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Home , Clwyd, Flint Mountain

2019/20

Flintshire Record Office Annual Report Contents ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Abbreviations p.3

List of staff p.4

Introduction p.5

User Statistics p.6

Outreach p.7

Conservation p.9

ICT p.10

Activities Behind the Scenes p.11

Staff Changes p.12

Staff Training p.12

Voluntary Work p.13

External Links p.13

Appendix A - Accessions p.14

Appendix B – Remote User Survey 2019 p.17

Appendix C – On-line Usage p.19

Front cover illustration: Image from Theatr collection, production of “Barnaby and the Old Boys” in 1987, an image scanned by one of our volunteers (see p.13). Photo ref. CC/TC/2/15/14/4. FRO also holds a programme for this production, ref. CC/TC/1/396

Flintshire Record Offce The Old Rectory CH5 3NR Tel.: 01244 532364 E-mail: archives@f intshire.gov.uk Website: www.f intshire.gov.uk/archives

2 Flintshire Record Offce Annual Report 2019/20 Abbreviations ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

ARA Archives & Records Association ARCW Archives & Records Council DA Archives DCC Denbighshire County Council FCC Flintshire County Council FRO Flintshire Record Offce MALD Museums, Archives & Libraries Division, Welsh Government NEWA Archives (merged Denbighshire Archives and Flintshire Record Offce from 1st April 2020) NLHF National Lottery Heritage Fund (previously the Heritage Lottery Fund) NLW National Library of Wales RCAHMW Royal Commission on the Ancient & Historic Monuments of Wales TNA The National Archives

Visitors in period costume at the World War II weekend

Flintshire Record Offce Annual Report 2019/20 3 Staff ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Principal Archivist: Claire Harrington

Senior Archivist: Steve Davies

Archivists: Steph Hines Liz Newman

Archive Assistants: Jen Armstrong (24 June – 28 Oct. 2019) Teresa Davies Sue Millward Bridget Thomas

Conservator: Mark Allen

ICT & Admin Assistant: Mandy Haslam

Mark receiving his Distinguished Service Award from ARA President Dr Alex Buchanan

4 Flintshire Record Offce Annual Report 2019/20 Introduction •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• This year has proved to be the end of an era in two important ways. Firstly the County Archive Research Network (CARN) system of readers’ tickets has come to an end and been replaced by the Archives Card. CARN tickets have served their purpose well for many years but for the 21st century something a little more technologically advanced was required. It’s been a few years in the pipeline but we were able to start issuing Archives Cards on 3rd March. Archive users can now sign up for a card on-line from home and will need to visit an archive repository only to have their ID verifed and possibly their photograph taken. The system will automatically do user-statistics calculations for us, saving a lot of staff time. More fundamentally from our point of view, the year 2019/20 has been the last for the Flintshire Record Offce by that name. I’ve been reporting for the past couple of years our plans to merge with our neighbours, Denbighshire Archives. 31st March 2020 saw the end of the two separate services and the birth of the North East Wales Archives. This will be the last ever Flintshire Record Offce Annual Report! Hand-in-hand with the merging of the services go our exciting plans for a new, purpose-built archive centre on a site adjacent to in Mold. It’s a big, ground-breaking project and we have been ambitious in going for a Heritage Horizon Award from the National Lottery. We are tremendously proud to have got through the initial two stages of an Expression of Interest and a presentation to the lottery panel. We now have to prepare a fully costed Stage One application but even to have got so far is a major achievement as from an initial 146 applications we are in the fnal 12. In connection with this project, in April we were delighted to welcome Jeff James, Chief Executive of TNA, and Malcolm Todd, Head of Policy. They visited both Flintshire and Denbighshire offces as well as seeing the site of our planned new building. We are very grateful for their continuing support as we proceed with our project. We are very proud of our Conservator, Mark Allen, who at the 2019 ARA conference was given a Distinguished Service Award for his work for the ARA Preservation & Conservation Group, his role as an instructor on the conservators’ training course and for many years of promoting archive conservation whenever possible. See photo p.4. As always we are very grateful to MALD, which has supported us in attending training and in employing external expertise to help us achieve our massive and exciting development project. As I write this all of the above changes have been affected by the world-wide Covid-19 virus outbreak. We started issuing Archives Cards just a couple of weeks before closing our doors to visitors. We’d hoped to have all our regular users signed up to the new card by now and more or less phased out the old CARN tickets altogether. The merging of the two services still took place on 1st April but without the fanfare we’d hoped. The process of applying for funding for our new building will certainly be put back, we don’t know yet for how long. I can assure everyone, though, that staff are continuing to preserve the archive material in our care and that it will be available for consultation again as soon as the present national emergency is over. In the meantime we are doing all we can to provide a service remotely, online, through social media and corresponding by post and e-mail. Claire Harrington

Flintshire Record Offce Annual Report 2019/20 5 User Statistics ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Archive Service 2019/20 2018/9 2017/8 2016/7 2015/6 2014/5 Searchroom visits 1,346 1,855 1,475 1,761 2,000 2,005 Postal enquiries 16 27 23 31 47 81 Telephone enquiries 276 337 286 326 421 361 E-mail/online enquiries 619 617 506 522 536 608 Documents consulted 3,811 4,000 4,707 4,423 4,849 5,991 Photocopies/printouts sold 2,726 963 2,458 2,273 3,454 3,263 Photographs sold 180 598 184 334 313 371 Photo permits issued 96 111 107 133 130 188 Research service orders; 19 18 37 30 30 32 1-to-1 sessions

Origin of searchers 2019/20 2018/9 2017/8 2016/7 2015/6 2014/5 Flintshire 923 1,364 1,037 1,188 1,409 1,306 Rest of Wales 204 232 179 250 277 286 Rest of UK 191 240 258 287 289 358 Overseas 28 19 21 36 25 55

Classifi cation of searchers 2019/20 2018/9 2017/8 2016/7 2015/6 2014/5 Education & publication 291 595 182 313 591 439 Genealogy 534 529 625 766 626 607 Local history 368 500 512 555 626 809 History of house 81 95 57 45 62 69 Offcial & legal 72 136 78 82 95 81

The old CARN ticket and the new Archives Card

6 Flintshire Record Offce Annual Report 2019/20 Outreach ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Open Doors After making Open Doors 2018 a major event we decided to go for something lower-key this year, reverting to the idea of opening up areas not usually open to the public. On Saturday 21st September we ran three behind-the-scenes tours covering the strong-rooms and the conservation studio. They were free but had to be booked in advance and, following excellent coverage in the press, we had all three tours booked up in record time and had to run two more during the following week to accommodate at least some of those we couldn’t ft in on the day. See p.21.

Explore Your Archive This year we joined in with the national Explore Your Archive campaign on Facebook by selecting items from our collections and highlighting them using the daily hashtags. There were nine hashtags covering the extended week (over two weekends) and we received over 12,500 views of just the # items. It began with #SweetArchives on Saturday 23rd November, going through Hairy, Friendly, Surprising, Action, ArchivesAtSea, Mysterious, ArchiveVoices, ending with #WildArchives on Sunday 1st December. We tried to be imaginative with our interpretation of the hashtags, which were set nationally. This included a “hairy” hemp fbre used in repairing an account book, our conservator playing the saxophone and a botanical painting of a wild saxifrage (see image p.10).

Educational visits We’ve had some interesting school visits this year. Ten girls from Holywell High School came to research the role of women in the Queensferry Munitions Factory during the First World War; St John the Baptist VA Primary School, , came to look at the history of their school and village; and Hawarden Village School made several visits to explore Victorian Christmas and, along with excursions into the churchyard next door, looked at some of the Victorian graves and their occupants. Holywell High School Claire answered a remote enquiry from some pupils at Ysgol pupils visiting FRO Esgob Morgan in about the bishop who gave his name to their school and was delighted to be invited to an event where they displayed the results of their research. They’d worked hard and creatively and found out a lot.

We were also pleased to welcome a group of volunteers from Mold’s Bailey Hill project for an exploratory visit prior to some individual research.

Denbigh & Flint Show We and Denbighshire Archives took the opportunity the & Flint Show offered to present ourselves as a future joint service and to put our plans for a new archive centre to the people of both counties, many of whom were not already users of our service. It was a busy and fun day for Claire, Teresa and Denbighshire’s Sarah Roberts. We met and talked to lots of people and received~ mostly positive feedback to our plans. We handed out lots of questionnaires and got people thinking about what records might interest them – see our chart, p.18.

Flintshire Record Offce Annual Report 2019/20 7 Outreach (continued) ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Publications Our selection of Christmas cards sold well, including some previous years’ cards. The Christmas bookmark we gave away in the spirit of Christmas! We now have a new selection of bookmarks based on our prints.

Existing stock still sells, albeit slowly. We’ve sold a few copies of Flintshire & Mold in Photographs, greetings cards and occasion cards throughout the year along with prints, posters and maps. We feel that at present we cannot make the most of our publications but look forward to the NEWA online shop to showcase our stock.

Other Following our dementia training reported last year we have followed this up by:

1. A joint visit by Steph and Nicola (Denbighshire Archives) to a Young Onset Dementia Group in ; 2. Inviting a representative from the Alzheimer’s Society to come and tell us how we could improve our public areas to help dementia sufferers. This has resulted in several simple modifcations such as clearer signage and angling the mat in our foyer so that it guides people towards the search-room. The focus of interest in war shifted from World War I to World War II last year. On the 75th anniversary of D-Day we and Denbighshire Archives launched a joint appeal for documents relating to the Second World War. In Flintshire this consisted of an exhibition and an event where FCC councillors were invited to bring in their own family heirlooms (see photo p.11). Claire also took our D-Day exhibition to a World War II event at the community centre in Talacre (see photo p.3). She learned a lot about Talacre’s role in the war and took in an accession of some wonderful photographs of Talacre (see Appendix A p.16 accession 5265).

We have participated in two Heritage Fairs run by the North-East Wales Heritage Forum, one in and one in Gaol. At the latter we encountered some local feeling against the plan to move Denbighshire archives into Flintshire but on the whole both events were rewarding. We have given just one outside talk on the work of the Record Offce – to the Buckley Society in February where there was a lot of interest in our plans.

The joint stand at the Denbigh and Flint Show

8 Flintshire Record Offce Annual Report 2019/20 Conservation •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• Mark has been very busy this year, as always. FRO has been pleased to welcome a number of Mark’s students on the ARA conservators’ training course:

Jane MacTarling, trainee based at the Berkshire Record Offce, has been learning about the various historical book structures and the different materials used in binding on the bookbinding module of the ARA conservation course. Whilst here Jane was able to assist in the conservation of a large volume from Lloyds Bakery, Holywell. The day book (ref. D/DM/98/5), dated 1908, records the day- to-day workings of the bakery with orders for various supplies. It had been severely water damaged, suffering from mould and pest attack, warping and delamination of Jane wrapping the volume to ensure the boards. that the original leather is attached over the new reverse calf which now supports the spine. Two other trainees, Katie Brew, based at Durham University Library & Collections, and Rhydian Davies from NLW have also completed the frst four weeks of their placements at FRO’s conservation studio, whilst Julian Evans, also from NLW, and Kat Saunt from East Riding Archives made return visits.

Mark has also hosted a visit by students on the archivists’ training course at Aberystwyth. The skill of an archivist is quite different from that of a conservator but it is valuable for each to know about the other’s craft.

As can be seen below, he has still found time to undertake a variety of conservation work himself. He has also started to plan for the enormous amount of work that will be involved in moving the archive collections from FRO and DA to a new building. Katie applying gold leaf to a flexible-style binding

Conservation work 2019/20 2018/9 2017/8 2016/7 2015/6 2014/5 Exhibition items 3 48 20 30 26 0 Paper documents 157 589 1119 722 894 948 Parchment documents 7 19 20 15 11 4 Maps & plans 67 70 95 84 63 68 ___, ------Manilla & hard cover--- bindings 40 26 35 26-- 29 - 32 ~ ~ ------.:,;.:...------~ Folders, boxes 53 68 122 182 58 ------57 r------__~ & OS map guards Photographs 4 44 3 2166 43 24

Flintshire Record Offce Annual Report 2019/20 9 ICT •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• After 13 years’ work, the major task of getting all our catalogues onto our CALM database and available on-line via the CALMView and Archives HUB websites is complete. This has been a huge task involving both staff and volunteers. A great achievement! Work continues to fnish inputting accession registers and complete the whole process of digitising our metadata. Work also continues on merging databases with Denbighshire Archives for our new joint service.

FRO continues to be represented in the work of the all-Wales Digital Preservation Group. Work has again been delayed but continues towards the joint Wales-wide storage facility we are aiming for. We are supporting the establishment of a new role examining electronic records preservation across and continuing to liaise with our information management team.

Last year I reported on the expected replacement of our very old and unreliable search-room PCs. I’m delighted to report this year that they arrived and have been very well received. Speeds are a lot better and they’re less grumpy!

Our Facebook page remains very popular, with 1,647 followers. 46 of these followers have joined during the Covid-19 lockdown so perhaps people, with more time on their hands, are turning to local and family history for stimulation!

We have shared some interesting posts in the past year including a story in September 2019 about ‘Midnight prowlers in Flint’ which reached 6,770 people and was shared 29 times. The newspaper notice of Greenfeld Hall, to be let in 1867, also received a lot of attention, reaching 3,907 people and receiving 36 comments. People seemed fascinated by the idea that they could rent a stately home!

The Flickr gallery has over 600 photographs of historic Flintshire and is viewed on average around 250 times per month. It remains a great way to showcase a small proportion of our holdings of fascinating images of the local area over the past 150 years.

As we become a joint service, we will be increasing our social media presence with new Instagram and Twitter accounts which we will use to bring exciting stories about our work and images from our historic collections to a wider audience. Some of the images used on Facebook for the Explore Your Archive campaign

10 Flintshire Record Offce Annual Report 2019/20 Activities Behind the Scenes •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• We sincerely hope we never have cause to need the services of the North Wales Fire & Rescue Service in an emergency situation but it’s a good thing to be prepared and we were pleased to welcome a contingent from our local fre station on a familiarisation visit in February. In July one of our depositors, the Grosvenor Estate, sent a valuer to look at the material deposited with us. This is a regular occurrence and last took place in December 2010. As always we undertook our annual stocktaking week in December, this year it fell on 9th to 13th. It was disrupted Councillors and guests at the by several and various events, ranging from a funeral to D-Day anniversary event to launch our appeal the General Election. However, a lot was achieved:

Stocktaking tasks Liz did a stock-take of uncatalogued accessions in the mobile area of the Lower Strong-room. She rationalised storage and so saved a few boxes-worth of space. During this process she found an accession of microflms of architect’s plans, which are to be indexed to make them accessible. She also identifed a number of items with no accession reference, which she will attempt to identify as existing accessions or, failing that, accession as of unknown provenance. Teresa did a similar task in the New Middle Strong-room. Bridget continued her task of checking that books are fled in the right class and updated the spreadsheet accordingly. Steph checked the Newspaper Cuttings collection, returning misplaced items to their correct folders and confrming the absence of a couple of missing items.

Appraising Steve sorted through 440 OS maps, identifying those we need to keep and those that can be disposed of.

Labelling Mandy labelled all the boxes housing the photographic collection. Sue completed the labelling of the Boards of Guardians collections and updated the Location Index. Bridget re-labelled all the pamphlet boxes in the library in larger print so that they can be seen from f oor level.

Re-packaging Sue and Steph completed the re-packaging and re-boxing of 22 boxes from the collection. This is an ongoing task which will be continued through the coming year. Mark re-boxed several uncatalogued collections which were still in the (non-archival-quality) boxes they arrived in. He also packaged 24 maps and made six bespoke boxes. ~ Whilst all this was going on, Claire completed the annual Accession Return, to be sent to The National Archives in the New Year, and attempted to make progress with an audit of Public Records (also requested by TNA).

Flintshire Record Offce Annual Report 2019/20 11 Staff ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Changes In June we welcomed Jen Armstrong to our team on a temporary basis as an Archive Assistant. Otherwise staff have remained unchanged. This is a good thing as it takes a long time to learn any of the roles in the Record Offce team so the longer people stay, the better!

Training FRO staff have undertaken a variety of training offered in-house by FCC. Claire attended a session on contracts; a workshop on writing reports and a demonstration of updated “iTrent” software. All the archivists had a refresher on the FOI procedure and software. All the frst-aiders undertook either refresher or requalifcation training.

Steve and Mark attended the annual ARA conference this year in Leeds and Claire made a fying visit to the Gala Dinner to see Mark accept his Distinguished Service Award. Mark and Teresa attended a meeting of the North Wales Emergency Planning Group in Bangor. Teresa attended the RCAHMW’s Digital Past 2020 Conference in February. Liz attended a Social Media Roadshow in Wrexham run by NUJ Training Wales.

We have shared three training sessions with DA staff: consultant Julia Holberry led a workshop on the activity plan we’ll need to create for our NLHF application; Mark ran a refresher session on preservation and packaging which included a practical session assessing the packaging needs of a single collection; at a workshop in February we made some important decisions about a logo and branding for the joint service and how our communications will improve and expand.

Sarah & Steph at North-East Wales Heritage Day

12 Flintshire Record Offce Annual Report 2019/20 Voluntary Work •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• As always, our volunteers have contributed a huge amount of work which wouldn’t have been done without them. The enormous task of listing individually all our building control plans from urban and rural district council collections is nearly complete. Scanning of photographs has continued with a selection of images from our minor, mixed collections. The listing of Holywell World War II evacuees’ index cards has also continued. Work has begun on listing a large addition to the newspaper-cuttings collection, which will in turn be scanned. Work has also begun on typing up the catalogue of Rhian (Denbighshire Archives) making boxes in the Hartsheath archive. We do not hold this the Conservation Studio collection at FRO but it is an important local archive.

We are very grateful for all the work our volunteers do and I’d like to take this opportunity to express our appreciation with a big “thank you”.

External Links

Staff continue to be involved in professional issues at local and national levels. Steve Davies is working on the Archives Hub and represents FRO on the Digital Preservation Group of ARCW; Liz Newman is an assessor on ARA’s registration scheme; Steph Hines represents FRO on MALD’s Archives Marketing Steering Group whilst Mark Allen is on ARA’s Preservation & Conservation Section committee, a visiting lecturer on the Aberystwyth University archives course, an instructor on the ARA conservation course and FRO representative on the North Wales Emergency Planning Group.

Claire Harrington, as Principal Archivist, attends meetings of ARCW, Friends of the Clwyd Archives, the Flintshire Historical Society and the Flintshire War Memorials steering group. She is also a peer reviewer for the Archives Accreditation Scheme and in that role made a very pleasant and informative visit to St Helens Archive Service this year.

We continue to have a cordial relationship with our Friends group, the Friends of the Clwyd Archives. Claire reported to their meeting in March an update on progress with the merged service and NLHF application and was pleased to fnd the Friends fully supportive. They have very kindly given us funding to purchase some portable furniture to take to external events but the Covid-19 situation intervened before this could be bought. We will be proceeding with this as soon as possible. ~

Flintshire Record Offce Annual Report 2019/20 13 Appendix A Accessions 2019/20 ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Flintshire/ 5251 Signed copies of council minutes, 2014-2019 5263 Papers re ballot of FCC tenants, 2010, 2011

Other Local Authorities 5250 Council observations re Boundary Change Community Review, 1975 5283 Records of Gwernaffeld and Mostyn Community Councils, 1991-2015 5306 Records of predecessors of Natural Resources Wales, re River Dee, 1935-1979

Schools 5261 Log book, Tallarn Green School, 1958-2012 5264 Log book and misc items re School, 1912-2016 5279 School photograph, Hawarden Grammar School, 1959 5281 Governors’ minutes, Ysgol Cae’r Nant, 2012, 2013

Businesses 5243 OS maps annotated with Fox’s Brewery tied houses, 1899-1912 5266 Contract plans for railway line, to , ?1840s 5274 Heritage Impact Assessment re Britannia Inn, Wrexham Road, Mold, 2019 5275 Minutes of Board of Directors of the Coal Co., 1856 5293 Invoices from Flintshire Limestone & Tarred Macadam Co., 1940s 5297 Files of archaeological investigations at RAF Sealand, 2018

Property records 5238 Gwysaney Estate records, 1862-1967 5239 Records of Hawarden Estate gamekeeper, 1837-1893 5248 Misc papers re Brithdir Mawr, , 1969-2013 5262 Extracts from agreement re Hawarden Estate land with LNWR, c.1897 5270 Deeds re property in Hanmer belonging to Ellis family, c.16th-19th C 5301 Map of Ty Issa Farm, , 1832 5307 Estate records, 19th & 20th centuries

Nonconformist & Other Churches 5260 Illuminated pieces, St Mary’s Roman Catholic Church, Mostyn,1930s 5276 Holywell Methodist chapel magazines, 1931-1961

Clubs/Societies 5240 Records of Flintshire 50+ County Forum, 2002-2019 5241 Records of Dyserth & District Field Club, 2018, 2019 5242 Records of Old Castles Freemasons Lodge, 1994-2018 5244 Records of Mossley Freemasons Lodge, 2003-2018 5245 Photo album, Mold Inner Wheel Club, c.1969-2019 5246 Records of Buckley Jubilee, 1902-2016

14 Flintshire Record Offce Annual Report 2019/20 •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• 5252 Photo album, Village Hall Photography Group, 2017, 2018 5272 Records of Mold Rotary Club, 1975-2019 5294 Records of Dyserth Women’s Institute, 2002-2015 5308 Records of Hawarden Park Cricket Club, 2018, 2019 5313 Records of Delyn Social Democratic Party, 1982-1988 5316 Scrapbooks of Broughton & Bretton Residents’ Association objection to Chester southerly bypass, 1971-1973

Personal Papers 5265 Newscuttings and photos re Talacre, 1946-2008 5284 Papers of John Graham Canham, curate in Hawarden, 1904-2014 5288 Pantomime scripts by Dennis Griffths of Buckley, 1949-1959 5292 Photo album of resident Edward Stewardson, 1918-1924 5300 Items re Griffths family of Hawarden, 1937-2008 5309 Personal papers, photographs and paintings of Theodore Brice Beaton, former sheriff of Flintshire, c.1900-1980s 5310 Life history of Alan Ryland, public health inspector 5314 Items re Smart family service in World War I, 1914-1919

Printed items 5236 Hawarden Benefce News, 2010-2012; John Summers High News, 2011-2017 5237 Photograph of Hawarden House of Correction, 1908 5247 Election leafets, European Parliamentary election May 2019 5249 Caerwys Chronicle, 2017-2019 5254 Railway photographs of Flintshire, 1970s, 1980s 5255 Photographs from Dragon Times, tourist newspaper, n.d. 5256 Articles re adult education in NE Wales, 1960s-1993 5258 Printed items of Flintshire interest, 1996 5259 Regimental Records of the Royal Welch Fusiliers, 8 vols, 1921-2019 5267 History of the Royal Welch Fusiliers, 2008 5268 Brochures re John Summers Steelworks, 1948-1968 5280 Modern map showing Caerwys in the 18th C. 5286 Geological reports, 1974-1983 5289 Brochures of local industries, 1950s 5291 Caerwys Chronicle calendar for 2020 5296 Sale particulars, properties in Rhyl/Dyserth area, 1980 5298 Election leafets, general election Dec. 2019 5302 Topographical Dictionary of Wales, vol.1, 1833 5303 Leafets re local government re-organisation, 1973-1975 5304 Clwyd Archaeology Service publications, 1980s, 1990s 5307 Sales catalogues of Flintshire properties, 1913-1978 5315 & District News, issues 380-390, 2019

Flintshire Record Offce Annual Report 2019/20 15 Appendix A (continued) Accessions 2019/20 ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Electronic media 5235 Copy (2019) documents relating to Catherine Wynne Eyton, 1884 & 1938 5257 Digital copies of photographs re Horace Owen, WW2 soldier 5273 Digital copy of 1970s cine flm “Clwyd – Gateway to Prosperity”, 2019 5277 Articles re Mold: D-Day Veteran and Mold Riots, 2019 5278 Article from Trafalgar Chronicle re Emma, Lady Hamilton, 2018 5290 Article re John Parry of , frst conductor of Mormon Tabernacle Choir, 2019 5305 Peter Evans, The Great Pratt – the Autobiography, 2019 5312 DVD of photographs taken by Tom Hayden of Holywell, chiefy 1900-1920

Miscellaneous 5253 Maps showing mines and other industrial sites, n.d. 5269 Items re Dyserth & Newmarket Light Railway, 1871-1913 5271 Items re Mold bypass road development, 1980s 5285 Coffee table made from counter top of Daniel Owen’s shop, New St., Mold 5287 Postmarks from Flintshire, 1960s, 1970s 5299 Archaeological survey & social history of Loggerheads, n.d. 5311 Files of photographs of Hawarden village, 1980s-2000s 5314 Misc items of Flintshire interest, 1900-2019 5317 Misc items re Flint, 19th & 20th C

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Illuminated document relating to Title page of E.A. Stewardson’s the Roman Catholic Church at photo album, AN5292 Mostyn, AN5260

16 Flintshire Record Offce Annual Report 2019/20 Appendix B Remote User Survey 2019 •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• This is a regular event run by ARA’s National Surveys Group. It targets alternately visitors to record offces and remote users of archive services. This year’s survey was of remote users and took place between 9 September and 29 November 2019. During this period everyone who sent us an enquiry by e-mail or post was invited to take part. Altogether, 84 invitations were issued. 45 responses were received, one of which was in Welsh.

The survey gives us a profle of our users as well as telling us what they think of the service they received. Ages ranged from 34 to 82 with a fairly even balance between women and men: 18 women to 24 men. There was a much younger profle in general from that of our visitor survey last year – only 14 of the 38 who confded their age were over 65 although 20 described themselves as retired. Most respondents described themselves as with no disability although one had a hearing impairment and one mobility issues. Only eight respondents came from within Flintshire, with seven from elsewhere in Wales, 22 from and one each from Sweden, Canada and New Zealand.

30 respondents had contacted us for the frst time and 36 had found out about our service from our website. The majority (27) were researching their family history with the next most common reasons being work in connection with their employment (7) and formal education as a student or researcher (5).

In response to a question on why they had chosen remote access rather than a personal visit, 20 lived too far away to visit whilst 34 wanted information preparatory to a visit or in order to decide whether or not to visit. Convenience was a common reason too, as was the need for further advice following use of the website. Only four found our opening hours inconvenient.

Our remote users are generally pleased with the service they receive. The vast majority described themselves as “very pleased” in all categories and, taking in “pleased” as well included almost everyone. The exceptions were one person who was given some information which turned out to be incorrect, so thought the content of our response “very poor” and two people who were not impressed with our website. A handful of people thought our charges, website and bilingual information merely “adequate”.

Everyone was given the opportunity to comment and many chose to. Most were very positive. Here are just a few examples:

• The service was absolutely frst class and information was set out so well that it could not be faulted in any way. Thank you very much.

• Was a brilliant response to my email and very helpful.

• I received great service. Thank you.

• My impression was excellent. I was surprised by the promptness and depth of the information I received.

Some were not so happy:

Flintshire Record Offce Annual Report 2019/20 17 Appendix B Remote User Survey 2019 •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• • I was unable to complete payment over the Internet

• I found identifying the records that you hold on the website to P.a.. F]IJH O EiOFNOblON O J:il:>thbOR..l:>E.\:; I CHI? 'NHA.T iYPE.S a:' R.~C..OR.bS Nl~li"T be very diffcult INTER£~, vov? 1 H£1J f'FOTOGjRlftAU I\ PHRINTIA.V ••••••••• : : •• ....,.•. • 01-t) PHOTO(;RAP!iS "' PAINTS HE:N F"APIAU When asked to suggest improvements: QI.J)M... PS

• Archival images, once purchased and agreed, could be made available for the purchaser to download on a secure link

• Where documents are suitable for scanning, an online accessible database would be good to view documents. Appreciate there may be a charge for this, but the money saved on travel and time would offset this. Our sticker chart at the Flint • Online catalogue speed could be improved. and Denbigh Show

• It would be fabulous if everything was available electronically!

• What would make the archive better for me is if they catalogued a fund I am interested in, but I understand that there are staffng and workload implications. it would be great if the archive used PhD students to do this sort of thing, giving them a work experience to put on their cv as part of their training portfolio (I am saying this without knowing whether the FRO already does use PhD students in this way)

• Unfortunately the reply to the information I gave was wrong. So maybe double check information before replying to enquiries.

• More publicity I guess

We are always keen to learn from what our users tell us. The main lesson we can take from this is that our digital provision generally needs improvement. We know from working with Denbighshire Archives that they are more advanced in this respect than we are so we are hoping for advantage from a merged service.

Our staff are experienced and generally provide a great research service, supplying accurate information. Occasionally we get it wrong and can only apologise to the enquirer who was given incorrect information.

We already work with local universities but this is an area which we are keen to expand on in the future and the use of PhD students is not something that has come up so a possible area for discussion.

18 Flintshire Record Offce Annual Report 2019/20 Appendix C - On-line usage ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

FRO pages of FCC website

2019/20 2018/9 2017/8 2016/7 2015/6 2014/5 April 1,715 2,572 3,334 3,939 4,591 3,978 May 1,814 1,573 3,049 3,792 4,229 5,036 June 1,714 962 2,949 3,016 4,087 4,478 July 1,945 1,368 3,544 3,433 4,106 3,912 August 3,540 1,470 3,979 3,719 4,786 5,242 September 4,219 1,580 3,361 5,153 4,501 4,387 October 3,907 1,761 3,924 4,105 4,342 5,169 November 4,172 2,748 3,678 3,844 3,888 6,265 December 2,930 1,334 2,492 2,814 2,710 4,224 January 4,006 1,856 4,370 4,235 3,866 6,194 February 3,853 1,740 3,881 4,881 4,413 5,581 March 3,109 1,610 2,728 4,257 3,102 5,695 Total for year 36,924 20,574 41,289 47,188 48,621 60,161

Flickr

2019/20 2018/9 2017/8 2016/7 2015/6 2014/5 April 208 228 210 258 334 544 May 132 142 255 340 765 661 June 124 89 184 342 231 453 July 149 177 156 271 255 531 August 147 247 222 743 245 590 September 202 182 250 367 196 396 October 257 227 318 322 302 572 November 85 188 250 543 274 709 December 298 118 180 239 533 940 January 154 184 335 321 373 546 February 270 149 213 339 454 527

---- - · - March 159 96 184 -295 419 700 ~ - - - ~Total for year 2,185 2,027 2,757 4,380 -----4,381 7,169--- ~ ------

Flintshire Record Offce Annual Report 2019/20 19 ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Facebook

2019/20 2018/9 2017/8 2016/7 2015/6 2014/5 April 7,409 9,778 6,330 7,782 3,181 902 May 8,250 7,536 6,164 5,728 9,226 2,849 June 13,454 8,344 7,335 5,850 5,013 1,509 July 17,893 17,705 5,997 6,234 10,489 2,397 August 3,109 7,705 4,909 5,768 6,248 1,822 September 15,171 7,754 23,279 9,152 2,126 1,504 October 10,197 10,177 15,878 2,581 11,981 2,050 November 20,525 14,938 10,841 11,647 7,034 4,511 December 11,211 9,857 4,121 9,244 11,222 10,143 January 11,640 10,621 9,700 9,858 5,144 6,053 February 14,776 9,963 12,454 8.939 3,265 7,095 March 4,463 10,317 14,679 1,775 9,679 7,921 Total for year 138,098 114,695 121,687 84,558 84,608 48,756

CALMView Currently we are not able to extract usage figures for this. The nearest we can get is to note the number of hits on the “Catalogues and Indexes” page on the website, which contains the link to CALMView. This shows:

2019/20 2018/9 2017/8 2016/7 2015/6 2014/5 April 136 150 217 244 344 May 164 130 242 252 263 June 141 91 193 204 203 July 147 147 231 222 263 362 August 237 128 273 263 318 377 September 298 146 280 244 275 341 October 287 156 284 339 272 387 November 295 180 252 273 253 436 December 184 99 167 170 162 265 January 268 130 316 299 277 419 February 300 165 310 327 324 406 March 233 114 217 324 267 382 Total for year 2,708 1,636 2,774 3,161 -----3,221 ~ 3,375 ,- 20 Flintshire Record Offce Annual Report 2019/20 ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Archives Hub During 2017 a substantial quantity of our catalogues was uploaded onto the Archives Hub, a UK-wide, on-line catalogue. It is early days but so far usage looks promising. In fact, it looks as though our users prefer the Hub to our own CALMView catalogue! A technical issue has resulted in a single figure for the two months February and March 2019.

2019/20 2018/9 2017/8 April 4,273 1,965 May 3,586 2,483 June 3,315 2,522 July 3,344 2,655 August 3,284 2,674 September 3,068 2,392 October 3,082 3,356 2,475 November 3,144 4,062 December 2,905 3,227 January 3,061 4,570 1,339 February 3,535 7,740 1,966 March 3,168 2,183 Total for year 39,765 37,646 7,963

Open Doors Behind the Scenes at -~ ■ Flintshire Record Office. ., __,.Ill The Old Rectory, Hawarden

SATURDAY 21 st SEPTEMBER 2019 10.00am to 1.00pm Record Office Tours at 10.00am and 11.45am BOOKING ESSENTIAL Tel. 01244 532364 or e-mail: [email protected]

Flintshire Record Offce Annual Report 2019/20 21 ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

TNA Discovery We also have catalogues in the Discovery section of TNA’s website. We receive statistics for visits and page views but only visits are recorded here.

2019/20 2018/9 2017/8 2016/7 2015/6 2014/5 April 51 67 39* 81 64 May 40 59 47 51 50 June 64 68 62 49 58 July 50 65 92 71 55 August 42 57 95 61 63 September 54 60 70 68 63 October 67 74 95 70 70 November 48 82 67 55 72 91 December 56 31 61 47 56 44 January 71 75 109 92 80 75 February 69 76 80 77 89 61 March 47 69 115 76 85 68 Total for year 659 873 817* 798 805 339

* There are no reliable figures for April 2017. A problem with the method used to track web traffic in Discovery in the last two weeks of April means that the figures are not accurate.

f/f ~~~<, Archifau Gogledd Ddwyrain Cymru \ ~ ~ J North East Wales Archives '--./----

The new logo for North East Wales Archives

22 Flintshire Record Offce Annual Report 2019/20