Dog Island
May 3, 2020
This is a guest post by Geography PhD student placement Robert Frost. My placement started in October 2019 with the aim of looking at the Engineers’ Files of the water drainage records in the University’s Manuscripts and Special Collections (MSC). These covered the predecessor bodies of the Severn Trent Water Authority, including the Trent Catchment …
Carry on Collecting: Tri Campus contemporary collecting during lockdown
April 27, 2020
Manuscripts and Special Collections (MSC) may be WFH and unable to access the collections in our manuscripts store, but we’re still busy improving our catalogues, promoting our resources, and we’re also still busy sourcing material to add to our archives. The University’s new digital preservation system allows us to manage and preserve digital items such …
Heirs and Spares: Succeeding George IV
April 13, 2020
This is a guest post by Dr Richard A Gaunt, academic curator of the exhibition Georgian Delights: Life during the reign of George IV 1820-1830. George IV spent most of his adult life waiting to be King. So accustomed have we become to this fact, and to the various machinations associated with his part in …
Live on Campus! – the 1970s
April 7, 2020
This guest blog was written by student placement Jessica Clarke, 2nd year Music. Jess trawled through our holdings of student newspapers, the Entertainments Committee minutes, and Students’ Union ephemera, to research bands and performers who played at the University of Nottingham. The 1970s were a different time: almost no one had a computer, most music was played from vinyl and the internet was not yet available to the public. It …
Homage to the Arboreal World
March 27, 2020
Trees have long been of significant importance to the human species. Our relationship with trees began with their ability to satisfy neolithic needs such as shelter and nutrients, which progressively shifted towards trees’ later central contribution to the evolution of agriculture and machinery. Indeed, major socio-economic changes over the 15th to 18th Centuries saw the …
Off to the races!
March 13, 2020
As today is final day of the Cheltenham Races, we’re trotting out some documents about horse racing in Britain and how some of its notable figures crop up in our collections. It’s become a cliche that the feckless elder son of an aristocrat gambles away the family fortune on cards and horses, but although there …
Putting it in Perspective
March 4, 2020
Guest post by Chloé Havez (3rd year Politics & International Relations undergraduate student) The title of a 1992 newspaper clipping on Coates’ criticism of the European Parliament quarrelling over where the European Environment Agency should have been built during the alarmist trend of ozone depletion is of unfortunate relevance today thirty years on, and could …
Monday Mystery: Celebrity Scrapbook, 19th century style
February 3, 2020
The Manvers family of Holme Pierrpont were one of the most influential families in Nottinghamshire in the second half of the 19th century. The men held high-ranking positions in various Army regiments, served as local MPs, and held other important civic offices, such as magistrates or Master of the Hunt. The archives we hold very …
The Cold War in the Cold Store
January 22, 2020
In the week before Christmas Manuscripts and Special Collections’ staff carried out an internal relocation of material and repackaging exercise that involved the entire section. To make this happen we decided to close the library to the public, freeing all staff to work in the library’s archival store. That week we donned warm layers and …
Georgian Delights
January 6, 2020
When King George IV died in June 1830, The Times asked, ‘What eye has wept for him? What heart has heaved one throb of unmercenary sorrow?’. George was a controversial figure throughout his lifetime (1762-1830). As Prince of Wales, after 1783, George became notorious for his frequent love affairs and lavish self-indulgence, spending wildly on …
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