A guide to archives and published sources relating to maritime history. Although a land-locked county, Derbyshire Record Office does hold maritime records created or collected by Derbyshire people. Ships and boats Material relating to ships and boats has all been subject indexed in our online catalogue under the term ‘seagoing vessels’. You can also search … Continue reading Maritime History Research Guide
Author: Sarah Chubb
Mining the Seams workshop recordings
On 13 October we held a workshop aimed particularly at students and academics to talk about the archives of the coal industry in Derbyshire and Warwickshire, catalogued with Wellcome Trust funding. As not everyone who wanted to attend was able to come, we are sharing recordings of the presentations. https://videopress.com/v/oe0ki84h?resizeToParent=true&cover=true&preloadContent=metadata Warwickshire County Record Office - … Continue reading Mining the Seams workshop recordings
Industrial Revolution Conference 2021
The Arkwright Society's 7th Industrial Revolution Conference will be on Zoom on Saturday 13 November and is a great opportunity to hear leading international academics discuss innovation in the first Industrial Revolution. The speakers are: Professor Joel Mokyr (Northwestern University, Illinois) talking about the role of taxation, patents, the poor law, apprenticeship and policing in … Continue reading Industrial Revolution Conference 2021
Miniature masterpieces – the world of Akan gold weights
As part of Black History Month, I am going to talk about something that could be perceived as being a bit mundane – weights. Not the kind you lift in the gym, but specifically weights used to measure out gold. These weights once formed part of the Derbyshire School Library Service, and were used by school children as handling objects. They have now been transferred to the permanent collection at Buxton Museum and Art Gallery.
These weights (known as mrammou) were used by the Akan, a diverse grouping of people inhabiting the present-day countries of Ghana and Ivory Coast. The weights first began to be used in the early 15th century and continued until the early 20th. This part of Africa is extremely rich in gold, and became known to Europeans, unsurprisingly, as the Gold Coast. This part of Africa was at the hub of…
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Dr Margaret O’Sullivan 1945-2021
We are sorry to say that Margaret O'Sullivan, our former county archivist, died last week at the age of 75. Margaret joined Derbyshire County Council in 1989 after the retirement of the first county archivist, Joan Sinar. Joan had been responsible for setting up the record office in County Hall in the early 1960s but … Continue reading Dr Margaret O’Sullivan 1945-2021
Mining the Seams online workshop
We're pleased to say that the Wellcome Trust funded cataloguing of the National Coal Board archive for the Derbyshire area is nearly complete. The archive contains more than 600 boxes of records, which relate to the miners who worked at the coalface as well as the management of the collieries and the coal they produced. … Continue reading Mining the Seams online workshop
Limestone Quarry, Derbyshire
The earliest picture of quarrying in Derbyshire?
In February the museum bought a small eighteenth-century watercolour from Chiswick Auctions in London. We don’t know who painted it or when, and its title, ‘Limestone Quarry, Derbyshire’ is somewhat ambiguous.
It is however, the earliest picture of limestone quarrying that the museum owns. It is perhaps the earliest picture of Derbyshire quarrying in existence.
Limestone quarrying was, and still is, an important industry for Derbyshire and the landscape is littered with the remains of old quarries. Although ubiquitous across the county, quarries very rarely make it into early topographical views of the area. The watercolour shows quarry workers, complete with pick-axes, chiselling away at the cliff face on the right hand side. In the centre, smoke can be seen billowing from a small lime kiln.
In the eighteenth-century artists had…
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An Archival Mystery
If you follow the Record Office Twitter account (@DerbyshireDRO) you'll know that we tweet an 'Archive of the Week'. A few of us take turns doing the Archive of the Week and the archive collections are randomly generated so we never quite know what we're going to get. For me this time it was collection … Continue reading An Archival Mystery
The Original Bakewell Pudding recipe?
Ask most people to name a dessert from Bakewell and they’ll say Bakewell tart. Now Bakewell tart is delicious - if you’ve never tasted it, it consists of flaked almonds, frangipane, jam and shortcrust pastry - but it’s readily available in every British supermarket so it doesn’t feel like a local speciality anymore. If you … Continue reading The Original Bakewell Pudding recipe?
Derbyshire’s Local History Societies
As Local and Community History Month draws to a close, why not take a look at what your local history society is up to? After all, local history is for life, not just for May! Local history groups and societies often offer talks programmes and social activities as well as opportunities to support their work … Continue reading Derbyshire’s Local History Societies
Derbyshire Record Office 