We often receive enquiries about workhouse records. Unfortunately, we only hold a small number of documents for Northumberland as a large percentage of them were destroyed during World War Two. For Morpeth workhouse, the only surviving records are a Guardians Minute book for the years 1902-1905 and a General Ledger for 1923-1930.
However, among our collection of Morpeth Borough records are papers & plans which were found under the foundation stone of the workhouse when it was demolished in 1951. Included are a full plan of the proposed workhouse building, elevations, contemporary newspapers and a parchment roll naming the Guardians, Workhouse Master and Doctor. The roll also states that the foundation stone was laid on Wednesday 21 February 1866 by Lady Elizabeth Grey.
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On 24 February 1866, the Morpeth Herald reported that the new workhouse had been designed by F.R Wilson who was an architect from Alnwick. It was to occupy the site on which the old workhouse and some adjacent property, recently purchased stood. Lady Elizabeth Grey laid in a cavity in the stone, a jar containing copies of the Newcastle daily papers, the Morpeth Herald, Alnwick Mercury, drawings of the buildings and a parchment roll bearing the names of the officials.
It was also reported that Lady Grey was presented with the silver trowel she had used to lay the foundation stone. The trowel was obtained from Mr Stanley, a Silversmith from Morpeth. The inscription upon it read, “Presented to Lady Elizabeth Grey, by the Guardians of the Morpeth Union, on the occasion of her laying the foundation stone of the new Union Workhouse, Morpeth, Feb. 21, 1866.”
In the afternoon, Lady Grey treated the inmates to an excellent dinner of roast beef and plum pudding. The room in which they dined was tastefully decorated with evergreens, flags and banners. Three banners bearing the arms of De-Merley, Howard and Grey were hung in prominent places.
My role at Northumberland Archives is two-fold as I work as a Cataloguing Assistant and as an Archives Assistant. Add the split of working from home and working on site into the mix and it means that my working week is incredibly varied, interesting and there are never two days the same. To give you an insight into the type of work that gets done, this is what I got up to a couple of weeks ago.
The Cataloguing Assistant role is workload from one of the Archivists, while working from home it is predominately catalogue based. This can be adding some of the thousands of records typed up during lock-down to the catalogue, editing existing collections on the catalogue to make them more user-friendly at the front end or adding information that helps colleagues in the back-end system and also attachingphotographs to the online records (this in particular I cannot do without the assistance of members of the digitisation team who scan the images first). Some of the collections added last week include copies of local verses including “Bellingham Show” by W. Bell; documents relating to Shoreston Hall; family photos from Acklington/Guyzance; school permanent files; deeds relating to Berwick-upon-Tweed; boxing brothers the O’Keefe’s; plans from Newcastle and Gateshead Waterworks and papers on the promotion of industrial development in the County.
I also get the opportunity to undertake research for social media and blogs; some topics I am asked to look into and others arise when I come across something interesting and, being curious, I want to know more. The most recent one I wrote was a short article after watching the episode of the Antiques Roadshow filmed at Woodhorn Museum.
When on site, the working day depends on whether we are open to the public (we are on Wednesdays and Thursdays for pre-booked sessions). Working in the searchroom involves opening up; making sure PCs, Reading Room and microfilm readers are all switched on. Names of researchers are checked against the booking system so we know who is booked in and for what, and pre-ordered documents are put out on desks. Researchers can request a further two items on the day, so when this happens, references are checked to find the correct location (strong room number, shelving unit and shelf number) and the document is retrieved. During half-term there were more people about than usual so we also had people come to the door asking for general advice on our service and also asking to register as a user and obtain an Archives Card. We close at lunchtime, so we clean work stations, return documents to the strong rooms and the new one’s are retrieved for the afternoon session.
On a Friday when the searchroom is closed, I work through some of the listing I have been asked to do, most recently this has included some photographic slides of the Corbridge area and marriage registers received following the change to procedures last year. Since re-opening we have been taking in deposits, on a Friday I will often help the Archivist with this; assisting the depositors bring items inside, re-packaging and boxing items so that they can be given a location in the strongrooms before they are listed, for more straightforward items I can assist with the listing or the paperwork for the accession. The last couple of Fridays’ I was asked instead to prepare documents for a group session that was being held. Retrieving in excess of 30 documents certainly is an afternoon’s work; lifting boxes, going up and down the step ladders meant by the end of my working week I definitely felt that I’d had a workout!
Dorothy Jacqueline Hope-Wallace, known as Jacqueline, was born in May 1909 in Kensington, London. Featherstone Castle near Haltwhistle was inherited by her great-grandfather James Hope, from his uncle Lord Wallace in 1837; shortly afterwards he changed the family surname to Hope-Wallace. At the time of Jacqueline’s birth, the Castle was occupied by her uncle, James Hope-Wallace who was killed during World War One. Her father Charles Nugent Hope-Wallace was a civil servant; he influenced his daughter’s decision to enter the Civil Service after studying history at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. Graduating in 1931 it was a somewhat difficult to find employment, and despite initial reservations, believing that civil service seemed ‘boring’, Jacqueline signed up and remained a civil servant for forty-years.
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Jacqueline’s career was a notable one; starting in the Ministry of Labour, moving to the National Assistance Board, during which time she was awarded a CBE in the New Year’s Honours list of 1958, and finally onto the Ministry of Housing and Local Government as under-secretary in 1965. The press of the time reported that she was the first female to reach that rank, however, Jacqueline later recalled in a 2009 interview for ‘Civil Service Network’ that there were women who were permanent secretaries at the time, and the reporting of this ‘fact’ had upset her. Jacqueline did seem to enjoy often being the only woman in meetings; rather than the situation being daunting, it gave her ‘a little bit of self-esteem’. Jacqueline retired from the Civil Service in 1969, although she continued to contribute to Boards, such as Corby Development Corporation, until 1980.
Away from the Civil Service her life was very different; she lived with her younger brother Philip, a journalist and music critic, who often featured in the Guardian newspaper, and historian Dame C.V. Wedgwood.
Cicely Veronica Wedgwood, known as Veronica, was a prominent historian, she wrote under the initials C.V. to hide her gender. She was born in Northumberland in July 1910; her baptism record held at Northumberland Archives shows that she was baptised on 18th August 1910 at Bywell St. Peter church, and records her parents living at Hindley House (which may also have been known as Hindley Hall), near Stocksfield at the time. Her father Sir Ralph Lewis Wedgwood was a railway manager, her mother Iris Veronica Wedgwood (nee Pawson) was a travel writer, a copy of her book ‘Northumberland and Durham’ published in 1932 can be found in a number of Northumberland libraries. Veronica was the great-great-great grand-daughter of the potter Josiah Wedgwood, for whom many the surname is best known.
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Veronica’s books written in a style that made them accessible to those who were not academics, which made her popular and well-respected. Her subjects were generally seventeenth-century England; her first publication was “Stafford”, a biography of Thomas Wentworth, the Earl of Stafford when she was aged 25. In addition to her publications, she was also a lecturer, broadcaster and involved in a number of societies and organisations including being the first female trustee of the National Gallery. She was awarded the CBE in 1956; the DBE in 1968 and Order of Merit in 1969, the last of these honours she termed as ‘excessive’.
It was at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford that the two ladies met; both studying history, both linked to Northumberland (Jacqueline more tenuously than Veronica), both having musical families. The composer Ralph Vaughan Williams was the cousin of Veronica’s father; Veronica edited and wrote an introduction to Philip Hope-Wallace’s book ‘Words and Music’. After graduating from university, the two ladies shared a house, appearing on the Electoral Roll for 1937 and 1939 at an address in Camden. The 1939 Register records them both in Wimbledon in the home of Charles and Mabel Hope-Wallace, Jacqueline’s parents; Jacqueline a Civil Servant, the same as her father, and Veronica an author and translator (the Register incorrectly records Veronica’s surname as ‘Vedgwood’). After the Second World War the ladies move to Marylebone sharing a property with Jacqueline’s brother Philip; the ladies later moved to Sussex where they lived until Veronica’s death. The living arrangements does suggest that there may have been some family awareness and acceptance of the nature of the relationship from at least members of the Hope-Wallace family, especially Jacqueline’s brother Philip.
How ‘out’ their relationship was in public during their lifetimes is difficult to gauge; it was not acknowledged in the majority of the obituaries following Veronica’s death. The ‘Aberdeen Press and Journal’ reported on 11th March 1997 that “Leading historian C. V. Wedgwood has died after a short illness, aged 86. She lived in London and Sussex with long-term friend Jacqueline Hope-Wallace”. Veronica had suffered with Alzheimer’s disease, the woman with undoubtedly a brilliant mind had very sadly lost the ability to read and speak towards the end of her life. The ‘British Academy’ published a feature about her life the following year which Jacqueline contributed to. The article indicates that Veronica shared a house with the Hope-Wallace siblings, remaining close to Jacqueline after her brother passed away: “after Philip’s death in 1979 Jaqueline [spelling in text] remained her companion for the rest of her life”; in reference to Veronica’s deteriorating health, “The devoted care that Jaqueline Hope-Wallace gave her all through those silent years in beyond her friend’s praise”. A 2016 publication about the life of historian Steven Runciman (a fellow-Northumbrian born historian) remarks that “Steven rarely felt much kinship with lesbian intellectuals even of Wedgwood’s grand respectable, classically minded calibre”. The differing language used in these two pieces, published almost 20 years apart, perhaps demonstrate the shifting acceptance of the nature of relationships between women or perhaps the earlier publication reflects the language that Jacqueline herself felt comfortable with at the time. Jacqueline passed away in 2011 at the grand old age of 102; she would have been aware of huge changes in how society viewed female partnerships during her lifetime and particularly in the years following the death of Veronica. In the 2009, Jacqueline had been able to describe the relationship in her own words; succinct but very much demonstrating togetherness: “for nearly seventy years I shared a life with a well-known historian called Dame Veronica Wedgwood”.
References
Parish Register of Bywell St Peter, 1858-1930 accessed via Reading Room
