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 “Dudley 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 West Midlands. 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.