We have undertaken this programme of cleaning as part of our ongoing work to care for and preserve the archives held at the Borthwick Institute. Dust and dirt on the surface of plans and documents can increase the rate of chemical deterioration, the continued presence of dirt also allows it to become ingrained and increasingly difficult to remove. Further to this, dirt obscures the information the plans provide for the readers who use our archive. As we are committed to providing access for research it is important to us that our holdings are preserved in the most healthy state possible, the preservation measures we are undertaking for the Atkinson-Brierley project is no small feat, the collection contains 6,324 plans and almost all will require cleaning.
AB 7/33B – Barclay’s Bank Norwich, 1925
Paint sitting on top of the fabric fibers at risk of further loss
The conservation volunteers will spend three sessions training in the handling of architectural plans, condition checking and conservation cleaning. Their training will focus on the cleaning of 115 plans of the former Barclay’s Bank building in Norwich, built in 1929-31 by E. Boardman & Son and Brierley & Rutherford. Now a grade II listed building built of Portland stone, red brick and slate, it stands as an important architectural landmark in the heart of Norwich. The plans show every level of the building’s construction from its Doric columned doorways to its plumbing and clerestory windows. These plans have survived in varying condition depending on the paper used in their creation, the conditions in which they have been stored and the time they have spent on site. They provide the ideal examples of differing conditions and materials within the collection at large.
I would like to welcome our new volunteers to the conservation department and the Atkinson-Brierley project and to thank all of our volunteers whose ongoing dedication and commitment have allowed us to clean over 2300 plans in the collection so far.
Written by Sally-Anne Shearn, Genesis Project Archivist
One of the most enjoyable aspects of Project Genesis are the personal stories that emerge from the many and varied archives held here at the Institute. Most recently the addition of the Borthwick’s charity records to the online catalogue revealed the story of Grace Green and, through her, a rather unexpected female occupation.
Grace appears in the records of Lady Conyngham’s Charity, a trust established in 1816 to provide yearly pensions for ten poor clergymen, twelve ‘poor and distressed’ widows of clergymen, and six poor women of York aged over 50.
Many early applications for these pensions survive in the archive and the applications of poor women of York make particularly interesting, if poignant, reading, chronicling as they do bereavements, illness, and misfortune and the limited and too often inadequate means of employment open to women in the early nineteenth century.
Grace’s application is part of the earliest bundle, dated 1816-1817. She describes herself as a 67 year old widow living in Goodramgate and, in contrast to the usual occupations of washerwoman, seamstress, nurse and teacher listed in the various applications, states that her existing financial support ‘arises from the office of Sexton of the Parish Church of the Holy Trinity… which she has held upwards of Thirty Years now last past.’ The Church of the Holy Trinity was Holy Trinity Goodramgate, York, and her application was endorsed by James Dallin, then rector of that parish.
Grace Green’s application to Lady Conyngham’s charitable trust.
A sexton is a parish officer, usually responsible for the maintenance of the church buildings and churchyard and for the digging of graves. At a time when women were barred from most public offices, Grace’s occupation was somewhat surprising but, as research proved, she was not the first woman to hold this office, nor even the first one in York.
The existence of ‘sextonesses’ can be traced back to at least 1671 when a female sexton was recorded at Islington in Middlesex. A sextoness was also employed at nearby Hackney in 1690 and 1730. It is not yet clear how common this practice was, but in 1739 it proved controversial enough to prompt a court case when Sarah Bly, the widow of the sexton of St Botolph without Aldersgate in London, was elected to succeed her late husband to the post.
Mrs Bly had polled 209 votes to her opponent’s 196; crucially, forty of her votes came from female householders in the parish. Her opponent, John Olive, took the matter to the Court of King’s Bench, requiring judges to decide not only whether a woman could hold the position of sexton, but whether women could vote in such elections at all.
Fortunately for Sarah Bly and those who came after her, after five months of deliberations the court ruled that as women had held higher offices (Anne, Countess of Pembroke and hereditary Sheriff of Westmoreland was used as an example), and as ‘the office of sexton was no publick office, nor a matter of skill or judgement, but only a private office of trust,’ it was perfectly legal for any woman who paid her church rates to hold the office and to vote in the elections for it.
The first known sextoness in York died just twenty years later in 1759 at the exceptional age of a century or more. She was described in The Gentleman’s Magazine of that year as ‘Mary Hall, sexton of Bishop-Hill, York City, aged 105, she walked about and retained her senses till within three days of her death.’ The London Evening Post adds that Mary had succeeded her husband to the office and that, between them, they had ‘enjoyed that Place 69 years.’
Burial record of ‘Mary Hall saxton aged 100 years’ in the burial register of St Mary Bishophill Senior, York, in 1759.
It would seem that widows succeeding their husbands to office was a common factor in the election of sextonesses, perhaps as a means of continuing financial support for the family. This was certainly true of Grace Green who succeeded her husband Thomas, a weaver, to the post at his death in 1802.
Thomas had been sexton of Holy Trinity Goodramgate since at least 1795, the year that Grace appeared as a witness in a case brought before the church courts for sexual defamation as the 42 year old ‘wife of the sexton.’ Thomas died aged 81 and in the following year the churchwardens’ accounts of Holy Trinity Goodramgate list the ‘sexton’s salary 24s, her bill 8s 2d.’ Thereafter there are yearly references to payments made to Grace Green for her sexton’s salary and for additional work such as cleaning the church, washing, and cooking.
It is not clear what else her duties entailed and whether she did in fact ever dig any graves or whether this job was delegated to another. Certainly there is evidence that sextonesses could and did carry out the more physical aspects of the job. In Kingston upon Thames, near London, the redoubtable Hester Hammerton rang the church bell and dug all the graves in the churchyard herself from 1730, when she succeeded her father in the role of sexton, until her death in 1746. Hester, who wore a loose gown and a man’s waistcoat and hat on every day but Sunday, ‘possessed great bodily strength,’ according to an 1820 memorial of her, and on one occasion was said to have confronted two would-be thieves in the church and ‘resolutely seized one of them by the collar and threw him over the reading desk into the pew below.’
Hester, or Esther, Hammerton of Kingston Upon Thames in James Caulfield’s ‘Portaits, memoirs, and characters, of remarkable persons: from the revolution in 1688 to the end of the reign of George II ‘ (1820). Image used with kind permission of Digital Library@ Villanova University.
Sadly the parish records for Holy Trinity Goodramgate offer no such stories for Grace. Her sexton’s salary of £2 a year, rising to £4 and 4 shillings by the 1820s, provided her with a very small income, small enough that she was moved to apply to Lady Conyngham’s Charity for additional help in 1816. Unfortunately her application was unsuccessful and the parish records show that Grace continued as sexton until around 1834, two years before her death in 1836 at the age of 90.
Grace was not the last of her family to hold the office however. In the same year that Grace’s name ceases to appear, a ‘Mary Green’ begins to be paid the sexton’s salary instead. Mary was the daughter of Grace and Thomas, born in 1782, and she continued in the role of sexton until 1863 when ‘thro’ old age & infirmity’ she was finally succeeded by the parish clerk, Isaac Barker, bringing to an end 61 years of Green family sextonesses at Holy Trinity Church.
Sources
James Caulfield, ‘Portraits, Memoirs, and Characters, of Remarkable Persons : From the Revolution in 1688 to the End of the Reign of George II,’ Volume III (London, 1820)
Sarah Richardson, ‘The Political Worlds of Women: Gender and Politics in Nineteenth Century Britain’ (Oxford, 2013)
Hilda L. Smith, ‘Women writers and the early modern British political tradition’ (Cambridge, 1998)
Written byRuth Mather, Volunteer, Atkinson Brierley Conservation Project
One of the largest and most interesting sets of plans in the Atkinson-Brierley collection is that relating to the rebuilding of Sledmere, a country house in East Yorkshire.
Sledmere House today (picture courtesy of Sledmere House_
The house was built in 1751, and in the 1780s and 1790s underwent significant renovations. Like many grand Yorkshire houses in the period, it was updated with fashionable Adam-style interiors by Joseph Rose, a specialist in fine plasterwork, and the gardens were landscaped by the famous Capability Brown.
The Library at Sledmere House today (picture courtesy of Sledmere House)
However, disaster struck in 1911, when fire gutted the building. Though estate workers and local people did their best to rescue Sledmere’s treasures, the building required extensive repair. This is where Walter Brierley came in. Using Rose’s original plans and surviving photographs and drawings, Brierley and his team worked to restore the house to its previous glory, as required by the then owner Sir Tatton Sykes. The plans reveal the intricate detail of this work, including beautiful coloured sketches of the parquet flooring and plasterwork which decorated the celebrated long library.
AB 7/1a Details of proposed design for parquet floor in library
AB 7/1a Details of proposed design for parquet floor in library
Meanwhile, the plans of the house exterior show how it was rebuilt and extended in sympathy with Georgian architectural fashions. Rebuilding continued through World War One, and by the late 1920s, Sledmere was once again a vibrant country estate. Thanks to the careful restoration of Brierley and his team, Sledmere survives today for visitors to discover elements of both Georgian and Edwardian aristocratic life. Here at the Borthwick Institute for Archives, the 181 Sledmere plans and archived correspondence tell the story behind his massive and marvellous restoration, newly cleaned and available for all to enjoy!
AB 7/1a: South West Elevation of Sledmere House
Further reading:
P. Nuttgens, Brierley in Yorkshire: The Architecture of the Turn of the Century (York Georgian Society, 1984
