A customer recently asked a question to which the only answer was ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know.’
It does sometimes happen! As an archivist – especially in a local authority-run record office, where collections are diverse and can be very large – you never know what you might be asked. Any aspect of any historical period in the last thousand years could crop up, so you can’t possibly hope to know everything. There’s an old adage in this business which says that archivists know ‘a little about a lot’, whereas historians, who tend to immerse themselves in one particular period or subject, know ‘a lot about a little’. It’s certainly true.When you’re faced with an archival challenge, you learn to follow your initial response with a bit of educated guesswork based on what you do know, and we’re lucky that we have a great range of expertise and experience right across the staff to call on, when two (or three) heads are better than one.
The enquirer was wondering why there was such a huge discrepancy in the number of documents in the Winchester City archives for the second half of the 15th century, compared to the first. We got our thinking caps on and started looking at what might explain the apparent gap in the records. There are several possible things which could affect document survival rate. It may just be a simple matter of different standards of stewardship by the various clerks responsible for the records at the time. We know this has happened elsewhere with other large, complicated collections of records, where the content and quality can vary dramatically according to the energy and efficiency of the individual record-keepers. A similar thing has happened with some of our big landed estate collections: some families scrupulously filed every scrap of paper, whilst others took a more relaxed approach, and we shouldn’t forget that the second half of the 15th century was a time of huge political upheaval with the Wars of Roses, culminating in the death of Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth and the founding of the Tudor dynasty in 1485. We know from other periods in history that national events can have a catastrophic effect on record-keeping at local level too. There are references in the Winchester Dean and Chapter records to documents being deliberately damaged during the English Civil Wars in the 1640s. A copy of the catalogue of the Cathedral archives by John Chase, Chapter Clerk, made in the 17th century, includes an extract from Chase’s memoranda concerning the recovery of such documents, and refers to records being thrown in to the river and others being made into kites (DC/F6/1/1).
John Chase’s extract, courtesy of the Dean and Chapter of Winchester.
In Odiham, the effect of the war was seen at first-hand by Thomas Hooker, the parish clerk. You can hear the exasperation in his voice as he speaks directly to us, at the end of the baptism entries for 1652 (47M81/PR1):
‘Thear will com a time that men will com to search in this Booke for the names of thear children and in Regard that thay cannot find Theare names hear writen let them not blame me for it but looke upon theare selves for since the wars began in this land [t]heare have been maney that have been baptised that I never knew of nether had I aney notes of them never the lese I know that the blame will be laid upon me.’
Not all loss or damage is quite so dramatic or wilful. Often it’s simply to do with the passage of time and changes in physical storage. The Winchester City archives have moved house many times over the years: they were kept in the City coffers at least as early as the 16th century, then at the old Council House in the High Street, then at the top of the Westgate. Anything regarded as surplus to requirements when muniment chests were moved around could easily have been removed, recycled, or disposed of completely, to make room for something considered more pressing or important at the time. Prior to their move to the Record Office in 1975, they were stored at the Guildhall, where there was a huge fire in 1969. It gutted the west wing of the building, which included records and documents. Some of the records, the silver plate, mace and valuables were also badly affected by water damage. The event was reported in the local press as ‘the City Council’s biggest headache since the war’ and several firemen were injured, so it was obviously a major event.
The fire at Winchester Guildhall during a performance of ‘La Vie Parisienne’. Photos by Bob Sollars, 111M95W/D2/609-616.
The reason for archival sparsity is often a combination of all of the above … which is, of course, why we need proper record offices and trained staff to run them, as the archives are at risk without them! Looking at the catalogue for the archives stored across the board at the record office, from the medieval to the modern period, there are references to damage by mould, stains, vermin, insects, flooding, fire and bombs… When you think about what they’ve been through, and the risks they’ve faced, it’s amazing any have survived at all!
Documents damaged by rodents, woodworm and water.
All of this got me thinking about the fragility of archives in a more abstract sense. These days we tend to expect information to be instantly accessible and always available. Not so for archives. They are often difficult to find, hard to understand, and sometimes annoyingly incomplete. But maybe it’s just as well. It prevents us from taking them too much for granted – especially if, I’m ashamed to say, you work with them every day – and we’re often frustrated at what they don’t tell us, instead of being grateful for what they do. One of the things which got me into archives many years ago – that made me aware there even was such a thing – was reading George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four as a teenager. The hero of the novel works at the Ministry of Truth, re-writing newspapers to suit the interests of the government in power at the time, then destroying all previous editions. It’s a great book as it reminds us what a hopeless, miserable society it would be if we didn’t value and protect the written past. Not only would you not be able to look up all those dates and names and places for your family history charts, you wouldn’t be able to prove they – or even you yourself – existed at all! Think about it. No records equals no roots – and no rights. Published in 1949, the novel is also, incidentally, an incredibly prescient book in this age of fake news and ‘news’ websites which only tell us what we want to hear… Give it another read and you’ll see what I mean.
Winston Churchill said it long before anyone had ever thought of blogging or tweeting: ‘A nation that forgets its past has no future’ … and you can’t argue with that!
Adrienne Allen, Archivist
Hampshire Archives and Local Studies 