The blog for the Borthwick Institute for Archives at the University of York.
The author of this post is anonymous. A few days ago, I was rummaging through a box of wills when I noticed something odd. Amongst the wills of those who died in 1703, and unusually high proportion had died aboard a ship. Closer inspection revealed that each of the thirteen Yorkshire men who died in … Continue reading The Great Storm of 1703
A guest post by Dr George Redmonds, author of the Yorkshire Historic Dictionary. If I were accused of eavesdropping I might be mildly embarrassed but I would certainly not expect tobe punished for it. The truth is that we use the word loosely these days, not stopping to consider that the eavesdropper was once the … Continue reading Eavesdroppers
The author of this blog is anonymous. In 1902, seventeen year-old Winifred Rowntree noted that there was nothing for teenage girls in York to do in the evenings . Inspired by the local evening school for adults, she decided to establish a club that would aim to entertain and educate girls from the area around … Continue reading Honesty Girls Club: Educating the Girls of York
Written by Alexandra Medcalf, Project Archivist for the Yorkshire Historic Dictionary Interactions between Scotland and Yorkshire were clearly, from the surviving terms in the dictionary, many and common-place. Those words which explicitly reference Scotland seem mostly to do with trade between the two areas, as Scottish men brought wares down from their home country to … Continue reading For Burn’s Night, Scotland in Yorkshire
The author of this blog is anonymous Walking through the strongrooms within the Borthwick, you never know quite what you will find. There is a Crown of Thorns, an ostrich egg, and a box simply labelled ‘Hair cuttings (family).’ So I was not surprised to learn that within the archive of the Wood family (later … Continue reading Food in the Archives
The author of this blog is anonymous This is the sixth in a series of blog posts celebrating the Retreat archive as we publicise the availability of the digitised archive. As we have worked on this digitisation project there have been many items that have caught our eye along the way. In this blog post, … Continue reading Eyewitnesses to History in the Retreat Archive
Written by Alexandra Medcalf, Project Archivist for Yorkshire Historic Dictionary (@YorksDictionary) “Wassail drink were allus best, when o’er a yule-clog boiled” I think I can safely assume that any Brit, at least, reading this blog will be familiar with the concept of a Yule log at Christmas. These days, it probably takes the form of … Continue reading A Yule… Clog?
Written by Jenny Mitcham, Digital Archivist for International Digital Preservation Day Most of us have a computer of some description (sometimes more than one!). Working with digital has become very much a part of our everyday life, but what do we do with the stuff that we create on the computer? How do we make … Continue reading “Save your digital stuff!”
Written by Sally-Anne Shearn, Project Archivist. In August 2017 the Borthwick Institute launched a new 27 month project ‘The Rowntree Archives: Poverty, Philanthropy and the Birth of Social Science.’ The project, which is funded by the Wellcome Trust, will arrange, describe, publicise and make publicly available the archives of the four Rowntree Trusts, the Rowntree … Continue reading The Rowntree Archives: Poverty, Philanthropy and the Birth of Social Science
Written by Sally-Anne Shearn ‘Fun like sunshine, mixed with sense like salt’ was how an anonymous correspondent in The Times described Lady Victoria Bullock following her untimely death in November 1927, at the age of only 35. This description is borne out in the lively bundle of letters by Lady Victoria which were deposited at … Continue reading An English Socialite in Paris: The Letters of Lady Victoria Stanley