Borthwick Newsletter - May 2026

Posted on 30 April 2026

Welcome to the Borthwick's May newsletter.

May in the archives - delve into our catalogues with this month’s featured description

Milford Bulletin: Typed hospital radio bulletin, w/c 10 May 1949. Handwritten to top of front page ‘Mr R Galton and Mr L Simpson’ [Galton and Simpson Archive, RGAS/1/647]

What’s New?

As we head into May the weather is warming up and excitement has once again gripped the Borthwick with the return of a fox family to the thicket behind our building. As we go up and down the back stairs to the strongrooms we have a perfect view of the vixen and her cubs, as captured below by University Photographer Paul Shields.

A curious fox cub outside the Borthwick, photographed by Paul Shields.

A curious fox cub outside the Borthwick, photographed by Paul Shields.

Aside from occasional fox-spotting, we’ve had a very busy month with new podcasts, several visits, a lot of press coverage of the recent Ancestry launch, and preparation for upcoming events on everything from bookbinding to board games. If you’re planning on visiting us this month, please also note that we’ll be changing our Guest WiFi in the searchroom from the 11th May, when it switches from CityConnect to ‘UOY-Fi Guest’.

New Accessions

We took in 10 accessions in April, three being additions to our University of York Archive, relating in particular to exhibitions at the Norman Rea Gallery. We also added copies of ‘Contact’ newspaper to our Patrick Duncan Archive. Duncan founded and edited the fortnightly newspaper in South Africa in the 1950s, aimed at an African readership and known for its radical politics and support for universal franchise, regardless of race.

The Yorkshire Wildlife Trust Archive has received some multimedia additions - DVDs and CDs covering a wide range of trust projects and three boxes of slides showing natural history paintings by Peter Waterton, trust staff, sites and projects, dating from 1979 to the 2000s.

On the architectural front, we’ve added 20th century drawings of Fossgate and Fossgate properties to the archive of the Company of Merchant Adventurers of the City of York, as well as drawings, articles and photographs relating to papers of architect George Pace. Papers relating to the repair of the fifteenth century tower of Terrington Church were also part of the latest Terrington parish accession, along with minutes and reports of the Parochial Church Council, orders of service and a 1611 edition of the collected works of theologian John Jewel.

Finally, in April we received the final part of the collected papers of two former members of the Society of the Sacred Mission, an Anglican religious order and theological training college based at Kelham in Nottinghamshire for much of its history. Alexander Adkins and Dr Dominic Tye were students and staff at the college during a tumultuous period in the Society’s history, both before and after the closure of the Kelham college in 1973. Their letters and photographs, together with their detailed notes and contextual essays arranged across eight volumes, provide a unique view of college life and the personalities which shaped the Society and they will be of enormous value to future researchers.

Borthwick Out and About

It’s a bumper ‘out and about’ this month. The big news in April was the launch of 16 million of our records on Ancestry.com, including all of our probate registers. The launch was featured on BBC News and the Who Do You Think You Are website, as well as in The York Press and The Northern Echo newspapers. Access and Digital Engagement Archivist Laura Yeoman also appears on That’s York TV to discuss the launch and what it will mean for researchers.

Laura also took a selection of Kit Kat wrappers to the former Rowntree’s Cocoa Works (now the Nestle factory) on the 10th April, accompanied by Collections Information Archivist Sally-Anne Shearn, who gave a short presentation on the history of the Kit Kat. The event marked the unveiling of a blue plaque on the site by York Civic Trust (modelled on a Kit Kat wrapper, naturally) and was covered by BBC News.

Our display of Kit Kat wrappers at the unveiling of the blue plaque at the Cocoa Works

Our display of historic Kit Kat wrappers at the Cocoa Works.

The 30th April saw the end of the excellent ‘All Shall Be Afforded Dignity’ exhibition, which drew on the Borthwick’s Southern African collections to tell the story of artist and anti-apartheid activist Norman Kaplan. You can read a behind the scenes blog by student curator Olivia Reed on the website of the Anti Apartheid Legacy Centre.

We released two new Borthwick podcasts in April: ‘York’s Merchant Adventurers and the Petition of 1478’ with York Medieval Studies alumni Diana Wallis; and ‘Clergy and Criminal Violence in Late Medieval England and Wales’ with Professor Peter Clarke of the University of Southampton. There’s also a new episode of Curator and Keeper for you to enjoy: ‘Historic Houses, Georgian Splendour and a Chocolatier’s Clock Obsession’ with Dr Sarah Burnage.

Lastly, we hosted two external visits in April, welcoming volunteers from North Yorkshire libraries and archives on the 20th and members of the York and District Family History Society on the 23rd, as well as attending the ‘History and Archives in Practice’ showcase at the University of Sheffield alongside colleagues from across the sector.

Laura and Lydia at the History and Archives in Practice showcase at Sheffield

Lydia and Laura at the History and Archives in Practice showcase at the University of Sheffield.

Looking ahead, on the 13th May Keeper of Archives Gary Brannan will be speaking at a special event held at Lancaster University to celebrate the 100th birthday of comedian Eric Morecambe. Gary will be discussing the joke books of Eric Morecambe, which we were fortunate enough to acquire last year.

You can also find several of us at this year’s York Festival of Ideas in May and June. Conservator Catherine Firth will be running a workshop on ‘Creative Bookbinding Skills’ with Emma Lloyd Jones on the 31st May, whilst Gary will be chairing two events in June: the Doctor Who themed ‘Adventures in Time, Space and Television’ on the 6th, and ‘Six Penn'orth of Hope: Gambling and the Rowntree Trusts’ on the 9th. On the 5th June, Minster and Rare Books Librarian Sarah Griffin will join Professor Rachel Cowgill to talk about the Kendrew family of printers in 19th century York, and on the 7th Catherine and Research Services Archivist Lydia Dean will be leading ‘Space to Play: Board games from the archives’, giving participants the chance to get hands on with facsimiles of real historic games from our collections. This will be accompanied by an exhibition in the display cases outside of the Yorkshire Room in the Morrell Library. The festival brochure goes live on 1st May, so make sure to secure your tickets!

Last, but certainly not least, Laura Yeoman and Gary Brannan will once again be taking part in the Great York Walk for the University's Mentally Fit York Fund as Team Borthwick. Mentally Fit York promotes good mental health on a local, national and international scale. Your support will be used to fund on the ground initiatives and the latest groundbreaking research.

This could include 24/7 mental health support for York students, Mental Health Nursing Scholarships and research projects to further our understanding of mental health issues and the barriers to accessing support services. Your support will contribute to a range of initiatives and research projects which are decided by an expert panel of mental health and wellbeing researchers, practitioners and advocates.

This is Laura's fifth year of taking part in the walk, and Gary's sixth. The Borthwick was also a recipient of funding from Mentally Fit York in December 2024 for the project Stories of Mental Health from York: Past Present and Future. If you are able to donate, you can do so through Laura's fundraising page, which links to the Team Borthwick page.

Archive of the Month: Papers of Ann Reynolds and Margaret Hannah Reynolds, née Twiss

What is it? Letters, artwork and photographs belonging to the Reynolds family, chiefly Ann Reynolds of Heslington, near York, and the family of John and Margaret Hannah Reynolds, née Twiss, of Denfield House in Cheshire.

Where can I find it? The archive has been fully catalogued on Borthcat.

Why is it Archive of the Month? The Borthwick has many important works of art in its care - from delicate medieval illuminations to hand drawn illustrations for famous Rowntree and Terry advertisements. This month we want to highlight the work of a lesser known category of historical artist, but one that deserves more appreciation - the enthusiastic amateur.

At the heart of this particular archive are a pair of women artists and cousins by marriage: Ann Reynolds and Margaret Hannah Twiss. Ann was living in the small village of Heslington outside York by the 1840s, whilst Margaret ran a boarding school for young ladies at Millington, Cheshire, both before and after her marriage to Ann’s cousin John in 1841. At a time when drawing and painting were considered necessary accomplishments for gently born young women, this collection shows the effort that went into honing these skills. The young Ann Reynolds attended drawing classes in Nottingham, alongside a host of other girls whose names she carefully records in the back of her sketchbook. There are pages upon pages in that same sketchbook, as well as elsewhere, capturing their studies of human anatomy, facial expressions and clothing, as well as renderings of classical statues and famous pictures, painstakingly copied from printed reproductions.

Ann Reynolds' practice sketches and a list of her classmates from drawing class at Nottingham

Practice sketches and a list of Ann Reynolds' classmates at Nottingham

These hours of practice enabled both women to eventually direct their efforts at something far more fascinating to the historian and researcher, the people and places they knew at the time they knew them. Heslington Hall appears multiple times in all its 1853 glory, sketched by Ann who lived only a few minutes away, while Margaret includes sketches from her visits to Brimham Rocks, Buxton, Kenilworth Castle and Thorp Arch, where she sketches a paper mill on the River Wharfe. For their families and friends, we find various silhouettes, side profiles and posed pencil sketches and watercolours showing men and women dressed in the well-to-do fashions of the 1830s and 1840s. And that’s not to overlook the family pets! Just as we love to take photographs of our pets today, so the keen artist of the early 19th century liked to do the same with the tools available to them.

Animal drawings from the Reynolds and Twiss archive, including Dido the Cat.

Family pets amongst the sketches of Ann Reynolds and Margaret Twiss

Such amateur works of art can be found in many family archives, both large and small. That they are not generally well known; that they are sometimes not particularly well executed, does not detract from their value as records of a world before photography became widely available. At a time when the only way to depict the world around you was through the application of pencil, charcoal and paintbrush, often following many hours of practice, these pieces survive as a window into the private worlds of their creators - an imperfect, idiosyncratic and, above all, wonderfully human glimpse of the past.

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