Elenor Mundy’s Cookery Book: Cracknells
September 3, 2020
This is a guest post by Library Assistant Safiya Williams. Like many during these strange and uncertain times I have found comfort in food, faced with shelves empty of my everyday food staples – pasta, rice, yeast – I found myself flipping through cookbooks and notebooks trying to make do with what I have. I …
Horticulture
August 12, 2020
As the grounds of stately homes and houses begin opening up after lockdown, we’re taking a look at horticulture, which can be broadly defined as “the art or practice of garden cultivation and management”. Horticulture features prominently in the estate papers of local aristocratic families, who had the space and resources to create extensive gardens …
King’s Meadow Campus
July 30, 2020
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
July 25, 2020
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 …
But what do you do all day? Our third lockdown diary
June 29, 2020
This is the third in a series of blogs looking at the work that Manuscripts and Special Collections staff have been doing from home, and we are once again focussing on the additions to our manuscripts catalogue. New Online Catalogue In the first of this series of blogs, I talked about the planned upgrade to our archival management software, …
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
June 25, 2020
In the 17th and 18th centuries, a time before Instagram, National Geographic, or even David Attenborough, there was great interest amongst Europeans in the animals which roamed distant realms. These fantastic beasts were eagerly read about in publications written by explorers brave enough to adventure to far-off lands, with detailed engravings made from eye-witness accounts …
Family and Local History
June 15, 2020
A University library and archive is not the first port of call for many family historians. Manuscripts & Special Collections has more resources than some, and you don’t need to be staff or student at the University to come and use them. Normally we would have a stall at the Local History & Archaeology Festival …
But what do you do all day? – Our second lockdown diary
June 10, 2020
This is the second of our lockdown diaries, looking at the work that staff in Manuscripts and Special Collections have been doing since we switched to home-working. In last week’s blog the focus was on cataloguing; this week I want to look at some of the behind-the-scenes work that we’ve been doing to improve the …
Colley Cibber
June 8, 2020
If ever there was a case of success and fame being the result of luck, rather than talent, then Colley Cibber is it. He was an awful poet who became Poet Laureate through his political connections; a middling actor who connived to became a pioneering actor-manager in Drury Lane; and an unscrupulous and divisive man …
But what do you do all day? Our Lockdown Diary
June 1, 2020
We closed the doors to our reading room at 5pm on Friday 20th March and since then all our members of staff have been working from home. Now, in the first of a series of blogs, we want to update you on what we’ve been working on whilst socially-distancing from our beloved archive and rare book …
Find, follow, join us
