FLINTSHIRE RECORD OFFICE

ANNUAL REPORT

2010/11

Flintshire Record Office Annual Report 2010/1

FLINTSHIRE RECORD OFFICE

ANNUAL REPORT

2010/1

Contents:

List of staff p.2

Introduction p.3

User Statistics p.4

Outreach p.5

Conservation p.6

ICT p.7

Activities Behind the Scenes p.8

Staff Changes p.9

Staff Training p.9

Voluntary work p.10

External links p.10

Appendix A - list of accessions p.11

Appendix B - results of TNA self-assessment 2010 p.15

Front cover illustration: Mark Allen and Sarah Money repairing an enclosure map, working on the wall board in the conservation studio.

Flintshire Record Office The Old Rectory CH5 3NR Tel.: 01244 532364 E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.flintshire.gov.uk/archives

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Staff

Principal Archivist: Claire Harrington

Senior Archivist: Steve Davies

Archivists: Angela Moore Liz Newman

Archive Assistants: Sue Copp Steph Hines Karen McNiven Sue Millward James Wasiuk

Conservator: Mark Allen

Conservation Assistant: Sarah Money (from 5 July 2010)

Admin Officer: Helen Waite

Modern trainee: Leona Jones

Staff and volunteers at Angela Moore’s retirement lunch

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Introduction

It’s been an eventful year at the Record Office. Along with many other parts of the Council, and local authorities all over the country, we have had to deal with a cut in our budget. It has been achieved by losing a vacant post and all other staff accepting a cut in hours and in pay. The result of this has been a reduction in opening hours but the service will continue in all areas with the high standards it has always had.

This is the second change to our opening hours in the last year. It was in October 2010 that, following consultation of both users and non-users, we began a pilot period of opening on the second Saturday of each month. This is to run for one year, at which point it will be evaluated and a decision made whether to continue it.

The latest national visitor survey was conducted in February and March 2011, too late for the results to be available here but very timely in that it will create a snapshot of usage and user opinion just before the budget cut took effect.

As usual, we took part in the National Archives self-assessment process this year. The results can be seen in Appendix B. Most noticeable is our dramatic improvement in the “access” section, from 44.5% in 2008 to 65.5% this year. It is still our weak section but the gap has narrowed a lot.

We are grateful to CyMAL for a variety of support through grant funding this year. The North-East enclosure award project continued with digitisation undertaken by the National Library of Wales; a new conservation project was started, repairing three years’ worth of quarter-sessions rolls; a new computer with large screen and A3 scanner was purchased for our digitisation work.

The on-line education project, which has been in the planning stage for some time, took a great leap forward in May with the arrival of Anna Logan from the University of on a work-experience placement. She spent a month working on the early development of this resource, which has received a further boost from the partnership of the National Grid for Learning. We anticipate that it will be a valuable and inspiring resource for teachers both locally and further afield.

Our newsletter, The Hourglass , is now in its fourth year and continues to be great organ of communication for us, both on paper and on-line.

Lastly, but by no means least, we were very pleased to welcome Alun Ffred Jones, Welsh Assembly Minister for Heritage, for a brief visit in May.

Claire Harrington

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User Statistics

Archive Service 2010/1 2009/10 2008/9 2007/8 2006/7 2005/6 Searchroom visits 2,584 2,890 2,906 2,650 2,630 2,461 Postal enquiries 166 199 212 223 250 295 Telephone and fax 501 573 779 614 583 602 enquiries E-mail enquiries 695 641 639 596 652 615 Documents 6,089 5,816 6,033 6,007 6,449 6,793 consulted Photocopies sold 5,510 4,460 6,139 7,643 6,684 6,492 Photographs sold 370 536 290 332 374 200

Origin of 2010/1 2009/10 2008/9 2007/8 2006/7 2005/6 searchers Flintshire 1,419 1,509 1,487 1,261 1,321 1,345 Rest of Wales 342 462 344 411 413 357 Rest of UK 767 843 1,052 948 854 699 Overseas 56 76 23 30 42 60

Classification of 2010/1 2009/10 2008/9 2007/8 2006/7 2005/6 searchers Education & 448 438 363 342 236 207 publication Genealogy 1,489 1,705 1,877 1,648 1,673 1,435 Local history 551 668 588 579 625 684 History of House 51 37 40 36 40 51 Official & legal 45 42 38 45 56 84

Visiting Japanese historians examining mining records Photo: Hideo Nakazawa

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Outreach

This year the Record Office has hosted a number of visits from groups, including local history groups from Bodfari and , the staff of the Shropshire Archives and a group of Japanese historians with an interest in the history of coal mining in the area.

The Record Office continues to provide small exhibitions for the foyer of County Hall and in May we hosted an exhibition illustrating the work of the Victorian Society. Also in May we were pleased to welcome Alun Ffred Jones, Welsh Assembly Minister for Heritage, to the Record Office. We were able to show him the new search-room and the conservation studio, where he saw our Assembly-funded conservation project in progress.

We have also gone out to tell people about the Record Office. Staff once again manned a stall at the Llangollen Local History Fair and created a lot of interest. Claire Harrington gave talks about our work to groups at Buckley and Holywell Libraries, and a talk on “The Role of the Record Office in Local History” at Castell Alun School in Hope as part of the Flintshire Heritage series of lectures. Our conservator Mark Allen contributed to an event in Aberystwyth run by the Preservation Advisory Centre.

At the beginning of 2011 we were approached by the BBC’s Who Do You Think You Are? magazine and an article about the ‘County of Flint War Memorial’, our card index of Flintshire men who fought in the First World War, appeared in the April edition (which actually comes out in March). It has resulted in a flurry of interest from all over the world in this wonderful and, we believe, unique index.

Claire Harrington with the group from Flint Mountain

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Conservation

It has been an exceptionally busy year for the conservation studio. Work on the quarter-sessions project has been successfully completed with the aid of a CyMAL grant. The document rolls from three years, 1793-1795, were conserved by project assistant Sarah Money. This has involved cleaning, washing, de-acidification and repair with Japanese tissue. A new development has been the treating of writing in iron gall ink with a phytate solution to prevent further ink corrosion. This has resulted in many conservators from across the UK visiting the studio to see how the new treatment is accomplished. A short article was published in ARC magazine to explain the innovative gelatine repair technique. The individual sheets from the rolls have also been digitised to enable wider access in the future.

Many of the Record Office’s volumes have been protected from light, dust and abrasion by the in-house construction of phase boxes with the help of a willing band of volunteers. This has been a new venture for the studio and has worked well for us whilst also providing an opportunity for people to experience the thrill of conservation work.

Congratulations are due to our conservator, Mark Allen, who has qualified to teach parchment repair on the Archives & Records Association’s conservation course. His first student will arrive in June.

A quarter sessions roll before …

… and after conservation

Conservation work 2010/1 2009/10 2008/9 2007/8 2006/7 2005/6 Exhibition items 66 40 49 0 0 46 Paper documents 1,024 68 139 351 1103 1056 Parchment 32 307 217 7 5 1 documents Maps & plans 109 58 103 134 260 24 Manilla & hard 35 20 28 16 48 22 cover bindings Folders, portfolios 205 53 118 102 207 46 & OS map guards Photographs 53 29 4 2 109 20

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ICT

With increasing demand for digital images and the wonderful work our volunteers are doing, pressure has been increasing on the equipment we use for digitisation. We are pleased to be able to report that this has been eased this year by the success of a CyMAL grant application for an additional PC and scanner.

An exciting new project this year is a joint venture with the National Grid for Learning Wales to create an on-line educational resource for schools, using items from our collections to give teachers local examples of primary source material to illustrate themes in the History national curriculum. It involves a number of students on work placements as well as Record-Office staff researching and selecting suitable documents. There is nothing on-line yet but a lot of preparation work has been completed and we are hoping to have something to show for it in the autumn.

Visits to website

2010/1 2009/10 2008/9 2007/8 April 360 197 467 335 May 421 220 407 421 June 460 159 405 332 July 571 367 403 425 August 644 300 128 363 September 520 242 171 370 October 414 286 185 458 November 477 245 144 444 December 274 167 111 270 January 461 677 190 454 February 562 592 182 494 March 511 495 202 597 Total for year 5,675 3,947 2,995 4,933

Sue Copp and Sue Millward, with student Anna Logan, at an inset day for History teachers, promoting the on-line educational resource.

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Activities Behind the Scenes

As usual, the Record Office closed for a week just before Christmas in order to catch up with a number of tasks that sometimes fall behind in the busyness of running the search-room. It was a very productive week when, amongst other things: 1. 65 of the 134 outstanding boxes from Records Management were appraised for permanent preservation or destruction; 2. Conservation staff worked on packaging for a number of items: • Wrapping or rewrapping 97 rolled documents, chiefly maps; • Reboxing 18 boxes-worth of material, chiefly quarter-sessions records; • photographs received from Dyserth Field Club, were removed from outsize, non-archival quality albums, listing the order and captions, and transferred to archival quality packaging; 3. A stock-take was begun, going through every strong-room, shelf by shelf, checking and correcting the location list; 4. Substantial progress was made on the education project. The first section (on jobs and changes in industry during the 18th and 19th centuries) was completed and approved by NGfL and other themes were begun - 'homes', 'migration', 'medicine' and 'food'; 5. The inventory of furniture and equipment received its annual update.

Wrapped maps in the strong-room

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Staff

Changes

Conservation Assistant Sarah Money returned this year for another CyMAL- funded conservation project, this time working on the repair and repackaging of three-years-worth of quarter-sessions rolls from the 1790s. The project began in July 2010 and will finish early in April 2011. We’ll be very sorry to see her go and wish her the very best for a future in conservation work.

At the end of March 2011 Angela Moore took a well deserved retirement after working with great energy in both her roles at the Record Office over eight years, initially as archive assistant then from 2007 as archivist. She will be much missed by staff and search-room users alike, for her patience and her many and wide-ranging skills, from to a formidable understanding of computers.

Training

Congratulations to Steph Hines, who has completed the Aberystwyth University archive training course by distance learning and is now a qualified archivist. James Wasiuk is making good progress on the same course.

The Record Office is not a dangerous place either to work or to visit as a user, nevertheless we try to make sure we’re well prepared in case of accident or emergency by having a goodly number of first-aiders amongst the staff. This year James Wasiuk attended a four-day course and passed the exam at the end of it to become a qualified first-aider. Steve Davies updated his first-aid qualification and Claire Harrington and Steph Hines each attended a half-day session to refresh their skills. All the first-aiders attend monthly meetings to quiz each other and keep their knowledge fresh.

Leona Jones and Helen Waite both spent a day at the Denbighshire Record Office on a “Basic Archive Skills” course.

Mark Allen and Claire Harrington attended the last ever Society of Archivists conference in in September, on the theme “We Are What We Keep”, examining how the choice is made of what to preserve and what to reject. The Society has now merged with a number of other archival bodies to become the Archives & Records Association.

Claire Harrington attended the Public Services Quality Group annual forum in November at The National Archives.

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Voluntary Work

Voluntary work continues to play an important part in the life of the Record Office. Our faithful crew of photo scanners continue their work scanning images from our photographic collection and our data-entry volunteers have made great progress preparing our catalogues for entry onto the CALM computer system.

For the first time this year we have welcomed a student from the University of Chester in a work placement as part of her degree course. Anna Logan spent a month with us working on the education project described in the IT section of this report and took it a major step forward. We hope Anna will be the first of many.

The recent donation of the wonderful photographic archive of Airbus has led to regular visits from photographer Mark Chaloner and colleague Sue Cutts to apply their expertise in cataloguing the collection. We are especially grateful for this as many of the images require specialist knowledge to describe.

Graduate students are still keen to enter the archive profession and we do our best to assist by providing pre-course work experience. This year we welcomed Kate Anderson for a return visit and, for the first time, Sarah Braisdell, Chris Edwards and Alex Thew.

Mark has also had some willing helpers in the conservation studio: Paul Broadbent, Hannah Strapp and Alex Thew.

External Links

Our staff continue to take an interest in local and national professional issues. Steve Davies chairs the Welsh region of the newly formed Archives & Records Association, Liz Newman during the year gave up her role as Communications Officer for the Association’s registration scheme but is now acting as mentor to a registration candidate. Mark Allen is Conservation Editor of its newsletter, Training Officer and serves on the Conference Committee.

Claire Harrington, as Principal Archivist, attends meetings of the Welsh County Archivists’ Group, Friends of the Archives and Flintshire Historical Society. During the past year she has also taken on the Vice- Chairmanship of the Archives & Records Council Wales.

Friends of the Clwyd Archives We continue to have a cordial and mutually beneficial relationship with our Friends organisation. We have contributed our usual news briefings to the journal Clwyd Historian and in June hosted a Friends visit with the topic “Country House & Estate Records”.

The Friends have again given us much appreciated financial support, with another substantial contribution to the cost of our enclosure-award project.

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Appendix A

Accessions 2010/1

Flintshire County Council 4373 Declaration of office of High Sheriff, 2010 4377 FCC year book, c.1970 4381 Deeds registers, 1935-1980 4436 Arts Development programmes, videos &c.,1970s-2009

Other Local Authorities 4374 Publications by Delyn Borough Council, 1976-1996 4381 Deeds registers, 1935-1980 4474 Clwyd Youth Theatre records, 1970s-1990

Schools 4482 Records of County School, Rhyl, 1852-1938 4484 Broughton Infants’ School log book, 1975-1990

Central Government 4371,4421 Records of Valley site, , 1940-1979 4378 Inclosure Acts, and Flint & , 1808/9

Businesses 4394 Copies of items re Carriage & Wagon Co., 2000s 4418 Institute of Industrial Management Chester/Clwyd Branch records, 1980s 4447 Clay Colliery Co.Ltd papers re application for open cast coal extraction at , 1990-1994 4448 Caxton Printing Co., Mold, records, 1920-1986 4453, 4461 Airbus photographic collection, 1940s-2010 4456 Shotton Steelworks, photograph album, 1940s, 1950s

Property records 4382 Plans of Glan yr Afon House, Mold, n.d. 4438 Bond re rental of The Vicarage House, Holywell, 1635 4441 Deeds & other records re business site in , 1860s-2000 4442 Copy draft lease of coal mines at Broncoed Isa, Mold, c.1825

Church in Wales 4400 Church of the Holy Spirit, , records, 1938-2004 4407 Church of St John the Baptist, Pentrobin, banns register, 1907- 1988 4408 Church of St Francis, , records, 1913-2003 4411 Church of St Ethelwold, Shotton, records, 1898-2007 4431 Parish Church records, 1872 4434 All Saints & Emmanuel churches, Bistre, records, 1926-2004 4473,4491 Hawarden parish records, 1858-2000s 4487 Photograph album of Mold Parish Church flower festival, 1990 4505 Mold Parish Church, records, 1951-2009

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Appendix A

Accessions 2009/10 (contd)

Nonconformist churches 4402 Llyn y Pandy Presbyterian Church, copy baptisms, 1827-1970 4405 URC, & Greenfield, records, 1990-2008 4444 Bibles from Moriah Chapel, Pen y Maes, Holywell, 1860s 4479 Capel yr Rhos, , copy marriage register, 1943-1970 4481 Mynydd Seion Methodist Chapel, Dyserth, records, 1893-1988

Clubs/Societies 4376 Five Villages Chronicle , newspaper and accounts, 1987-2009 4382 Merched y Wawr accounts, 1969-1999 4385 Llanferres Poultry Society records, 1948-1995 4392 Mold Golf Club records, 1932-2010 4396,4440 Hawarden Park Cricket Club records, 1903-2010 4399 & Moor Village Hall Association records, 1970-1992 4413 Sir Watkin Wynne Lodge of Freemasons, records, 2003-2009 4419 Caerwys Carnival records, 1977-1996 4435,4457 Hall WI records, 2008/9 4440 Flintshire County Cricket Club score books, 1998-2010 4449 Rotary Club of Mold records, 1937-2007 4462 1st Connah’s Quay Scouts, centenary publication records, 2007 4499 Thomas Pennant Society, records, c.1998-2010 4501 Cantorion Glan Alun records, 1983-2000

Personal Papers 4372,4389, Klaus Armstrong-Braun, misc. papers, 1984-2011 4393,4398,4404,4423,4426,4433,4439,4472,4490 4379 Scrapbook re campaign against widening of A494, 1980s-2009 4380 Gwysaney Estate and Davies-Cooke family records, 20thC 4384 Price family Bible, 1872-1950 4386,4417 Papers of Oscar Morris, Rhyl Town Clerk, 19 th & 20 th C 4387 Notes from lectures by William Wyn Woodhouse of Llansannan, 1980s 4391 Sheet music by, and papers re life of, W.P. Hartwell Jones, composer, 1950s-1970 4403 Typescript of autobiographical novel, c.2004 4406 Death cert. of Jessie Seedman, d. Meadowslea Hospital 1947 4410 Gladstone family correspondence, 1840-1842 4414 Items re W.E. Gladstone, 19 th & 20 th C 4424 Various papers of Roger Whitley, diarist, 1997-2002 4428 List of research papers of J.E. Messham, local historian, 2010 4445 Various papers re awards to surviving land girls, 1995-2010 4446 Papers of Thomas family of Flint, c.1900-1946 4450 Photographs, scrapbooks and research papers of Gwyneth Kermode of Meliden, local historian, 1880-1960s 4459 Transcript memories, Margaret Perry of Queensferry, 1994-2010

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Appendix A

Accessions 2009/10 (contd)

Personal Papers (contd) 4464 Copy genealogical pages from Thomas family Bible, 1843-1983 4468 Personal records of John Hope Beech, band-leader of Rhyl and Prestatyn, c.1912-2002 4469 Misc. records of Pennant family of Tremeirchion, 1853-1980s 4470 Personal records of Olwen Richardson of Mold, c.1914-c.1943 4475 Employment records, apprentice fitter Colliery, 1960-1987 4478 Copy birth cert. of Geoffrey Morel-de-Ville, b. Hawarden 1906 4480 Records of Jim Bentley, Buckley artist & historian, 1950s-2004 4488 Scrapbook re Gladstone 200 th anniversary celebrations, 2009 4494 DVD oral history interview, Mrs Alice Thomas, b.1916, scullery maid at Hawarden Castle, 1930s, with transcript and notes 4496 Copy papers of Walter Bartel, refugee from Nazi Germany, d. Hawarden 1939

Printed items 4375 Brochure re North Clwyd Animal Rescue, 2010 4388 Election leaflets, general election May 2010 4390 Election leaflets, county council elections, May 2008 4395 Various printed items of local interest, 1927-1982 4409 "The Cementation Process at Point of Ayr Colliery", 1930s 4415 Sale particulars, Glan yr Afon House, Mold, 2007 4416 Various antiquarian books, 14 th -19 th C 4425 Print of Bromfield Hall, Mold, ?1877 4427 Aerial photograph of Mountain, 1980s 4429 Sale particulars for 4 Cambrian Villas, Mold, 2010 4455 Photograph & programme of eisteddfodau, 1926, 1969 4458 Sale particulars, Hoseley House, Marford, c.2008 4465 Copy programme for opening of Talbot House & Chapel at Meadowslea Hospital, 1955 4471 Order of service at Pavilion, Mold, 2007 4476 Framed picture of W.E. Gladstone, 20thC 4483 Article on Holywell’s old vicarages, 2011 4485 Rhyl Coliseum poster, 1963 4486 Report of Tribunal of Inquiry into abuse of children in care in Gwynedd & Clwyd since 1974, by Sir R. Waterhouse, 1999 4489 Funeral order of service for Vic Williams, local historian, 2011 4502 A Short History of the Royal Regiment of Wales (24 th /41 st Foot) , 1977 4503 Programme of Hawarden Singers’ concert, 1998

Electronic media 4430 CD of photographs showing moving of Daniel Owen statue 1979 4437 Transcripts of Flintshire chapel registers 1830s-2010 4443 Digital copies of audio tapes of Flintshire interest, 1957-1979

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Appendix A

Accessions 2009/10 (contd)

Electronic media (contd) 4454 Transcripts of Mold & nonconformist chapel registers, 1813-1900 4463 Electronic version of Village Hall historical frieze, 2007 4493 CD of photos of construction of Hawarden Bypass, 1982-1984 4497 Electronic copies of various items of local interest, 1875-1892 4500 CD of historic photographs of

Miscellaneous 4397 Various research papers &c. of local interest, 1978-1989 4401 Various items of Buckley local interest, 1871-1968 4412 Various maps re Flintshire, 1899-1915 4420 Typescript article on early coal mining in Flintshire, with CD copy, 2010 4422,4432, 4451,4495 Various misc. items of local interest, 18 th C-2010 4452 Glass slides of photographs of Flintshire interest, 19 th & 20 th C 4460 Photographs of local interest donated to Connah’s Quay Library by members of the public, 1895-1976 4466 Photocopies of various items of local interest, 1990s, 2000s 4467 Roll of 35mm film cont. images re history of Mold, n.d. 4477 Draft MA dissertation on early Norman castles in N Wales, 1996 4492 Report "Ten Years of Weather - the Carmel weather station 2001-2010" by Robert Moore 4498 Typescript history of lead mining in North Wales, 2002 4504 Aerial photograph of Connah’s Quay , c.1960

Shotton Steelworks photo album (accession 4456) awaiting conservation work

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Appendix B

TNA Self-assessment 2010

There was no national self-assessment in 2009. The figures in brackets are from 2008.

FRO has improved all its scores and is now higher than the national average in all sections. The improvement in “access”, where up to now we have been very weak, is particularly noticeable. We are now a “three-star” service – the maximum possible is four stars.

FRO Welsh UK score average average

Section 1: governance & resources 66.5% 62% 66% (57.5%) (57%) (62%)

Section 2: documentation of collections 70% 61% 64% (60.5%) (59.5%) (59%)

Section 3: access 65.5% 56.5% 62.5% (44.5%) (48.5%) (57%)

Section 4: preservation & conservation 87.5% 67.5% 69% (76.5%) (63%) (65%)

Section 5: buildings, security & 75.5% 65% 68.5% environment (69%) (57.5%) (64.5%)

Overall score 71% 61% 65.5% (58.5%) (55.5%) (61%)

Section 1 covers such things as: reporting line to Chief Executive; management of budget; staffing; training; scope of responsibilities; policies; service plan.

Section 2 covers such things as: relationships with depositors; accessioning and cataloguing to standards; record keeping; cataloguing backlog

Section 3 covers such things as: opening hours; publication of information; usage; customer service; outreach to non-users; customer feedback

Section 4 covers such things as: standards of strong-rooms, shelving and packaging; conservation; provision of surrogates

Section 5 covers such things as: standard of building; risks; maintenance; search-room security; environmental monitoring; public facilities; accessibility of public transport

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