Our Archive Journeys
The Public Record Office was founded in 1838 for the creation of a national archives. There was no such national plan or natural custodian for records at a local level at that time, and local records were collected and stored by the likes of local judiciaries, municipalities, record societies, libraries and (from the 1890s) county councils. The result was a haphazard development of collections from individuals, families, estates, churches, local government offices and other organisations within that locality, with the legitimacy of such local archives not confirmed until the Local Government (Records) Act of 1962 enabled local authorities to acquire records and provide services to the community. The lack of a national plan, and the subsequent dearth of standardization across county record offices, has (incidentally) resulted in a wealth of idiosyncratic collections and distinct profiles unique to individual counties. Record offices play a vital role in preserving local history and cultural memory. And it is within these collections that we find stories of everyday people who lived and worked in these localities.
Over the last 12 months, our project team have travelled to these archives across England, from Cumbria to Kent, Northumberland to Cornwall, in search of music materials. Every journey we have undertaken – by train, bus, foot and sometimes bicycle – has been an experience in this unique history and development of county archives. Record offices have been found incorporated in county council offices alongside registry offices, magistrate courts, museums and public libraries. Others have dedicated, purpose-built centres, often located out of town centres, in industrial estates or sited on former industrial ground. Some counties have incorporated all their archive collections into a single location; others have multiple, smaller repositories located across the county, united into a ‘county archive’ by the consolidation afforded by an online catalogue and archival staff working and collaborating across sites. Despite decades of austerity, unending funding challenges and resource limitations, county record offices have continued to survive and to offer cultural, historical and research services to their communities. Many strive to evolve, providing vital space for local communities to gather and be curious, and in doing so support individual and community health and wellbeing. Some have even been successful in encouraging young people to volunteer or, at the very least, simply be in a safe space where they observe the curiosity of others.
Northumberland Archives is situated in Woodhorn Museum. The building is located alongside former colliery buildings on the site of an old pit. The design of the building was influenced by both the history of the site and the archive collections that were to be stored there.
The Box, Plymouth, is located in the city centre. The building incorporates Plymouth’s original museum and art gallery (built by 1910) with a modern extension to house the museum, art and the Plymouth and West Devon archives collections under one roof.
With the help of online catalogues, on-site paper catalogues and the enthusiastic teams of archival staff, our journeys to county record offices have been highly rewarding in uncovering a treasure trove of pre-1850 musical material – much of which has been previously unknown to music bibliographers. Books of manuscript and printed music abound across the country, originating from the obvious sources including private family collections, parish churches and other religious institutions. Other sources are more personal in nature: tune books compiled by a specific individual, including clergy in Cumbria, merchants in Newcastle, and farmers in Cumbria and Hampshire. However, perhaps most intriguing is the prevalence of notated music in unexpected places: amongst parish registers, tithe maps, private letters, commonplace books, diaries, administrative documents, probate records. Fragments of music manuscripts are used as binders’ waste, to wrap books or to line boxes. Handwritten tunes happily sit alongside recipes, poetry, household accounts, farming notes, weather reports, pen trials and doodles. The ubiquity of music in everyday life demonstrated by the growing evidence found in record offices across the country hints at an embeddedness of literate musical culture that has yet to be fully appreciated; it offers an as-yet unrecognised rich soundscape of local, regional and national musical heritage. The ‘Music, Heritage, Place’ project aims not only to unlock this music by cataloguing it all into the public-access database RISM, but to investigate what these repertories reveal about local identities and meanings of place; to write a local music history that embodies a nation.
The Music, Heritage, Place: Unlocking the Musical Collections of England’s County Record Offices project is uncovering musical sources in county record offices across England to offer a richer and more decentralised picture of the country’s music heritage. The project is creating RISM catalogue records for musical sources between c.1550 and c.1850 in England’s local archives.
