Kathryn Steenson
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Cheers to Nottinghamshire’s Pubs!
November 20, 2018
It’s almost that time of year when people eat, drink and make merry. Public Houses, taverns and inns have been at the centre of English community life for hundreds of years. Their origin can be traced back to Roman Britain, when places to seek rest and refreshment were established along the network of Roman roads. …
By the pricking of my thumbs Something wicked this way comes
October 31, 2018
The Witchcraft Act of 1735 brought an end to the legal acceptance that magic and witchcraft were genuine. It became a crime to claim magical or supernatural powers, with a maximum penalty of a year’s imprisonment. Instead, witches, cunning folk and wise men were viewed as fraudsters conning the desperate and the naïve. This complete …
MRI project gets under way
October 17, 2018
This is a guest post by Zoe Ellis, MRI Project Archivist. Manuscripts and Special Collections recently started work on an exciting 12 month project entitled ‘Development of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) at the University of Nottingham’. This project is funded by a Wellcome Trust Research Resources award of just under £100,000. The project will catalogue, …
Mad Dogs & Englishmen
September 28, 2018
World Rabies Day takes place each year on September 28, the anniversary of the death of Louis Pasteur. Better known for developing the pasteurisation process, he was also involved with developing the first efficacious rabies vaccine. It’s not a disease that many people in the UK have reason to give much thought to, but roughly …
Reaping What You Sow
September 17, 2018
Autumn is harvest time, and there has been much in the news about how the heatwave of summer 2018 has affected arable farming. Wheat harvests came early, but salad crops suffered from the lack of water. We are better protected from food shortages and weather anomalies than our ancestors, but the weather still has a …
A Token of Childhood
August 20, 2018
Are the souls of your children of no value? Are you indifferent whether they be damned or saved? They are not too little to die…not too little to go to hell….not too little to go to heaven. And so begins James Janeway’s cheerful book, ‘A Token For Children: An Exact Account of the Conversion, Holy and …
Silence
August 15, 2018
The grumpy 13th century scribe who couldn’t help but open his story by reminding his audience how underpaid and underappreciated the arts (especially storytellers) are would probably despair if he had known similar complaints would still be expressed in the 21st century. He wrote seven centuries ago, but his tale was set seven centuries before …
Remembering Hans
August 4, 2018
Today, 4 August, marks the 143rd anniversary of the death of Hans Christian Andersen, the prolific Danish author best remembered for his fairy stories, including The Little Mermaid, The Little Match Girl and The Ugly Duckling. Andersen was born in 1805, the only child of poor and uneducated parents who told him the family rumour …
‘Wish You Were Here!’ Picture Postcards: The Wrench Series
July 25, 2018
Guest post by Abigail Cobley, Document Production Assistant at Manuscripts & Special Collections. Picture postcards offer a unique and fascinating insight into social history. Much can be gained about life in the past from studying postcards showing street scenes, holiday destinations, military events, and artistic watercolour prints (to name but a few). In the 21st …
Women’s Suffrage in the D H Lawrence Collection
July 18, 2018
One hundred years after the ‘Representation of the People Act’, which awarded the vote to women over the age of 30 who owned property, it seems like a good time to rediscover some gems from the archives that provide intimate snapshots of the fight for the vote. Louisa ‘Louie’ Burrows, a friend and onetime fiancée …
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