Professor Marc Smith talking about medieval paper in Cambridge

On Friday 20th January CAG was pleased to hear from Professor Smith about his research into medieval paper in Cambridge. It was our first full in person event since March 2020 and it was great to be joined by many of our conservator colleagues.

Professor Smith began with an overview of papermaking, noting its origins in China in the 2nd and 1st centuries BCE. Paper reached Europe in the 11th century. Early in the 13th century paper began to be made in Europe, firstly in Spain and Italy, particularly Fabriano in Italy. Watermarks acted as trade marks for paper and allowed the origin and date of paper to be traced.

The earliest English paper mill was owned by John Tate and located near Hertford. There was also and early mill in Kent, owned by Spilman. In Cambridge there was a mill established in the 1550s in Fen Ditton. The mill was established under the auspices of the Bishop of Ely and the watermark of the paper produced shows the initials of the Bishop of Ely (Thomas Goodrich Eliensis: TGE or sometimes just TE, as below) and the paper maker (Remigius Guidon: RG). Reading bottom to top, this watermark says ‘RG 4 TE’

University Archives, reference UA VCCt/Wills 1

We also heard about the process of early paper making: rags were shredded, then pounded (using power from a watermill) to break down the fibres before being mixed with water to create a pulp which was then lifted out on frames to create individual sheets of paper. Frames were used in pairs. Illustrations from Denis Diderot’s ‘Encyclopedie’ of 1767 (below) show the process.

The frames create chain lines and laid lines on the paper and allow watermarks (designs made of wire, attached to the frame) to be added. Sizing (glue) is also added and then the paper is smoothed and folded in necessary. It may then be made into quires (24 or 25 sheets) (NB not the same as a quire in a bound volume) and then bundled into reams (500 sheets).

Paper was usually made in folio size (a bit smaller than A3), and the watermark was placed in the centre of one half. Watermarks came in a wide variety of styles and were often influenced by location, time and current fashions. Some included initials (as the Cambridge paper did) of producer or a date of production. When recording a watermark is it important to note its vertical and horizontal height and position on the page. You may also wish to count chain lines and laid lines and where the watermark occurs with respect to them, perhaps recording how many in a 10cm space for the close-together laid lines. Always include a scale in your photographs, ideally a horizontal and vertical one and use a light sheet to bring out the watermark. You may be able to use photographic software to enhance your images. The quality of the watermark may indicate how long it had been in use for, with paper frames typically in use for 2-5 years. Even ‘the same’ watermark may be slightly different on different sheets because many different frames will have been used by the same papermaker over the years.

Printed reference sources for watermarks include:

• Charles Moïse Briquet, Les Filigranes, 1907: with a focus on French paper watermarks
• Gerhard Piccard, Die Wasserzeichenkartei, 1961-1979: with a focus on European, principally German watermarks
• W. A. Churchill, Watermarks in paper in Holland, England, France, etc. in the XVII and XVIII centuries and their interconnection, 1935
• Edward Heaward, Watermarks, Mainly of the 17th and 18th Centuries, 1950
• Raymond Gaudriault, Filigranes et autres caractéristiques des papiers fabriqués en France aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, available via Gallica: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k3371715d.texteImage)

Much work is now being done to make these resources more accessible and Briquet’s catalogue now features at https://briquet-online.at/. The online version allows much easier searching, though a knowledge of French is still required! There is also the Memory of Paper Portal: https://www.memoryofpaper.eu/BernsteinPortal/appl_start.disp and Filigranes for all: https://filigranes.hypotheses.org/. There is also a project, partly based in Cambridge, looking at watermarks also: Digital approaches to the capture and analysis of watermarks using the manuscripts of Isaac Newton as a test case. See https://www.cdh.cam.ac.uk/research/projects/digital-approaches-to-the-capture-and-analysis-of-watermarks/ for further details.

The session ended with a look at some paper from the University Library’s holdings (see document above) and a William Morris paper-making frame. It was great to be able to see some of the paper that had come from the Cambridge Mill.

Looking at Cambridge paper using light panels (best with the room lights turned down!)

Thank you to Professor Smith for talking to CAG and the University Library for hosting.

Lizzy Ennion-Smith, Pembroke College

Cambridge University Library: projects undertaken in recent years

We were pleased to hear from 4 of our colleagues at the University Library who talked through some ongoing and recent projects that have taken place in the Library.

James Freeman began the afternoon with a presentation about a Wellcome funded project to make medieval medical recipes more accessible: ‘Curious Cures in Cambridge Libraries’. 186 manuscripts from the University Library, Fitzwilliam Museum and 12 Cambridge Colleges will be conserved, catalogued and digitised during the 2 year project. It is also planned to transcribe many of the recipes.

The resulting output will give not only an understanding of historical cures, but also allow examination of patient-doctor interactions and provide information about the social situation. We all understand illness and the need to find a cure for ailments, so the material will be very relatable to a wide variety of people.

See curious cures blog post.

Sally Kent then talked about her work on records relating to Thomas Hobson undertaken during the period the University Library was closed during the Covid pandemic. Hobson is a familiar name to those in Cambridge: Hobson Street, Hobson’s Conduit; and to the wider world with the phrase ‘Hobson’s choice’.

unknown artist; Thomas Hobson (1545-1631), Celebrated Cambridge Carrier; Old Schools, University of Cambridge; http://www.artuk.org/artworks/thomas-hobson-15451631-celebrated-cambridge-carrier-195456

Hobson features in University records as businessman and benefactor in the period 1587-1631, and the project was designed to bring all the records relating to him together on the Cambridge University Digital Library. The focus of the project was on accessibility: many of the records he features are hard to read (the Registrary James Tabor, who was responsible for many of the University records of the period, had bad handwriting!) and the documents often used Latin legal phrases. Translations and transcriptions were created and catalogue descriptions enhanced, often adding indexes to catalogue records to facilitate searching.

The digitsation of the c. 300 images took only 3 days but the transcriptions and translations were very time consuming. The output provides a template that could be used for similar projects and helps give a way in to some of the less well used University records such as the Act Books and Depositions.

See Thomas Hobson pages on the Cambridge Digital Library.

This contrasted with a talk by John Wells on the Jardine Matheson Archive – a business archive held at the Library since 1935 when it was presented by the company, with subsequent transfers over the following years. Formed by William Jardine and James Matheson in 1832, the company was initially based at Canton, but transferred its main office to Hong Kong in 1844. In its early years the firm was heavily involved in the opium trade, but latterly handled a wide range of imports into China, such as coal, metals and machinery.

The initial deposit arrived just after the new Library had opened so there was space for this very large collection! It was not until after the Second World War that cataloguing began. Initially a manuscript index was created providing indexes of the correspondents and brief summaries of letters. The collection contains over 175,000 letters arranged by place of writing. This index is still used today and although such detail would most likely not be created in a modern catalogue the index provides a way into the collection that would not otherwise be possible.

After a gap, further work was done to create a classification scheme, list the bound volumes as well as carrying out repair work and microfilming in the 1980s.

Calendar box and index slip examples.

A further major deposit in the 1990s lead to more work, including the creation of a listing in cardbox software. This was then exported to MS access and then into Cantab before moving to ArchivesSpace. Work was also done on the Chinese documents, which include rare survivals of property deeds.

See Jardine Matheson Archive and catalogue on ArchiveSearch.

Lastly we heard from Susan Gordon who is working with the Stephen Hawking Archive that the University Library received in 2021 as part of the acceptance in lieu scheme.

Hawking was an iconic figure who spent most of his career in Cambridge. Papers from his office at Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP) had begun to be transferred to the Betty and Gordon Moore Library (BGML) in 2001 with further deposits over the years. The BGML accepted all the material offered with no sorting. That material, along with what remained in Hawking’s office at DAMTP, was valued by Christie’s for the acceptance in lieu scheme and material was divided between the Science Museum (objects) and the University Library (‘paper archive’). It is a complicated provenance history!

The material covers the period 1948-2018, with varying amounts of material over time. There are some audio visual and digital materials, but the majority is paper: essays, correspondence, research notes, drafts, scripts, notebooks, photos, gifts and material given to him by his mother Isobel. Initial sorting has been completed and cataloguing is beginning!

See News Post for further details.

Featured image: one of Milton’s epitaphs, taken from Poems of Mr. John Milton: both English and Latin, compos’d at several times (1645) (University Library classmark: Y.11.45) 

Cambridge Women in Academia 1891-1923: a talk by Dr Ann Kennedy Smith

Dr Ann Kennedy Smith joined the CAG to discuss her research on women academics at the University of Cambridge.

One of the key images in the history of women at the University of Cambridge shows an effigy of a woman on a bicycle – a ‘Girton Girl’ – suspended above a crowd of men outside Senate House in May 1897, when thousands of male students and alumni protested against a proposal to admit women to the University. Dr Kennedy Smith drew attention to the women present in the picture, but reminded us that the proposal was defeated, riots broke out, and the effigy was burned that night on a bonfire.

But this wasn’t the beginning of women’s campaigning to be allowed equal access to the University.

Women were allowed to attend lectures at Cambridge University when Girton College was founded in 1869, closely followed by Newnham College in 1871. In 1881, women won the right to sit the Tripos exams. In 1887, Agnata Ramsay (1867-1931) was the only student to be awarded a first class in the Classics Tripos; and in 1890, Philippa Fawcett (1868-1948) obtained the highest score in the Mathematics Tripos: in both cases, outdoing all the men. But women were still not permitted to be members of the University.

Dr Kennedy Smith pointed out that because of this, women scholars had to apply for general reader’s tickets to access the University Library. Dr Kennedy Smith’s research in the UL archives, together with that of Dr Jill Whitelock, highlights that because of this registration system, we know more about the women readers than their contemporary male counterparts, for whom access was unconditional.

In 1891, a protest by 24 women from Girton and Newnham took a very different form to the riots and effigies of 1897: Dr Kennedy Smith showed images of a letter to the Syndics of the University Library, who had restricted access to the library for non-members (including women) to the hours of 10am-2pm. The letter asks if, in light of their morning teaching and lecturing commitments, women academics might have access until 4pm.

The two organisers of the 1891 letter were Mary Bateson and Ellen McArthur.

Mary Bateson (1865-1906) studied at Newnham 1884-1887, and was a Mediaeval historian and suffragist. As the daughter of the Master of St John’s College, Bateson had grown up in Cambridge academic circles and recognised that women at Cambridge were routinely excluded not just from the library, but from most societies, and from scholarships. She herself was only able to study at the University because her family could financially support her. To address this need for practical funding and support, Bateson established the first Research Fellowship for women at Newnham in 1898 – Jane Ellen Harrison was the first to hold one.

Mary Bateson, undated, c. 1890s, by Elliott and Fry. Image courtesy of Newnham College, reference PH/10/4. 

Ellen McArthur (1862-1927) read History at Girton at the same time as Mary Bateson, specialising in economic history, and was also one of the first women to be awarded a degree by Trinity College, Dublin. Like Mary Bateson, McArthur wanted to give practical support to women students at Cambridge, so between 1896 and 1903, she ran a hostel for post-graduate women students. She also left money in her will to establish a prize for economic history. The Ellen McArthur Lectures were established in the 1960s and the Studentships in the early 1970s, with funds from her bequest.

Ellen McArthur, c. 1880-1890, by R. H. Lord. Image courtesy of The Mistress and Fellows, Girton College, Cambridge, reference GCPH 6/2/3/3.

Dr Kennedy Smith describes Bateson as seeing women’s scholarship at Cambridge as a fellowship of women – women whom the Establishment had decided were hard workers who could pass exams, but not naturally talented enough to contribute new ideas to scholarship. These women, as well as generations after them, proved this old-fashioned view of women scholars to be wrong. In 1923, women were granted full access to the University Library. Women were finally awarded degrees by Cambridge University in 1948.

For more information, please see:

Cambridge Ladies’ Dining Society, 1880-1914 – Ann Kennedy’s Smith’s website Cambridge’s pioneering women – Ann Kennedy Smith (akennedysmith.com)

The Rising Tide: Women at Cambridge, a 2019 exhibition curated by Lucy Delap and Ben Griffin, available to view online at The Rising Tide: Women at Cambridge

‘Lock Up Your Libraries’? Women Readers at Cambridge University Library 1855-1923, by Dr Jill Whitelock, online at ‘Lock up your libraries’? Women readers at Cambridge University Library, 1855–1923 | Library & Information History (euppublishing.com)

Women of Cambridge, by Rita McWilliams Tullberg (Gollancz, 1975; reissued by CUP, 1998)

Helen Weller, Archivist

Westminster College, Cambridge

June 2022

Featured image: Effigy Of Woman Hanging By Senate House, 1897. Image courtesy of The Mistress and Fellows, Girton College, Cambridge , reference GCPH 9/1/4.

‘Celebrating our lockdown achievements’

On Tuesday 6th July we heard from a series of speakers about their lockdown projects.

Collecting Covid-19, Jacky Cox, Cambridge University Library

The University Library had been asked what they were doing to document the pandemic. There had been previous examples of the Library actively seeking materials to build up collections, e.g. with the EU Referendum Collections and it was decided something similar could be done to document the pandemic in Cambridge. The focus is on collecting the unofficial record of Collegiate Cambridge and the wider Cambridge community.

The collection is format agnostic and from the outset digital records have been collected, with paper records also to be collected once the Library fully re-opens again. The challenge with taking so much material digitally is to ensure that it remains accessible in the future. It is also essential that the terms of each donation are very clear. Support was received from the University’s Information Compliance Officer with this.

Material has been sent in via Google drive and Dropbox. The infrastructure for the project had to be built up from nothing whilst all members of were staff working from home. A workflow for rapid collecting was developed, which is hoped will be useful for future projects. So far around 40 donations of material have been received with all but 3 being digital.

Full details of the project can be found at https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/CollectingCovid-19 and https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/a-citys-pandemic.

Digital Mycenae: The Aegean Bronze Age Rides in to the 21st Century, Rebecca Naylor, Faculty of Classics

The Greek city of Mycenae is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the Faculty of Classics holds an extensive archive collection of the British excavations that have taken place there. The collection was an excellent candidate to be digitised:

• it is heavily used
• surrogates would aid preservation
• enhance access for existing audiences
• introduce the collection to new audiences
• enable the Cambridge and the British School in Athens collections to be reunited
• enhance the centenary anniversary celebrations of Alan Wace’s 1920 excavation there.

The project began in 2018 with the support of the Cambridge University Library Digital Content Unit. The work to copy the material stopped in March 2020 but lockdown provided an opportunity to draft the webpages to show the newly digitised material and it was possible to launch the website during lockdown.

There are 6551 pages of field notebooks, 140 pages of site plans and section drawings, 236 drawings, 249 tomb photographs, 385 site photographs and 704 small finds photographs! The project also allows a new democratic evaluation of the archaeological evidence as all the material from the excavations is available, not just that which the dig director chose to include in their reports. The project has also garnered international press coverage, been shortlisted for an Apollo Digital Innovation of the Year Award and a virtual conference is due to be held in September this year!

Websites: https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/digitalmycenae, https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/mycenae.

The Great History Chase, Jayne Hoare, Cambridgeshire Archives

The Great History Chase is an HLF funded project which aims to enthuse primary school age children about local history. The project seeks to reach out to communities and help children learn about local history, archives and conservation and engage a broader audience for the Archive Service.

The project has worked with a number of local primary schools on topics as diverse as the history of the Fens and their drainage, World War II in Cambridgeshire and the history of local schools.

Jayne has visited a number of schools, taking copies of documents from the Archive with her. Children have been able to have a go at transcribing documents and see connections with their local area. The classes have, Covid restrictions permitting, been able to visit the Cambridgeshire Archives and see a range of original documents, as well as visiting the storage and conservation areas to get a real feel of how the Archive works.

It had originally been hoped that the children might then be able to visit local care homes to talk to residents about their experiences of the history of this area but this has not been possible so Jayne has created memory boxes to help stimulate conversations for care home residents.

The project has created a number of resources teachers can now use in their teaching of History and copies of images created as part of the project are available via Cambridgeshire Community Archives Network. More information can be found at https://www.cambridgeshire.gov.uk/residents/libraries-leisure-culture/archives/latest-news-from-the-cambridgeshire-archives-service/the-great-history-chase.

Researching the Contents of an Archive Collection: Donald Wiseman, Alison Stacey, Tyndale House

Tyndale House holds the Archive of Professor Donald Wiseman, a biblical scholar, archaeologist and Assyriologist. His papers came to Tyndale House in c. 2010 thanks to his daughters. The collection documents all aspects of Wiseman’s life and Alison used lockdown to do further research into some of those people who feature in the Archive but are not especially well-known.

Fuʼād Safar, an Iraqi archaeologist, was one of the people Alison looked into. He was Director of Excavations at the Iraqi Directorate General of Antiquities. His name has various spellings, and even Wiseman was not consistent in how he spelled Safar’s name. Issues of spelling can make an archive collection problematic for users. Alison also looked at Theophilus Goldridge Pinches (1856-1934), an assistant and then curator at the British Museum as well as a lecturer in Assyriology at University College London and in the University of Liverpool.

Understanding all the connections within the Archive has been fascinating! Further information can be found at https://academic.tyndalehouse.com/library/archive/ and https://academic.tyndalehouse.com/media/iolk0qsr/wiseman-archive.pdf.

Hannah Jones, the National Archives

Hannah gave us an update on some of the work TNA has been doing, principally their new guidance on managing mixed collections and the forthcoming GDPR Toolkit.

The Managing Mixed Collections Guidance provides detailed information on the management of Archives that contain non-archive heritage collections, those for example containing material more commonly found in a museum. Guidance is given on museum standards, such as SPECTRUM, ethical considerations and relevant legislation, before more detailed advice is provided on managing items such as weapons, costumes, sculpture and human remains. There are also case studies to provide real-world examples.

The Data Protection Toolkit for Archive Services will be launched later in July and will be freely available, though it will be necessary to register for a free account on the TNA website. It has been developed in consultation with Naomi Korn Associates and will provide an overview of GDPR legislation, decision-making steps when deciding whether to close items for data protection reasons, and templates to help document decisions. It has been approved by the Information Commissioner’s Office. A launch event is being held on the 20th July.

Elizabeth Ennion-Smith, Pembroke College, July 2021

Images: courtesy of Jayne Hoare, Cambridgeshire Archives