Borthwick Newsletter - June 2025

Posted on 29 May 2025

Welcome to the Borthwick's June newsletter.

June in the Archives - delve into our catalogues with this month’s featured description

'Mandela banished': a leaflet by the University of Cape Town Student Representative Council, June 1977 [South African Student Unions and Publications, STU/5/1]

What’s New?

As we head into June, all eyes have been on one particular archive at the Borthwick, thanks to a national campaign to secure it for our collections. In September last year we took possession of the very large and varied archive of Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, a comedy script writing partnership credited with the invention of the British sitcom. Their most famous creations include Hancock’s Half Hour and Steptoe and Son, the latter regularly pulling in audiences of more than 25 million people in the UK and inspiring adaptations in America, Sweden and Portugal.

Ray Galton and Alan Simpson

Although part of the archive has already been secured thanks to generous donations, the push has been on to raise the final £30,000 to ensure the material remains together and accessible to all. You can read more about the project (and donate) online. It is hoped that the archive will form part of our growing light entertainment collection, which already includes the archives of Frankie Howerd, Ernest Maxin, Marks and Gran, Barry Took and, most recently, the joke books of Eric Morecambe.

New Accessions

We received 17 accessions in May. Six of these were additions to the University of York Archive, including recent copies of York Vision newspaper; photographs from the Department of Music, beginning in the 1960s; further records of the university’s Outdoor Society; and records of the Ukrainian Society. The latter is one of the newest societies on campus, founded in 2023 to provide a social space for anyone interested in Ukraine, its culture, people and language, and to represent Ukrainian staff and students of the university.

We were also pleased to accept a small addition of the archive of composer David Blake in the form of published scores for The Coming of the Year (2006) and The Mulberry Road (2024); and to the Pace Family Papers of a privately printed book on church architecture. An addition to the records of the Society of the Sacred Mission came with a very informative visit by two former members who have been generously sorting, compiling, and editing their large collection of letters, papers and photographs for inclusion in the archive, as well as adding valuable contextual essays. The new material covers the period 1957-2020 and examines the reasons behind the closure of the Society’s theological training college at Kelham, as well as the subsequent development of the Society and the lives and personalities of its various members.

Our six brand new archives cover quite a range of subjects, beginning with a collection of sound recordings of Ring Ouzels in the wild. If you are unfamiliar with the Ring Ouzel, they are a type of thrush, similar in shape and colour to a blackbird but distinguished by a white crescent across the breast. The word ‘Ouzel’ is in fact an old name for blackbird, and the Ring Ouzel has had many other names over the centuries - heath throstle, colley bird, moor blackbird, hill chack, and even Michaelmas blackbird. The recordings were made on the North York Moors and have been gifted with accompanying documentation to help us better understand the habits of these birds, whose population is now, sadly, on the decline in Britain.

A Ring Ouzel in the wild. Photograph by Paco Gomez.

Our other archives take in music, theatre, church and health. We received the archive of the York and District Organists’ Association, founded in 1945 by Sir Edward Cuthbert Bairstow, composer and organist for York Minster, as well as the papers of Tom Ryan relating to theatre productions and his work with the Theatre Writers’ Union and the Writers Guild of Great Britain in the 1970s. The archive of the Friends of Holy Trinity Goodramgate complements our parish archive for the same church, highlighting the group’s efforts to share the history of the church and to support the work of the Churches Conservation Trust. Lastly we were pleased to be offered a cache of fascinating family records relating to Dr Bedford Pierce, better known to us in his capacity as Medical Superintendent of The Retreat psychiatric hospital. The collection includes letters, photographs and a family history written by Bedford Pierce himself, giving us an opportunity to learn more about the man behind the title.

New Catalogues

Number of archival descriptions on Borthcat on 1st June 2025: 141,370

We added two new catalogues in May. The first chronicles the work of Reverend John Gaunt Hunter who served as secretary to the ‘Call to the North’ evangelical initiative of the 1970s. The project aimed to bring together people of different denominations in the North of England. The archive has been catalogued by Liz Wilson, one of our library colleagues (and a former Borthwick Archives Assistant) and Liz has also discussed its importance in our June Archive of the Month (see below).

We have also added the full catalogue for the archive of theatre director Cordelia Monsey. This archive was boxlisted, arranged and added to Borthcat by Lucinda Vaughan, who has been volunteering with us as part of a placement which aims to introduce people to archival work. The completed catalogue includes annotated scripts, research notes, and programmes from Monsey’s work with the Peter Hall Company, demonstrating the detailed planning required for every production - from exploring the background and inspiration of the writer to deciding how the actors should move on stage, how props should be carried and which lines should be emphasised. We also hold the archive of Cordelia Monsey’s mother, the actress and writer Yvonne Mitchell, which we hope to catalogue later this year.

News from Conservation

This month in Conservation various projects have been rumbling along. Among their tasks, our conservators have highlighted: some surveying work to support a new digitisation project; an annual stock take of our disaster kit; condition assessments and the construction of book supports for material going on loan; and a significant number of microfilm repairs, to support continued use of our well-loved microfilms.

The before and after of a delicate probate repair by our Conservation team.

Honourable mention is also awarded for the completion of a long-term project to repair 10 bundles of probate, which were requested by a researcher last year and found to be in such a poor state that they could not be unrolled without losing bits. Treatment began with documenting and then surface cleaning all 29 documents, which were a mixture of paper and parchment. The parchment documents all required humidification and pressing, and the paper documents all required extensive wet repair work. Post-treatment images still need to be finalised, but it is exciting to be able to report that the treatments themselves are complete.

Borthwick Out and About

May saw a lot of publicity for the campaign to secure the Galton and Simpson Archive at the Borthwick. Keeper of Archives Gary Brannan appeared in the Yorkshire Post to talk about the archive and its importance, as well as being featured on ITV News at Ten, and he’ll be giving a talk on the archive at the York Festival of Ideas (see below). The campaign was also covered by the British Comedy Guide.

May also marked the launch of a new project: ‘Stories of Mental Health from York: Past, Present and Future’. The Borthwick was awarded £9,000 from the University of York’s Mentally Fit York fund to undertake a year-long project which aims to engage audiences with our mental health archive collections in new and more creative ways, demonstrating the importance of archives in helping us contextualise and make sense of our lived experiences. To launch the project, artists Stephen Lee Hodgkins and Griselda Goldsbrough led a free guided walk around York on Saturday 17th May. Called the Walk of Alfred, attendees followed in the footsteps of Retreat patient Alfred Smith, who kept a diary of his daily walks during the 1870s. You can find out more about the project here: www.york.ac.uk/borthwick/projects/stories-of-mental-health/.

A photograph of an elderly man seated in a Victorian suit and waistcoat is overlaid with the words Walk of Alfred.

Looking ahead, June sees the return of the York Festival of Ideas and, as always, Borthwick staff and archives will be popping up across numerous events. Access and Engagement Archivist Laura Yeoman will be chairing a series of short talks for the ‘Insights in a Flash’ session at York Explore on the 31st May. On the 1st June Catherine Firth from our Conservation team will be running a workshop on ‘Creative Bookbinding Skills’ with Emma Lloyd Jones. On the 8th June Keeper of Archives Gary Brannan will be exploring the comedic genius of Ray Galton and Alan Simpson in ‘Innit Marvellous? The World of Hancock and Steptoe’, and on the 11th University Art Curator Helena Cox will be leading a guided walk through the treasures of the university’s art collection. Our archives also feature in ‘The Quest for Eric Milner White’ by Allen Warren on the 3rd June, and in the Rowntree Society’s talk on industrial relations at the Cocoa Works, ‘Come, Let Us Reason Together: Unions at Rowntree’s’ on the 7th. Finally on the 13th June Dr Philip Burnett of the School of Arts and Creative Technology, in collaboration with Thin Ice Press, will be running an interactive workshop drawing on documents and photographs from our Society of the Sacred Mission Archive. ‘Printing Sounds’ gives you the opportunity to learn to print and sing tonic solfa, a system of musical notation popularised by religious missionaries in the 19th century. Fun fact - the workshop will be held in St Anthony’s Hall, York, which was, until 2005, the home of the Borthwick Institute!

If that isn’t enough, you can also catch us at the University of York Open Days on the 21st and 22nd June and at Acomb History Fair on the 28th. The History Fair will be held in the parish hall on Front Street in Acomb from 10-3 and will also include guided walks around St Stephen’s Churchyard, as well as talks on family history.

Archive Of The Month: Rev. John Hunter Archive: Call to the North documentation

What is it? The records of Rev. John Hunter concerning the “Call to the North” evangelical initiative.

Where can I find it? The full catalogue is available on Borthcat.

Why is it Archive of the Month?

In the late 1960s, concern about declining Christian belief and church attendance in England led the Archbishop of York Donald Coggan to launch the “Call to the North” initiative. This aimed to reinvigorate Christian belief and worship in the North of England by bringing together representatives from all major Christian denominations for evangelical outreach projects, culminating in a series of events in Holy Week 1973.

A promotional poster and leaflets from the Call to the North project

John Hunter was ordained in 1951 and served in Uganda before becoming Vicar of St Michael’s in Altcar, in his native Liverpool. As “Call to the North” secretary he played a key role in the project’s organisation, steering it from inception to its official ending in 1977 when it was renamed the Northern Consultation for Mission. Hunter’s collection on “Call to the North” includes comprehensive committee papers, outreach literature and personal correspondence which reveal the complex logistics of the ecumenical undertaking, and how differing opinions of churches involved could sometimes frustrate or encourage unity. His personal letters particularly demonstrate his practical organisation skills and deft hand in managing different peoples’ expectations. Both of these were necessary to maintain project momentum against the 1973 deadline, while delicately handling denominational and theological politics to ensure no single church was thought to dominate discussion and action.

Thanks to Hunter’s central role in the project, the collection provides a comprehensive and unique perspective on “Call to the North” and the ins and outs of cross-denomination co-operation. He returned to the project in the 2010s, gathering participants’ recollections and reviewing its strengths and missed opportunities in his book, The Beginning of Tomorrow: Call to the North, Churches working together in mission.

We’ll be back in July with more news and events from the archives!