As part of a series of blogs and social media posts, staff at Northumberland Archives have recently been tasked with highlighting their favourite area of the archive’s holdings; whether this is a specific document, a particular series, or an entire collection. Needless to say, with strong rooms holding over 6 miles of records from a period spanning 1154 to earlier this year, the consensus in the office has been that this is a somewhat difficult task, and when it came to my turn, I found the question no less difficult to answer. When considering archival documents, it can be interesting to think about not only how the document looks and what information it contains, but also the context in which it was created, who created it, and why. And so, in a bid to conveniently sidestep the awkward question entirely, I’ve chosen to use this blog to highlight not a favourite archive, but a favourite archive characteristic.
As difficult as this may be to hear, archives were in most cases not created for your benefit. Try not to take in personally, but when quill, pen, pencil or typewriter were put to page in the distant or not so distant past, the document’s authors were unlikely to have your future research in mind. Neither were they seeking to entertain you, or even to simply offer you a glimpse into what life was like in a Northumbrian solicitor’s office in 1876. This is because the majority of archival material was not created for its own sake, but as a by-product of something else. In many cases this ‘something else’ was just a basic or standard daily function of a business or organisation.
The creators of many records will have been aware of the likely permanence of the documents they were creating; they will have understood that the nature of their work or organisation demanded accountability and responsible record keeping, and the information they were recording would be retained past its immediate use. But for many of the documents in our care it would be safe to assume that the author likely gave little thought to the long-term future of the paper in their hands or on their desks. He or she had a job to, some instructions to pass on, and after that was done, they could move on to their next task. Below is a Royal Navy certificate of service from an individual from Blyth from 1917. This standard, regulatory document served an obvious administrative purpose, but due to its historic significance, over 100 years later, it finds itself within the holdings of a county archive.
There are of course exceptions. Within our holdings we do have a significant amount of primary source documents that may or may not have been created with potential future readers in mind. Many diaries will have been written with the explicit intention to never be seen by any pair of eyes other than the author’s. But for many, perhaps slightly more egotistic writers, the idea of future researchers taking an interest in their thoughts and ideas may have been the motivation for writing in the first place. In 1829, Charles John Brandling undertook a grand tour of France and Italy with his wife and sister. Throughout their travels, he documented their experiences in a journal complete with accompanying sketches. His reasons for doing this may have been simply his own amusement, or perhaps he (quite rightfully) envisaged a day when future historians would be interested to learn of the sights and sounds of 19th century continental Europe.
This travel journal is not only historically important, but also visually arresting and aesthetically pleasing. It was created to record the experiences of the author at a specific time and place, and the potential interest to people in 2023 is obvious. But there are many items within our collections that on the surface may appear nothing more than the trivial administration of common Northumbrian workplaces, which are of entirely equal fascination as the accounts of the sophisticated holidays of the gentry. Pictured below is an extract from a memorandum to superintendents sent by the Chief Constable of a Northumbrian police department on the 20th January 1939. These circulars tended to contain standard instructions to police officers relating to their daily operations and activities and this example contains the following section;
The memo continues
Although created for a very specific purpose – to convey important information to police sergeants in the short-term – this item immediately brings us into contact with several major historical issues in the course of it’s one page. Concepts around Irish/British history, the origins of the Troubles, British government attitudes to security and terrorism and the history of nationalistic or racial profiling by the police are all present in the text. In the space of one piece of A4 paper, we have been given a vivid, first-hand socio-political glimpse into a time and place which we can use to inform our understanding of the state of the country in 1939.
When it comes to the interpretation of historic documents sometimes it might be preferable to let others do the hard work; researching and reading primary source material and then using that information to produce some manner of secondary output. This might take the form of historical text books, works of fiction or even big budget Hollywood films. Not only is this method of consuming history entertaining, but it is also a very convenient way for people to feel closer to the past without having to invest too much effort. But for all the entertainment value that books, films and podcasts can offer, we are always at the mercy of somebody’s else interpretation of the source material; somebody else down the line has at some point visited an archive to look through the sort of material we have in our strong rooms. As cliched as it may sound, consulting archival documents is literally the practice of holding the past in your hands, of being so close to history that you can (often literally) smell it. Archival documents are very often the by-products of history, and it is remarkable to remember that many of their creators were completely oblivious as to how interesting the papers on their desks would one day turn out to be.