The Ballad of the Cherry Tree

This is a guest post by Trish Kerrison, who volunteered at Manuscripts and Special Collections between April and September 2023, cataloguing medicinal herbs and their uses in remedies from material held in our collections.  In Mrs Willoughby’s Housekeeping Book of 1737 (MS 87/4), to which Mother Bird is a frequent contributor, there is a receipt …

International Women’s Day: Dorothy Brett

This is a post by ‘Editing DH Lawrence# co-curator, Dr Rebecca Moore. Dorothy Eugénie Brett, born in London in 1883, was an artist of noble birth. Having had drawing lessons since the age of five, she joined the Slade School of Art in 1910, and studied there until 1916 where she became known simply as …

Colonialism in Correspondence: The Letters of Lord William Bentinck

This is a guest post by English student Ben, written as part of his placement with the Nottingham Advantage Award from the UoN Careers and Employability Service. The letters of Lord William Bentinck, from the Portland Collection at the University of  Nottingham, contain many details of the governorship of India in the early 19th century. …

Say Cheese!

We may be approaching the end of picnic season, but we’re not quite ready to abandon buffet style finger foods just yet. We recently tried out an 18th century recipe for cheese rolls from one of the household recipe books in the archive as part of the 2021 Heritage Open Day theme of Edible England. …

King’s Meadow Campus

The University of Nottingham has been at King’s Meadow Campus for 14 years now, but the site is sometimes still referred to by what came before us: the Central TV Studios. The building now known as King’s Meadow Campus first began life as the East Midlands Television Studios. The foundation stone for the building was …

Agricultural Societies

Many agricultural societies were formed during the 18th century at a local level, enabling like-minded farmers to meet on both a professional and social level. The general aim was to share information on the latest farming methods and to improve livestock breeding. References to these societies can be found amongst the family and estate papers …

MRI Collections Project: the papers of Brian Worthington

This is a guest post from Rachael Orchard, Archives Assistant for the MRI Collections Project. Professor Brian Worthington’s papers form part of theWellcome-funded MRI Collections Project currently under way in Manuscripts and Special Collections at the University of Nottingham. He was a radiologist who was heavily involved in the development and use of magnetic resonance …

Celebrating the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II

The recent visit of Queen Elizabeth II to Nottingham as part of her Diamond Jubilee celebrations reminded us of an unusual item from the records of the Castle Gate Congregational Church. This extract comes from The Music with the Form and Order of the Service to be performed at the Coronation of Her Most Excellent Majesty Queen …

In Search of D H Lawrence

  If you think you know all about D H Lawrence but are struggling to remember titles beyond Lady Chatterley’s Lover or Sons and Lovers, call in on the exhibition  which opens on Friday 4 May at the Weston Gallery, Lakeside Arts Centre.  The display is entitled The Many Lives of D H Lawrence and it …

An Ancient Historian in the Archives

From May to November last year I was given the opportunity to conduct some research in the Manuscripts and Special Collections on behalf of the University’s Gender Histories Network. My task was to identify key areas within the collections that would be of interest to those researching topics related to the study of women and …