Cyclist Alex Dowsett delves into the past of his sport at the Essex Record Office

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As the Tour de France draws to a close and Britain gears up to host the 2012 Olympics, Essex’s own home-grown medal-winning cycling Alex Dowsett paid a visit to the Essex Record Office to find out about the story of cycling in his home county. The Team Sky cyclist attended King Edward VI Grammar School in Chelmsford, and is the current British National Time Trial Champion.

Alex Dowsett in Team Sky kit

Alex took time out of his busy training schedule to visit the ERO ahead of his next major competition, the Eneco Tour, in the Netherlands and Belgium.

Cycling was a popular pastime in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and Essex was a popular choice with cyclists, particularly those from the London area as it was a short distance to ride out into the countryside from the London suburbs.

The North London Cycle Club at Chelmsford, c.1895. Fred Spalding Collection, ERO D/F 269/1/384

Many clubs were formed to organise social rides and competitions, and some clubs even had huts where members could stay overnight before returning home.

Races were held over long and short distances, and some even took place on penny farthings.

A penny farthing. The reason for the large front wheel? Speed! Fred Spalding Collection, ERO D/F 269/1/329

Handbooks and maps gave cyclists advice about where to go in Essex, including one which advised that some of the terrain in Hadleigh, where the Olympic mountain biking event is taking place, was too dangerous to be ridden!

Even women took part in cycle rides, despite wearing restrictive corsets and ankle-length skirts.

The Chelmsford Bicycle Club, c.1895, Fred Spalding Collection, Chelmsford Sporting Groups 382

Archivist Allyson Lewis talked Alex and Councillor Jeremy Lucas, Cabinet Member for Customer Services, Environment and Culture, through the documents and images which tell this story.

From left to right: Alex Dowsett, his mother Jan, Archivist Allyson Lewis, and Councillor Jeremy Lucas. (Photo: Marion Wynn)

Alex said:

It was great to see all the results from back in the day, comparing the times on the machines they used then with the times possible on my modern machinery. It was also nice to see names I recognised of Essex cyclists who have helped me along the way

 

Racing bike and rider, 1890s – the Victorian equivalent of the kind of machines that racing cyclists use today. Fred Spalding Collection, ERO D/F 269/1/330

Alex not only got to see pictures of the kind of machines that his predecessors raced on, but got to try one out. We think he liked it.

Councillor Jeremy Lucas with a penny farthing, and Alex Dowsett on an 1890s racing bike outside the ERO. (Photo: Marion Wynn)

Bye Alex! 
(Photo: Marion Wynn)

Many of the documents which Alex saw on his visit will be on display in the reception area of the Essex Record Office from next week.

 

Oldest known map of historic Essex town discovered in outbuilding

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A map of Saffron Walden dating to 1757 has turned up in an outbuilding on a farm. The map was discovered at Bruncketts, Wendens Ambo, which would previously have served Mutlow Hall. The map has now been transferred to the Essex Record Office in Chelmsford on permanent loan.

The map being examined at the Saffron Walden Archive Access Point. From left to right: Tony King, Conservator, Clare Mulley, Zofia Everett, Archive Assistant, Allyson Lewis, Archivist, Geoffrey Ball and Lizzie Sanders. Photo by Gordon Ridgewell

The map predates the previously earliest known map, made in 1758, by one year. It shows the town of Saffron Walden, and despite its extremely poor condition the ink outlines of streets and buildings are still sharp and clear.

The outlines of the roads and buildings of the historic town are still sharp and clear, and easily recognisable today

The map has had a hard life up until now. It is drawn onto two pieces of parchment, which at some point had been mounted onto canvas and varnished. After being stored for years rolled up in damp conditions, the map has split down the middle, has numerous small tears in it, several different phases of mould growth, and a sizeable chunk of one corner has been eaten by rodents.

The two pieces of parchment used to make the map have come away from one another

 

The map is peppered with small tears

  

Mould that has grown on the split between the two pieces of parchment

 

A large chunk of the map has been nibbled away by rodents

The map was made by Edward John Eyre, whose later, larger 1758 map of the town and surrounding area may well already be familiar to Saffron Walden residents. It is likely that both maps were commissioned by Elizabeth Countess of Portsmouth or her nephew, Sir John Griffin Griffin, who inherited part of the nearby estate of Audley End. 

Expert conservators at the Essex Record Office will now work to stabilise the map to prevent any further damage, and make any repairs possible.

Down and Out in Thaxted and Barnston

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Ruth Selman blogs for us about her research for her PhD ‘The Landscape of Poverty in Later Stuart Essex’…

Essex Record Office has just launched a small exhibition on poverty in Essex in the late seventeenth century which can be viewed in the Searchroom at Chelmsford. This is based on my research into the scale and nature of poverty in Essex between 1660 and 1700 for a PhD at the University of Roehampton. I am studying records held by Essex Record Office and The National Archives with the aim of identifying who was poor at that time and how the experiences of being poor differed within communities and across Essex as a whole.

The records of the hearth tax, which mainly date from the 1660s and 1670s, give us a glimpse into the varied circumstances of Essex residents at that date. Every liable householder was required to pay a shilling for each hearth in their dwelling twice a year – at Lady Day (25 March) and Michaelmas (29 September). In an attempt to ensure that all revenue due to the Crown was collected, even those exempt from paying the tax were recorded in the returns. Exemption was granted to those who lacked the wherewithal to pay local church and poor rates, and to those who paid twenty shillings or less rent for their houses and whose goods were worth less than ten pounds. With three hearths or more, however, there was no avoiding the tax collector even if you met the other criteria.

This extract from the hearth tax return for Michaelmas 1670 lists some of the householders in Thaxted and notes that there were also 40 people in receipt of alms (charitable payments or parish relief). 

Q/RTh 5 – hearth tax return for Thaxted, Michaelmas 1670

The proportions of householders exempt from the hearth tax varied greatly across the county. The parishes closest to London tended to exhibit the lowest rates of exemption with an average of about 23%, possibly reflecting the relative prosperity brought by proximity to the London market. Those in the north and north-west of the county saw much higher exemption rates averaging about 63%.  This may well have reflected the vulnerability of the many workers in the cloth industry who were based in that area.  Interruptions to trade caused by wars, disease and local crises could result in a rapid change to dependent workers’ economic circumstances. 

The Michaelmas 1670 hearth tax returns for Essex have been transcribed and analysed by the Centre for Hearth Tax Research at the Universityof Roehampton and are to be published this month by the British Record Society and a conference is being held to mark the launch.  See http://www.hearthtax.org.uk/ for further details.

Comparing the lists of those exempt from the hearth tax with recipients of poor relief, recorded in the few detailed sets of accounts produced by overseers of the poor, provides us with greater detail about what poverty meant and how people survived.  Support was provided to those unable to work by parish officers under the Poor Relief Act of 1601.  The Act also required that the unemployed should be put to work on tasks such as spinning and that poor children should be apprenticed to learn a useful trade.

In practice,Essex parishes took different approaches to the problem of their poor depending on the particular local circumstances. Some poor, particularly widows, were paid regular pensions, although often the amount they were paid would have been insufficient without additional resources. In many cases, support was provided in kind, with clothing, fuel and food given directly to the poor. Sometimes the parish employed the poor to carry out odd jobs such as repairing the almshouse or digging graves. The care of orphaned and abandoned children often took up significant resources, with payments made to foster parents and the frequent supply of replacement clothing for their growing bodies.

This extract from the accounts of the overseers of the poor of Barnston in 1671 shows a range of expenses incurred in support of the poor. A major expense derived from the last illnesses of husband and wife, Goodman and Goody Brown, with payments for nursing them and digging their graves (D/P 153/12).

The Barnston overseers reclaimed some of their expenditure by disposing of the household goods of the Brown family after their death, although there were some debts to pay with the proceeds. The inventory was recorded with their accounts (D/P 153/12).

The list of goods suggests the Browns were not destitute, but nevertheless they were unable to survive in their final months without support from the parish and their neighbours.  They were not alone.  It must have been a frightening existence, knowing that illness, disability, fire, flood or theft could result in dependence on parish relief and charity, often grudgingly given.

On that note, I am very grateful for the ungrudging funding awarded to this project by the Arts & Humanities Research Council and the Friends of Historic Essex and the help and support provided by Essex Record Office and The National Archives.

Find out more about the hearth tax records at The Hearth Tax in Essex, our first conference of 2012, on Saturday 14 July. See our events page for more information.

Belt up!

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Martin Astell blogs for us about one of the weird and wonderful things he is called upon to do as the Sound and Video Archivist at the Essex Record Office…

Because the Essex Sound and Video Archive preserves a range of sound recordings on all sorts of obsolete media, to some extent we have to be a kind of working museum of old audio equipment.

This is a Fostex R8 – an 8-track open reel tape recorder built in Japan in the late 1980s for the high-end home recording market. Our machine was refusing to play tapes, so I decided to investigate.

I could see that the capstan (i.e. the bit that drives the tape through the machine) was not turning so I guessed that there may have been a problem with the drive belt. I took the front panel off to see if I could identify the problem.

This is the daunting sight that greets you when you remove the front panel. The cotton swab you can see stuck into the machine is showing the capstan drive wheel. I could see at this stage that the belt was slipping off the drive wheel as it turned.

The rubber drive belts unfortunately stretch over time, eventually reaching a point where they no longer grip the wheel sufficiently. The remedy is to replace the belt.

 

Here is a close-up of the capstan drive wheel. Note that there is quite a small ‘window’ through which the belt and drive wheel can be seen. So how do you change the belt? This is when I discovered (thanks to the wonders of the internet and the willingness of analogue recording enthusiasts to help one another) that I should have taken off the back panel of the machine.

 

Here are the scary circuit boards which present themselves when you remove the rear panel and the daunting tangle of wires, motors and electrical doo-hickeys behind them.

Through the judicious use of a screwdriver and some tweezers (which reminded me at times of playing the children’s game ‘Operation’) I was able to remove the drive motor, take off the old belt and replace it with a new one. Having put it all back together (with no bits left over), I am mightily relieved when I turn the machine on and see the capstan spinning as intended.

All very rewarding, but it does make me think, “The other archivists don’t have to go through all this bother to access their records. They just have to open a volume and start reading!”

But, I hear you ask, where do you get a new drive belt for an old, obscure and obsolete Japanese tape recorder? Well, that would be telling…

Don’t judge a book by its cover: conserving Essex Illustrated

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What does an archive do when faced with a book being torn apart by its own binding? Our Senior Conservator Tony King blogs for us about conserving Essex Illustrated.

In February-March 2012 the Conservation Section at the ERO worked to conserve Essex Illustrated in a Series of Nearly 100 Views, a book of 94 prints dating from 1834. It was in a very poor condition due to the original style of binding and the quality of the materials used during the binding process.

Essex Illustrated, 1834, had clearly seen better days when it arrived in the Conservation Studio

The book contains nearly 100 prints, such as these ones of the ruins of Waltham Abbey and the now demolished Gidea Hall:

This book presented a real challenge; conservation practice is to preserve as much of the original binding as possible and only to rebind a book as a last resort. This is because it is not just the content of a book which can tell us about the past, but the physical object of the book as well.

This book was bound quickly and cheaply, which tells us something about the intended audience and use of the book. Perhaps it was given a cheap binding as the buyer was expected to remove the prints and frame them or put them in a scrap book, and to put what would have been considered an expensive binding on it would alter the nature of the book and the information that can be inferred from its presentation.

Yet to reconstruct the style of binding originally used would seem foolish as it had completely failed; however, to alter the style to a more robust one would not be in-keeping with the historical integrity of the item.

We needed, therefore, to devise a method which would reuse every part of the original binding and preserve the appearance of the book as much as possible whilst creating a strong volume so it could be used by researchers.

Investigation

The first step was to find out how the book had been bound originally. In order to do this, the pages were clamped into a finishing press with the binding removed.

Removing the binding of the book to reveal the stitching underneath

This revealed that the book was made from single sheets of paper that had been oversewn, a sewing style where the stitches are passed through the sheet of paper near the spine edge rather than through the centre of a fold as is more common. Oversewing had been used as there were no folds to sew through as each page was a separate sheet of paper rather than a folded section and it offered the fastest method for sewing the book.

This choice of sewing style made by the original binder was the cause of many of the problems the book now presented. The thick paper used for the prints was restrained by the sewing going through the page and the pages were too stiff to lay flat and articulate properly when the book was opened. This resulted in stress being placed on the pages, causing the paper to tear around the sewing holes and pages to become damaged and loose.

The pages, comprised of single sheets, had been oversewn, and the stitches had torn at the pages

 Furthermore, the style of binding (case bound) combined with the poor quality materials had resulted in a very weak binding with little strength at the point where the boards attached to the book and both boards had torn away and were completely detached.

 Treatment

After washing and deacidifying (treatment of acid present in the paper with an alkaline chemical) each print was adhered at the spine edge to a sheet of thin acid free paper which was then folded around the face of the print to form a folded sheet with a central crease which could be sewn through. These thin sections were sewn together using 5 linen tapes as support which would then be attached to the boards and act as a hinge.

The freshley sewn pages ready for the binding to be reattached

Once sewn, the original boards were reattached by pasting the ends of the linen tapes down underneath the original pastedown, thereby obscuring the new additions to the binding structure. New book cloth was required to replace the partial loss of the original and the bridge the gap created by the increased thickness of the volume.

The fresh linen tapes attached to the back board to act as a hinge

 

The linen tapes hidden underneath the original pastedown at the back of the book

The conservation work has been carried out without replacing any of the original material or drastically altering the appearance or mechanics of the structure, and following treatment the book is now strong enough to be handled by researchers, without the risk of damage to the binding or the prints inside.

The newly conserved Essex Illustrated, ready and waiting for a new generation of readers

You can see Essex Illustrated for yourself by ordering it in the Searchroom, using the reference LIB/REF 2.

A summer holiday on Essex’s ‘Sunshine Coast’

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Where are you planning your summer holiday this year? Essex is possibly not the first place you would think of, but in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Essex’s ‘Sunshine Coast’ was one of the destinations of choice for the discerning British holiday maker.

The historians of the Victoria County History of Essex have been hard at work over the last few years researching the pasts of Clacton, Walton and Frinton, and their research has now been published as volume 11 in the Victoria County History of Essex series.

I/Mb 387/1/4 Print of Walton-on-the-Naze as a seaside village, 1829, just as it was starting to be developed a seaside resort

From the 1820s, Walton and later Clacton and Frinton were promoted as high-class residential and holiday resorts. After a slow start, hampered by poor communications and low demand, growth was stimulated by steam ship companies which landed visitors on newly built piers in Walton and Clacton and by the railways that reached Walton in 1867, Clacton in 1882 and Frinton in 1888.

I/Mb 387/1/13 Photograph showing new resort bulidings at Walton-on-the-Naze constructed c.1860, juxtaposed with the surrounding rural landscape with cows grazing on the cliff tops. Photograph by T. E. Freshwater

 

I/Mp 86/1/3 Clacton Pier – a key element in the growth of Clactonas a seaside resort, since it enabled steamship to bring visitors to the town

However, the working-class excursionists newly attracted to Clacton, and to a lesser extent Walton, then irrevocably changed the social tone of both resorts. By the 1920s and 1930s Clacton had become a highly commercialized holiday destination and its pier’s funfair-style facilities rivalled those of any other British resort.

   I/Mb 86/1/29 Postcard of the bandstand, Clacton-on-Sea, c.1910

Nearby Jaywick was established as a cheap and cheerful plotland development and Butlins opened its popular Clacton holiday camp in 1938. While Walton remained popular with families, Frinton continued as a ‘select’ resort, with building development and commerce strictly controlled to protect its exclusive character. 

After 1945 camping and caravanning increased in popularity, but from the later 1960s the growth of overseas holidays led to a steep decline in the domestic tourism economy. The coast remained popular for retirement and subsequent diversification has led to large dormitory-style housing developments, light industry and shopping centres.

The volume which tells this story is part of a grand tradition: the distinctive big red volumes of the Victoria County Histories have graced the shelves of archives and libraries across England since 1900. Founded in 1899 and dedicated to QueenVictoria, the Histories aim to produce ‘an encyclopaedic record of England’s places and people from earliest times to the present day’. The Histories are still being written by historians working in counties right acrossEngland, and the Essex Record Office is home to the Essex VCH Trust.

Volumes of the Victoria County of History in the ERO Searchroom

Volume 11 of the Victoria County History of Essex, Clacton, Walton and Frinton: North-East Essex Seaside Resorts, will be available in the ERO Searchroom shortly, and can be ordered from Boydell & Brewer Ltd here.

Conservation Surgeries

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Do you have family photographs stashed away in a shoebox in the attic? Or perhaps letters, diaries, war records or newspaper cuttings relating to your ancestors?

These documents and pictures help to tell your family’s story, and are irreplaceable. Many things, however, can threaten their survival. 

Old photographs, diaries, letters and other documents provide direct windows into your family’s past

Quite apart from the risks of loss and wear and tear, there are the invisible threats that storage in envelopes, boxes and albums can bring. Over time, acid contained within ordinary paper and cardboard will eat away at the documents stored inside.

 The yellowing at the edges of the pages of this self-adhesive album show where acid contained within the paper is seeping out

 This wedding photograph from 1945 has had sellotape applied to it – one of the worst things you can do to an historic photograph or document!

Stored and cared for properly, however, documents like this can last for generations.

To help you keep your documents and photoraphs in the best condition possible the ERO is hosting two Conservation Surgeries. Come along to these free drop-in sessions and bring your documents for expert advice from our Senior Conservator on how best to care for your documents and photographs.

 

Friday 22 June 2012       10.00am-12.00noon & 1.00pm-4.00pm

At the Saffron Walden Archive Access Point, Saffron Walden Library, King Street, SaffronWalden,CB10 1ES

Thursday 28 June       10.00am-12.30pm & 1.30pm-4.00pm

At the Essex Record Office, Wharf Road, Chelmsford, CM2 6YT

 

The Robinson photograph and postcard collection

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Archivist Allyson Lewis writes about working with the Robinson photograph and postcard collection

This collection consisting of 112 boxes of photograph and postcard albums and slides was compiled by Geoffrey A. Robinson of Thundersley, Essex.  A keen photographer he also collected postcards, chiefly of places in Essex but also all over the country.

One of the 112 boxes of photographs, postcards and prints in the Robinson collection

 

Just a few of the albums that make up the extensive collection

Mr Robinson had a clear plan when taking his photographs of places in Essex.  He would start with the parish church and take exterior views, then move inside, including any memorials or noteworthy architectural features.  He would then take the churchyard including inscriptions on larger memorials.  Then he would tour the village taking photographs of old buildings, public houses, the school, and any other religious buildings e.g. chapels. He was most active during the 1960s and 1970s and his photographs provide a wonderful window back in time to the quiet lanes of Essex with no cars in sight.

A few of Mr Robinson's photographs of the church at Tilbury-juxta-Clare

One of the more unusual postcards - holes punched in the front of the card allow light to shine through a coloured backing in this night time seaside scene

He put all his photographs and postcards into albums, initially using photograph corners on paper pages but later using the dreaded self-adhesive lift-and-stick plastic pages. These are a particular problem as the adhesive remains sticky and holds the image so firmly to the page that it cannot be removed without damage.  Fortunately, for most of the albums in the Robinson collection the adhesive has dried so much that the photographs and postcards can be removed easily.

Many of the photographs and prints are stuck into damaging self-adhesive albums, and are sometimes very difficult to remove

The images are being been re-stored in inert melinex pockets which will ensure their preservation for years to come.

Postcards and photographs safely re-stored in acid free melinex pockets

Postcards relating to other counties have been sent to the relevant offices (about 40 at the last count!).

One of the mysteries of the collection is the correspondence with a Miss Raverty. The author of the postcards seems to have written to her frequently, and would spread individual messages across several postcards, which were then numbered. We have tried to put the sequences back together, but cannot make much sense of them as yet!

Some of the postcards written to the mysterious Miss Raverty, each containing a fragment of a message

 

A postcard written to Miss Raverty on 18 November 1902 with a fragment of a message - 'Alfie's place is within thirty yards of this gate of the palace, so he has an excellent view of all the processions & whatever.'

The Robinson photograph and postcard collection is catalogued as Accession A7792 – D/DU 1464

Collections highlight: Southend in historic images

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For our second collections post, we thought we would share some highlights from our extensive image collection.

One of our blog’s header images is a picture of Southend-on-Sea, which is probably one of the most photographed places in the county, which given its status as a major Victorian and Edwardian seaside resort is no surprise.

Situated on the mouth of the Thames estuary, Southend first became a resort during the eighteenth century, and tourists have been attracted ever since by its miles of beaches, and later by the longest leisure pier in the world. With its proximity to London and a good rail link, Southend was one of the most popular places for Victorian Londoners to escape to for some sea air. Its popularity declined from the 1960s, however, with the advent of cheap air travel drawing increasing numbers of people abroad for their holidays.

If you would like to find out more about Southend’s past, then you can join our Southend-on-Sea: Stepping Out walk on Friday 18th May, 2.00pm-3.30pm. The walk will trace the history of Southend, from fishing village to Georgian resort to Edwardian London’s playground. The walk costs £5 and advance booking is essential – please telephone 01245 244 620.

I/MB 321/1/32 Black and white print: Marine Parade, Southend J.T. Wood, 278 Strand, London Bound in volume, 'Views of Southend'

I/Mb 321/1/65 Southend from the sea, sailing barge in foreground

I/Mb 321/1/66 View of Pier from the beach, Southend, c.1900

I/Mb 321/1/56 London Tilbury and Southend Railway Poster. Day Excusions to Southend, 1911

I/Mb 321/1/58 Marine Parade, Southend-on-Sea, 1955

I/Mb 321/1/57 Boats at Marine Parade Beach, Southend-on-Sea. Dome of Kursaal in background, c.1955

Our digitisation programme means that many images can now be found on our online catalogue Seax – to search for a digitised image, simply select the ‘Images’ option before you begin your search.

Although many images have been digitised, they still represent a small proportion of our image collections. To search all of our records, simply select ‘Everything’ above the search box. For advice on searching for historic images, you can call us on 01245 244 644.

Work Experience in the Conservation Studio at ERO

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Hello readers!

My name is Jillian and I am currently studying on the Masters program in Paper Conservation at Camberwell College. In order to gain more experience and improve my technical skills, I have been undertaking work experience at the ERO, one day a week since July 2011.

Hard at work in the Conservation Studio

During this time I have undertaken a wide variety of projects, from repairing mould-damaged documents, badly damaged photographic material, and architectural drawings, to cleaning parchment and wax seals, and more recently carrying out a large scale map lining using the map wall.

Cleaning a seal

 The photographic project in particular was very interesting as my background is in photography. The photograph in question was torn into several pieces, had missing areas, and had areas of the gelatin emulsion that were folded back on themselves. Treatment for this object included humidification and flattening, stretch lining, infill repairs, gelatin consolidation, and finally housing.

The badly damaged photograph before conservation work

The photograph during the humidification process

The photograph after conservation work was completed

All of the projects I have undertaken so far have helped my technical ability and confidence grow immensely. I have also now experienced first hand specific techniques and treatments that I had previously read or heard about, but had not necessarily been able to carry out at University.

Work experience at the ERO has been, and continues to be, immensely useful and worthwhile, and ERO conservators Tony and Diane, continue to be fantastic in sharing their expertise, and providing advice and support.

If you are interested in finding out more about some of the projects and work I have undertaken, please feel free to have a look at my website.

http://www.jilliangregory.co.uk/