1947: Some illustrious Nigerians at the School Museum Service

One of our latest accessions is a visitors' book from Derbyshire's School Museum Service. It was a pioneering institution, established in 1936 following a Carnegie Trust grant. Small wonder it attracted visiting students from the Institute of Education in London, now part of UCL. Some of the students were from today's Ghana, Zambia, South Sudan …

Gustav Hamel’s 1911 crash

When renumbering some of the photographs in the archive of Calke Abbey (our collection D2375), I came across some intriguing early aviation images, which roused my curiosity. There are quite a few aviation-related photographs in the collection - Richard Fynderne Harpur Crewe, who took the images, was a keen amateur photographer with a clear interest …

In the footsteps of Len

Alistair, from our Modern Records team, has been cataloguing a collection maps and plans about which we know remarkably little: only reference numbers for each document and the shelf on which it sits. Since resuming work on the premises, Alistair has described one-third of the 360-ish rolls. I'll let him pick up the story from …

A Maroon victory in Jamaica & improving our catalogues

The following post contains offensive and oppressive language and themes, being direct quotes from the original documents. We believe it is important to retain the original language as it reflects the attitudes of the time. Like so many terms and names used to describe individuals and communities of African descent, ‘Maroon’ was originally used as …

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 …

Putting colour into the past

If you have followed our blog for a while, you will know that one of our favourite subjects is Sir John Franklin and his lost expedition to discover the northwest passage from the Atlantic ocean to the Pacific via the Arctic. On 16 May 1845, the officers of Franklin's expedition had their photographs taken by …

A Wayward Ward

Although much has changed in the last 200 years, some things remain constant, and the troubles of teenagers is one of them. I recently found a wonderful set of letters within the Miller Mundy family archive that tell the tale of a ward of Edward Miller Mundy, whose transition into adulthood didn't go very smoothly! …

The Gratitude of First World War Prisoners to Margery Swanwick of Chesterfield

A post from catalogue volunteer, Roger. The Record Office recently purchased several letters and postcards at an auction which illustrate aspects of humanitarian work during the First World War. Margery Eleanor Swanwick (1880-1959) a resident of Whittington, Chesterfield was active both in providing parcels of food and other comforts to Allied soldiers imprisoned in Germany, …

The Mysterious Mrs Munday

October is Black History Month, which is the ideal time to write about research I've been doing on an early figure in Derbyshire's Black History, Mrs Munday. I first came across Mrs Munday around ten years ago, when I was working for Sandwell Community History & Archives Service and doing some Black History research there …

An Insider’s View of north Derbyshire Libraries around 1950 – part 2 (Buxton)

Last week, Roger shared some stories from Dora Axon relating to her experiences as a librarian in Whaley Bridge and Chapel-en-le-Frith; this week, we hear about her experiences in Buxton, where she started work in 1949. At this time the library at Buxton was the responsibility of the borough council, in contrast to the libraries …