The day Mahatma Gandhi came to Beeston
July 15, 2024
On 17 October 1931 crowds gathered at the small railway station in Beeston, Nottinghamshire. It was a chilly afternoon, but that did not dampen the excited anticipation of the spectators. When they eventually saw him disembarking from the train, the watchers fell silent, curious. Clad in loincloth and sandals, with a shawl to protect him …
Dead End? Tunnels under Nottingham in fact and fiction
June 28, 2024
Considering the number of manmade caves which lie beneath the streets of Nottingham, it is unsurprising that, over the years, a tangled web of stories has developed which imagines a secret network of tunnels beneath the city. The details vary, with passages variously linking the city centre, the castle, and Wollaton Hall or running instead …
The phoenix in early modern print woodcuts
June 4, 2024
This blog post was written by our Special Collections Librarian in the course of her work on an upcoming exhibition at the Old Rectory Museum, Loughborough, where facsimiles of books from the Loughborough Parish Library collection will be displayed. The early Christian writer St Isidore of Seville described the phoenix in his Etymologies: ‘The phoenix …
A Painter and A Petition
May 9, 2024
In late 1841, Henry Pelham-Clinton, 4th Duke of Newcastle, received an unusual request in the post, comprising of a letter and petition from a man named as Thomas J. Williams asking for financial support to attend the Royal Academy in London, in order to hone his talents as a painter. In the petition, which is …
Discovering Iceland with the Benedikz Collection
April 9, 2024
The University of Nottingham may seem like an unlikely home for a treasure trove of Icelandic literature, but, nonetheless, in 1998 we welcomed the Benedikz collection: an assemblage of Old Icelandic sagas, poetry and travel books which greatly enhanced our pre-existing holdings of Norse, Icelandic and Viking literature. So, how did this remarkable acquisition come …
A Peek Behind the Iron Curtain
March 19, 2024
This is a guest post by Samantha Brinded, a volunteer at Manuscripts and Special Collections. Several months ago, upon expressing my interest in volunteering for the archives, I received an email inviting me to contribute to a project involving the School of Geography. The task would involve collating metadata for hundreds of slides, and subsequently …
Victorian Valentines
February 14, 2024
The link between St. Valentine’s Day and romance has existed at least since the later medieval period – but it was not until the latter half of the nineteenth century that one of its most iconic features emerged in its modern form: the Valentine’s Day card. Traditionally, Valentine’s Day had been associated with poetry – …
Working with the Mining Collections
February 5, 2024
This is a guest post by Owen Coller, who volunteered at Manuscripts and Special Collections between October and November 2023, as part of the Nottingham Advantage Award scheme. As a humanities student, the opportunity to explore a collection of 19th and 20th century sources through the Nottingham Advantage Award was both a daunting and exciting …
Politics Gets Personal
January 25, 2024
Diaries can make exceptionally rewarding reading: they are intensely subjective, inward-looking narratives, and yet can also provide a window onto times gone by, capturing everyday experiences and sudden cataclysms alike. This duality is perhaps captured nowhere so well as in the Diaries of the 4th Duke of Newcastle, which date between 1822 and 1850, and …
Meet the Participants
January 4, 2024
Hatfield Chase, a low-lying marshland straddling Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, once teemed with wild birds, fish and deer – the pursuit of many a party on this royal hunting ground. However, by 1626, Charles I had drained the nation’s coffers and sought an innovative solution to his financial woes: employing another Charles (Vermuyden, a Dutch engineer) …
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