Friends of Wolverhampton Archives and Local Studies Newsletter

March 2014

Future Opening Hours

After all the consultation over recent weeks the new opening hours for the Archives have been confirmed as Tuesday 10am -4pm, Wednesday 10am – 7pm and Thursday 10am – 4pm. The new hours will start on Tuesday 1st April. As Jon mentions in his update, he has agreed to honour all existing room bookings for Saturdays which obviously includes the Friends’ meetings that are scheduled in our programme to July. At present we are unsure as to the situation for our meetings following July, we hope to have definite news on this in the next newsletter.

Programme News We have had excellent attendances for our first meetings of this year, that were entertained with a couple of fascinating talks . The schedule for the coming months is equally interesting so we are looking forward to more “full houses”. Don’t forget, everyone that comes to our meetings counts towards the Archives visitor numbers.

The Local History Symposium at Bantock House delivered the usual interesting variety of subjects and again had a packed house. This is a great showcase for our local history and the City Archives. The winner of the £300 bursary has just been announced as Kate Hartland-Westwood for her talk on Wolverhampton’s little-known coffee mill manufacturing industry. The Friends provided refreshments and yet again surpassed last years’ takings with more than £160 raised. Many thanks to all those that helped on the day.

Forthcoming meetings

22nd March We are pleased to have Ned Williams speaking on “Church and Chapel in Wolverhampton”. 26th April Billy Howe returns to entertain us on “Early Printing in Wolverhampton” 17th May Samantha Badger with “Food for thought – poaching, theft and allotment use in the Black Country” 21st June Dave Mills and Martin Rispin speaking on “ Road School – past life and new use”

Don’t forget that guests of Friends are always welcome at our meetings at a charge of £2 per head. If they like what they see they are of course most welcome to join.

Other events Wednesday evening local history talks at the Archives continue with the following.

12th March “Running with Wolves” with local Paralympian Mark Farnell who shares the story of his career. 9th April “Hidden Histories” with Claire Darke and Dr Paul Darke. The first female doctors in Wolverhampton, their patients and institutions. They will also reveal the results of two local projects, part of the Our Stories programme. 14th May “Birmingham and the Black Country” with Chris Upton. Tales of the industrial .

All these talks are from 5pm – 6pm at the Archives, and are well attended so it pays to get there early.

Visit to Birmingham Archives

We have arranged a visit for members to the new Birmingham Library for a tour of the Archives and Local Studies area on the 4th floor. The tour will be on Wednesday 9th April starting at 2pm. We suggest that members make their own way there and we will meet up on the 4th floor for 2pm. The tour will include the storage area that has a “low oxygen system” as part of the fire precautions. Any visitor to this area has to sign the enclosed form to declare that they have no health issues with entering a reduced oxygen area and that they do so at their own risk. If you wish to go on the tour you must sign this form and bring it with you on the day.

We do need to know numbers before the day, as numbers are limited so if you would like to go on the tour please contact Frank Lockley.

History Seekers

History seekers is a brand new history club for young people held at the Archives on Saturday mornings. Held on the first Saturday of the month for children aged 8 years and upwards, it offers the opportunity to hear amazing stories about local people and the city from the past using historical documents from the archives. The cost is just £3 per child and the club runs from 10.30am – 12pm.

Online Survey and Petition

You may want to complete this online survey for users of the Archives that has been organised by Luke Dady, a student at Wolverhampton University and volunteer at the Archives, http://tinyurl.com/nbwy46f

There is an online petition that is asking for the 1921 census to be made available online, some years before the official release date. If you agree with this suggestion, you can make you views known via http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/49199

Updates from the Archives

During the December closed fortnight we were able to catch up with a lot of ‘behind-the-scenes’ work and start off with other new ideas. Staff caught up with the news indexing of the Express & Star while Jon and Carrie in Conservation were flat-out to have all the material ready for the Beatties Exhibition, and made it in the nick of time. Alf has done sterling work creating an index of Church of England records for St. Michael & All Angels Tettenhall, Christchurch Tettenhall Wood and Holy Trinity Heath Town up to 1930. This index is available now in the search-room though as yet not online. Another year of Coroners Inquests was taken in for 2011-2012. While these files are not open to the public they are regularly consulted by law enforcement and legal professionals so it is important that they are catalogued and indexed right away.

Local history talks so far this year have included Ned Williams ‘Wolverhampton; a Railway Town’ many interesting facts, some wonderful illustrations and more than a few good tall stories along the way! In February we hosted Chicago University’s Samuel Brandt who gave a talk about Wolverhampton ring-road. Unbeknown to most residents of the city, Wolverhampton’s ring-road is cited internationally as a ‘classic’ of 1960’s ring-road design, as is our near neighbour’s in Coventry. There will be an extra Local History talk at 5pm on the 12th March by the highly successful and well respected Wolverhampton Paralympian Mark Farnell. I recommend being punctual for this one as his following suggests it will be standing-room only for late comers. This talk is in addition to those advertised in WAVE.

Future opening times have finally been confirmed as Tuesday 10-4, Wednesday 10-7 and Thursday 10-4. At present it is my intention to honour all pre-existing Saturday room bookings.

Finally an appeal for material for the First World War blog, this is your opportunity to show-case your research, all submissions very welcome please. And this should be the last you hear from me as service manager as Heidi McIntosh returns full-time from maternity leave on March 3rd. Thank-you all, it’s been a blast. Jon Everall, Conservator

After five months of sorting, box listing and keyboard tapping I can finally say that the entire Beatties collection has been put to bed and placed on to our on-line catalogue at www.blackcountryhistory.org. The exhibition of a small selection of catalogued items is now up and running in the Rococo Room and will be there until 29 March this year. As well as the Beattie Bear raffle there is also the chance to become part of local history by recording your memories of Beatties (good or bad) into a Memories Book which will be added to the collection when the exhibition is over. The winner and runners up of the Beattie Bear raffle will be presented with their prizes and a cheque for the amount raised from the raffle will be presented to a representative from Compton Hospice in April. So there’s still time to purchase that winning raffle ticket!

During our last closed fortnight I personally managed to scan and catalogue 171 photographs of Guy Motors, Red Cross Street Schools and West Park Infant & Junior School. They are now accessible via the above website. Other interesting acquisitions that have come my way have included material for the Wolverhampton Municipal Grammar School, Penn Players Amateur Dramatic Society and Bilston College of Further Education.

Updates from the Archives (contd)

Finally, a quick word about one of the most prestigious events in the Archives calendar. I am of course referring to our 8th Local History Symposium which was held on Saturday 22 February at The Tractor Shed, Bantock House, Wolverhampton. As usual, we were treated to a varied and very interesting programme of presentations on various aspects of local history including Captain Sydney John Sankey, the origins of Wolverhampton Wanderers Football Club and the story of Wolverhampton coffee mill makers. On behalf of Tony Stamp, Local Studies Librarian who was the main organiser of the event, thanks go to our colleagues at Bantock House for providing the venue and food, the Friends for the tea and coffee refreshments and of course Archives colleagues for their help throughout the day.

As with Jon, this will also be my last newsletter as Cataloguing Archivist for Wolverhampton Archives as my secondment ends in March. I have thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it so if anyone out there needs an archivist, they know where to find me! Karen Davies, Cataloguing Archivist

Document Storage Items for sale

There have been a few price increases on the items that we are stocking, a new price list is shown below. We are also changing the way that we sell them. Order forms will be available at the Archives reception that will be passed on to Jackie Harrison will now be processing sales. We are now also offering a discount of 15% to members. The “polypockets” are specialist products made from inert clear polypropylene and are safe and suitable for long-term storage. Standard PVC sleeves can, over time, suffer from leaching of plasticiser that can lift print off pages and ruin your valuable documents.

Certificate polypocket 70p Accommodates long certificates as well as modern A4 size. A3 polypocket 80p Ideal for storing and protecting larger documents. A5 polypocket 30p Suitable for storing leaflets/photographs etc. A4 polypocket 60p Suitable for all manner of documents, available as top or side opening Certificate Binder (includes 5 polypockets) £15.60 Holds up to 40 pockets thus storing up to eighty certificates when placed back to back, two per pocket. A4 Binder £14.50 Holds up to 50 pockets, with padded cover. Binder Divider Set £4.50 A set of 5 tabbed dividers to enable separation of pockets in the binder. Card Insert 40p Fits inside certificate sleeve separating two certificates, also suitable for printing.

Susan Price

Our staff profile is one of the most important members of staff, Susan Price, one of the receptionists.

I was born in in 1960 as Susan Wagstaff and have lived there ever since. The house I was born into was in Darkhouse Lane, Coseley right beside Darkhouse Baptist Church. It was a basic two-up two-down terraced house which had an outside toilet and wash-house. There were about eight houses in an L-shaped terrace enclosing a back yard where all the children would play together. Although the living conditions were quite basic, there was a real community feel about the place with all residents knowing and helping each other. We moved from here when a compulsory purchase was made by the Council, into a three bedroomed house about 200 yards away. I was educated firstly at Christ Church Infants and Junior School and then The Coseley School. When at secondary school I played for the netball team, being then selected to play for the Dudley Schools’ team. I also enjoyed athletics, winning high jump, long jump, 100 metres and 200 metres at one sports day. On leaving secondary school, I was given an award for having the best examination results for my year.

I then did a year long secretarial and accountancy course at . On completion of this I was employed as an office junior in the secretarial section of the Finance Department of Wolverhampton Borough Council. For the first year, this was located in the old Town Hall in North Street. I worked there for seven years by which time I was secretary to the three Assistant Directors of Finance.

I met my husband David in 1981 and we married in 1983. We have two daughters, Alison and Rachael. I was a full-time mother until my return to work as a Visitor Assistant at the Visitor Information Centre in Queen Square, Wolverhampton. In 2009 I also started work here on reception at the Archives. I worked in both posts until I was made redundant from my position at the VIC upon its closure. I spend my spare time mainly with my family. We enjoy eating out, going to the pub together and also to rock concerts (David has given the girls a good education!). We take part in a weekly pub quiz together, our team comprising David and myself, Alison and Rachael and their husbands. Alison christened our team ‘The Craggy Island Crusaders’ in homage to her favourite comedy series ‘Father Ted’! We also holiday together once every year, usually a trip to St Ives, a place I have grown to think of as a second home, my first visit being at the age of 18 months.

Bilston Historic Film

The Friends have recently donated £150 that will be used to part fund the digitisation of some historic film to DVD format. The film dates from around 1910 and is believed to be of street scenes of Bilston. It came to light through the family of the local cinema entrepreneur Thomas Wood who deposited it with the Media Archive for Central England (MACE) for safe storage. Once the transfer to DVD has been done the Archives will have a copy and we will arrange a showing at a future meeting.

Wolverhampton Old Bank

While browsing through the Express & Star of August 1914 for the Wolverhampton’s War project I came across a reference to Wolverhampton Old Bank. A little more research has led to the following. Thomas Gibbons the elder, John Davies and Thomas Gibbons the younger were in partnership as bankers from the 1st October 1808 to 10th October 1811 under the name of “The Wolverhampton Old Bank” At this latter date the partnership was dissolved and a new one formed between Thomas Gibbons the elder, Thomas Gibbons junior, John Gibbons and Benjamin Gibbons junior, this being announced in the London Gazette of 12th November 1811. This partnership continued in business until Thomas the elder died in June 1813, the sons carrying on the business after this. The £1 note below (held in the Archives) was issued on 28th August 1815 and is signed by John Gibbons.

The bank only survived a short time after this with the partners being declared bankrupt in March 1816. The reasons behind the bankruptcy are not known. More references to the bank’s history may be found in trade directories for the town. A directory of 1783 lists a “Gibbons & Timmins” , bankers in Dudley Street. In 1805-07 the bank is called Gibbons & Co. still in Dudley Street and is one of three banks listed. It would be interesting to hear from any member that has more information about the ban.

If you would like to contribute to the Friends newsletter in any way please contact Frank Lockley on 01902 725520 or email [email protected]

Committee Contact Details

Nigel Brown, Chairman & Programme Secretary Tel: 07795 204159, email: [email protected]

Ann Eales, Vice Chair & Treasurer Tel: 01902 563281, email: [email protected]

Frank Lockley, Secretary & Newsletter Tel: 01902 725520, email: [email protected]

Betty McCann, Membership Secretary Tel: 01902 597005, email: [email protected]