Digitising History

Have you ever worried that your old letters, certificates, photographs, maps and diaries are getting damaged whenever you handle them?  You want to share them with the family, give everyone the opportunity to connect with long-gone relatives, but you can see creases gradually turning into tears. And what about those framed photographs hanging on the walls?  They are fading in the light, changing gradually, getting irrevocably damaged.  The best way to keep all these treasures safe, is to make copies: this allows you to store the originals out of harm’s way, while the copies can be handled and displayed. With a digital copy you can even print off as many duplicates as you like, as often as you need them.

We have been copying our records in order to protect them for a long time, and I’m pleased to say that we’ve opened up our copying service to everyone, from individuals to heritage organisations: we can now digitise your history for you.

Our experienced staff, using the same equipment they use for all the historic records we hold, are able to digitise:

• diaries, journals and other bound volumes
• letters, certificates and other documents
• photographs
• maps and plans
• drawings, watercolours and prints

What are the advantages of trusting Derbyshire Record Office with your family’s history?

• We have a state of the art digitisation system, including a book cradle for safely copying bound volumes.
• Our staff are highly trained in handling delicate historic records.
• Whilst in our care, you records will be kept safe in one of our secure archive stores.
• We provide high quality images of at least 300 pixels per inch (ppi).
• We give you the choice between TIFF files, which have a very high resolution but take up a lot of space and can be slow to open, or Jpegs, which have a smaller resolution, but take up a lot less space.
• We put the images on a CD for you for free, or for a small charge on a USB stick

To ask for a quote, simply fill in a Digitising History quote request form on our website.

 

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The Junction Arts story

Congratulations to Christopher Bevan – his film, “The Junction Arts Story” has been nominated for a 2017 Royal Television Society Midlands Award in the Factual Programme of the Year category. The winners will be announced at the end of November.

Derbyshire Record Office

One of my main preoccupations of 2016 was the Junction Arts archive collection – and a fine preoccupation it was too.  Now comes an opportunity to share some of that experience with you – in the form of a specially-commissioned film, The Junction Arts Story:

Derbyshire Record Office’s first encounter with Junction Arts was back in 2012 when they brought a group of young people to carry out some research as part of a farming heritage project called Combine. A couple of years later, Junction Arts let us know that they were applying to the Heritage Lottery Fund for a community-based project relating to their archive material, to celebrate their fortieth anniversary.  We were only too happy to support the JA40 project application, especially as the proposal involved the transfer of the Junction Arts archive to us.

The application was successful. The unprocessed archive of four decades was passed into our…

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Explore your local history… Long Eaton

How? Why? What? Where?

Discover how Derbyshire Record Office and Derbyshire Libraries can help during our series of events at Long Eaton Library in September and November

Tuesday 19th September, 9.30am-12noon –  Family History Online

Tuesday 10th October, 9.30am-12noon – Maps and Photographs

Monday 13^th November 2.00pm to 4.30pm – History of Buildings

with original archives from Derbyshire Record Office

Tuesday 5^th December 9.30am to 12pm – Old Newspapers 

All events are free, but please book your place at by calling Long Eaton Library on 01629 531470 or emailing longeaton.library@derbyshire.gov.uk

Web: Long Eaton Library

 

Horses and horticulture – Heritage Open weekend at Calke Abbey

Specially selected items from the Harpur-Crewe family archive, held at the record office, will return home to Calke Abbey this Saturday. It will be our third visit in as many years, and we are delighted to be invited back to this unique estate.

Visitors to the National Trust property can view original records of those who lived and worked at Calke. We are taking a fascinating selection of records with us, including family letters and diaries, photograph albums, tenant’s registers, maps and one of the oldest documents in the collection – a deed dating from the 12^th century. This year we have been asked to include material relating to the gardens at Calke and the families’ interest in horses.

Our staff will be based in the Learning Room and will be on hand to talk to visitors about these historic documents and offer advice and information about the work of the record office and the services we offer.

As part of the Heritage Open weekends this event is free as is entry into the house, so come along and see us, we’ll be there from 12pm-4pm.

For more information visit www.nationaltrust.org.uk/calke-abbey or telephone Calke Abbey on 01332 863822.

Calke Abbey, Ticknall, Derbyshire, DE73 7LE

The (very) Young Victoria… Miss Appleton and the Duchess of Kent

ITV’s ‘Victoria’ is back on television, and so this seems a good time to follow up on my previous blog post about Miss Elizabeth Appleton, where I mentioned that some sources suggested she had been considered as a governess for the future Queen Victoria.  The reason for this suggestion can be found in William Porden’s diary (archive reference no. D3311/4/6).  On 10 September 1820, Mr Porden writes:

Miss Appleton at dinner.  She has lately published a book on the Early Education of Children which she has dedicated to the Duchess of Kent and having received a visit from Gen [blank] on the part of the Duchess about a fortnight ago, has been in high expectation of being summoned to attend her Royal Highness and perhaps her flattering fancy may have given her an establishment in her Royal Highnesses household.  She has now received a Letter from Capt. Conway commanding her attendance on Wednesday.  What will be the result?

Miss Appleton clearly described what happened on her momentous visit to the Duchess of Kent in great detail, as it takes up nearly three and a half pages of Mr Porden’s diary.  She visited on 13 September and the young Princess Victoria, who would have been almost 16 months old at the time, is described (like many babies of that age!) as ‘a healthy fat thing’ .  After being passed through a chain of servants, she waited in ‘a magnificent Drawing Room’ until she  was taken to the Duchess’ dressing room for an audience…

Where besides the Duchess were the little Princess seated on a piece of Tapestry, the English Nurse attending her and other Attendants standing round rather in Scenic Order.  She was most graciously received and had perhaps half an hour’s rather familiar conversation.

Miss Appleton had brought a doll as a present for the princess, which was:

…given to the Child on the Carpet who appeared delighted with it but began to pull its head-dress and cloathing as made Miss A apprehensive that its drapery which she had taken so much pains with would be destroyed before her face.

Anyone who knows small children of this age would hardly be surprised at this!  Miss Appleton mentions that she was dressed in white, whereas the Duchess and everyone else was in black.  The Duke of Kent had died in January of that year, and Miss Appleton’s outfit seems to have been a bit of a faux pas, as ‘The Princess was struck with the contrast, and showed surprise, more than pleasure.’

Painted a few years later, this portrait of the duchess (still in black) and her daughter, by Henry Bone, gives an indication of how the Duchess would have looked.

Unfortunately for Miss Appleton, the book dedication and her visit didn’t result in a job offer.  Given the fact that she subsequently opened a highly profitable school, she perhaps didn’t mind too much in the end.

I wonder what you miss if you stick to the path?

Pop Up Evaluator Sara looks back over The Amazing Pop Up Archives Project so far.

So how can the archives lead the story? We begin again from another place, another part of our own history with this project. As individuals, with our own unique interests, we begin to play with the Archives themselves. I follow Pop Up Project researcher Kate Henderson, with a handful of students and we are taken to The Local Studies Library. This feels how it should do, intuitive, personal, hands-on, and strangely collaborative. We are here together finding and sharing our own topics and places of interest in these archives. Of course many of the original documents in The Archive are irreplaceable, but here in the local studies library we can leaf through drawers and drawers of cards catalogued in often quite extraordinary ways in these Cabinets of Curiosity. Such cataloguing is often quirky, and curiously beautiful.

As we call for and are brought the referenced published materials, the books, newspapers, articles, programmes, the photographs draw me in. They instil in me the idea of wonderment, of being privy to this extraordinary collection of wonders of Derbyshire, of wondering with purpose, of wonder for its own sake. I wonder what you miss if you stick to the path, how you wonder with ideas, how wonderment itself can become the framework of a process.

A history of the archives service for Derbyshire

Late last Spring I began what came to be a rather extensive piece of research into the development of the archives part of Derbyshire Record Office. After so much work I wanted to share what I had found, and on Monday we ran an event featuring a talk about the history of the archives service, an exhibition of our own archives (by which I mean the records we actually created rather than those we look after on behalf of the county) and a behind-the-scenes tour of some of the record office building. We couldn’t do the whole building as it is so big, and to be honest once you have seen one or two of our strong rooms, you have really seen the other 12 or 13 (yes, we do have 14 in total for archives and local studies).

I hope many of the people who read this blog are interested to hear how the record office has developed, and I do intend to write further posts in the future so please watch this space. For now here are a few photographs from the event

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All good things….

I can’t really believe it but we are just two days away from our final event for the Amazing Pop Up Archives Project!  Our project has been a few years in the making and now it seems rather strange that once Wednesday is over we won’t have any more exciting (and often a bit bizarre!) events to plan. Officially the project runs until the end of November, but that time will be spent writing case studies should other intrepid Pop Up projects wish to follow in our wake, designing an exhibition and prepping the project archive for cataloguing.

If you are up Gamesley way on Wednesday afternoon we will be ‘popping up’ at the annual Meet the Neighbours Day which takes place at Winster Mews.  In this event we will be focusing on the meaning of home and community.  We’ll have a range of records from our collections to spark conversation and lots for the kids to get involved in.  So come and see what the Story of the Silver Spoons, the song ‘Dirty Old Town’, a poem about green beans, a ‘domesday’ book, a cooking pot and an empty suitcase all have in common. The Amazing Pop Up Archives Project – bizarre to the last!

Developing an archive service for Derbyshire

In April 1962, Miss Joan Sinar was appointed as the first County Archivist for Derbyshire. In the 55 years since this landmark was reached, whilst much has changed at the Record Office the basic principle of preserving Derbyshire’s archival heritage and providing access to it has remained constant. However, 1962 may not have been the true beginning of Derbyshire’s archive service.

On Monday 14 August, join us to find out more about the history of the Record Office and record keeping in Derbyshire. There will also be a display of original archives illustrating the development of the Derbyshire’s archival heritage, and a unique opportunity for a behind the scenes tour.

Monday 14^th August 2017

10am-1pm

Cost: £10 (including light refreshments)

Booking essential. Please register via the link to the right, or call 01629 538347

An intriguing photograph

Sorting through a records of the Record Office earlier this week, I came across a small bundle of copy photographs of images elsewhere in the archive collections. The images were rather eclectic in their subject matter, featuring photographs from World War One, family and industrial photographs, and I browsed through them again whilst waiting for a staff meeting to begin on Monday morning. There was one in particular that was a little more obscure, it puzzled us for a little while  and then tickled us when we realised what it was. Take a look for yourself and see what you make of it…

A wooden panel with the title ‘Cemetery’ above … what we didn’t know. When we looked a little closer we saw three words that told us everything we needed to know and amused us in the process. These words were ‘Ferodo’ and ‘brake lining’ – it is a cemetery of the brake linings manufactured by Chapel-en-le-Frith based Ferodo.

(Apologies for the poor images – they are a photographs of a photograph of a photograph!)

We already knew the company and their staff had a good sense of humour and imagination from other items we hold in their archive collection, including our Treasure #26 Ferodo’s imaginative advertising.

This particular photograph comes from an album featuring images from the the company’s factory, Rye Flatt House at Combs in the small collection of papers of Herbert Frood, the firm’s founder, (ref: D5700). The main archive for the company is held under reference D4562, with a wide range of records relating to production, staff and promotional materials. My favourite item from the collection is not actually an archive, but an artefact…

Mounted display of original brake lining used by `Babs’  who broke the land speed record in 1927 and was buried later that year following an accident that resulted in the death of the driver, John Parrry-Thomas.