East Sussex Record Office Report of the County Archivist
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eastsussex.gov.uk East Sussex Record Office Report of the County Archivist April 2009 to March 2010 2010/11_411 Front cover: The Maltings from Lewes Castle, c1930 (ACC 10305), with details of the Paine separation agreement, 1774 (ACC 10423) Back cover: Bathing beauties from the inaugural programme for SS Brighton, 1935 (ACC 10439) County Archivists of East Sussex 1950-1953 Bernard Campbell Cooke (1897-1953) 1953-1959 Francis William Steer (1912-1978) 1959-1964 Richard F Dell 1964-1965 Mary Elizabeth Finch (1923-2007) 1965-1970 Cedric G Holland (1932-1983) 1970-1974 S Carl Newton 1974-1981 Alan Arthur Dibben 1981-2000 Charles Roger Davey 2000-2010+ Elizabeth Margaret Hughes The shape of things to come? A computer-generated view based on our plans for The Keep, including a projection-wall on the front elevation. Introduction Welcome to this 60th anniversary edition of our annual report. The fi rst County Archivist of East Sussex was appointed in January 1950, which is the date that we have taken as marking the offi cial beginning of East Sussex Record Offi ce. Read more on ESRO’s offi cial history and developments, its ups and downs, later on in this report in Christopher Whittick’s amusing and thought-provoking recollections. As if in anticipation of the anniversary, we were honoured in November by a visit by His Royal Highness the Duke of Kent, who toured The Maltings to meet staff, Friends, searchroom visitors and local children to learn more of what we do. Elizabeth Hughes (ESRO), Peter Field (HM Lord Lieutenant), Christopher Whittick (ESRO) and HRH the Duke of Kent, examining his grandmother Queen Mary’s signature in the Lewes Castle visitors’ book, 1927 To deal with the present, the year was once again dominated by efforts towards achieving The Keep, the partnership project between East Sussex County Council, Brighton & Hove City Council and the University of Sussex to build a new Historical Resource Centre, but the core work of the Record Offi ce also continued as busily than ever, despite several disruptions, as this report seeks to illustrate. In the year of events marking the second centenary of his death, we were delighted to bring back to Lewes a most important document dating from Tom Paine’s time in the county town. It was another year in which accessions reached record numbers, but our spirits were dampened by the sudden death of Julian Fane, who had become such a charming friend and generous benefactor to the offi ce. 1 Following the decision of the Heritage Lottery Fund not to contribute towards The Keep, an options appraisal was undertaken to consider a way forward. The results indicated that an affordable building could be achieved within the existing partnership funding and this design was taken forward. The revised design is similar in concept to the original proposal. The capacity of the strongrooms remains the same, ensuring that there will be enough space for accruals for twenty years after opening, in accordance with British Standard 5454. The so- called ‘People Block’, which will house the public and staff areas, has been reduced both in size and specifi cation. However, we are confi dent that the resulting building will be something of which all the partners can be proud. An assessment of the revised design’s sustainability by BREEAM (BRE Environmental Assessment Method) rated it as Very Good; but local planning regulations require an Excellent rating. Work on improvements continued during the year and at the time of writing we are optimistic that we will achieve Excellent. Features contributing to the building’s sustainability include rainwater recycling, a biomass boiler for heating, the inclusion of a green roof (indigenous grassland mix) to the public and staff block and photovoltaic cells on the plant room roof. We expect to submit a planning application in the late summer or autumn of 2010. We also began to draw up Activity and Business Plans, appointing consultants to help us. The Activity Plan will ensure that the service reaches as many people as possible both on and off the premises, including schools and local communities as well as traditional users. Some of this work will be done in partnership with other services and organisations such as libraries, museums and the voluntary sector. The Business Plan will set out the running costs for the services within The Keep, including those proposed in the Activity Plan, and the income that could be achieved to help to offset them. Both plans were due to be completed in the autumn of 2010. Extensive consultation has been undertaken with interested parties, possible partners, users and potential users throughout the life of the project and this continued throughout the year, culminating in preparations for a major public consultation exercise across East Sussex and Brighton and Hove and beyond to be held in May 2010, seeking views on the project as a whole and on the current designs. The Keep project has attracted national attention, both for its ethos of partnership working and for its sustainability; Wendy Walker, the programme manager, was invited to give a presentation to the All Party Parliamentary Group on Archives in May 2009. Detail from a map of Berwick Common, 1752 (ACC 10255) 2 Partnership working was also the key to Living the Poor Life, a nationwide project co-ordinated by The National Archives (TNA) to catalogue and digitise the correspondence between offi cials in 21 local nineteenth-century Poor Law Unions and the Poor Law Commissioners in London. East Sussex Record Offi ce recruited, encouraged and supervised a group of volunteers to work on the letters from the Rye Poor Law Union 1834-1843 held at TNA, working from digitised images, and the results were expected to go online in late summer 2010 on TNA’s website (www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/livingthepoorlife). The correspondence adds an extra dimension to the information held at ESRO and is an invaluable source for family and social historians. Buildings and weather featured quite strongly in Record Offi ce life this year. The Maltings was closed during August while structural works in the strongroom were carried out. 10% of our holdings at The Maltings were transferred to Newhaven to reduce the loading on the mezzanine and supports were installed on both levels. At the same time, the public and staff areas were completely redecorated. I believe that it was worth the disruption as the place looks a lot fresher after its paint job – and tidier! In December and January we also lost half our heating to coincide with the worse snow for 30 years and had to run a limited service from the hall while it was sorted out. However, with the exception of one day, the Record Offi ce remained open throughout with staff going to great lengths to get to work to serve the few brave searchers who also struggled in. Our Southover outstore was completely re-roofed from January to April, requiring us to limit production of documents for three months, and extractors were installed there to help control the humidity. The cold weather also affected our archive store in Newhaven when a pipe burst, sending water into the storage area. Fortunately, it was noticed almost immediately and damage was minimal, but we took the incident as an added incentive to redouble our efforts to box up as many archives as possible, both as a buffer against adversity and in preparation for the move to The Keep. This has been a major project this year and will continue as we prepare for the move. We have continued to seek external funding to support the core service and have had considerable success, as the Document Services and Outreach and Learning sections of this report explain. And we have several potential projects in the pipeline, including a European Union INTERREG co-operation with our colleagues from the archives départmentales of Seine- Maritime, based in Rouen. Jane Bartlett was kept busy by requests under the Data Protection and Freedom of Information Acts, and achieved a response-rate within the statutory timescales of 93%, well above average for local authorities. In 2009 we received 582 FOI requests, a 33% increase over 2008 (437). The service continued to host the East Sussex Museum Development Offi cer, who is paid for by the government’s Renaissance Funding. This post supports museums within the county, helping to identify additional fi nancial support, but also benefi ts the Record Offi ce by opening up new partnership and funding opportunities. The Record Offi ce’s other activities and achievements, no less important than those already mentioned, are covered in the rest of this report. 3 Archive Services Public Services Searchroom attendance has shown a decrease during the period, partly the result of the various building works during the year and the wintry weather. However, document production fi gures increased despite the closures. Most visitors (61%) were tracing their family trees, 27% were studying local and house history, 4% were educational users and 3% business users. Although the number of hours of paid research was considerably down on last year, the number of copies sold remained buoyant. Postal and email enquiries were down on last year but, as ever, ranged across a wide variety of subjects including English Civil War pro-Royalist tracts; arrests in Brighton during the general strike of 1926; the trial of author Rupert Croft-Cooke; and the infamous Eastbourne Crumbles murder of 1924. We were also able to provide information about their time in local authority care in the 1950s to several enquirers for whom no case fi les had survived.