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) …
Mysteries of the Forest
December 14, 2023
Sherwood Forest has deep roots in Nottinghamshire’s history, folklore and culture: there is perhaps no other place which is so emblematic of the county. We are fortunate enough to hold several records about this remarkable area – including a collection of two manuscript volumes featuring copies of statutes, ordinances and extracts from the forest courts. …
The Ballad of the Cherry Tree
December 11, 2023
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 …
Cataloguing History: Time with the Manvers Collection
November 21, 2023
This is a guest post by Andy Judson, a student volunteer studying towards a PhD in History at University of Nottingham. He recently completed a 60-day placement funded by the Midlands4Cities Doctoral Training Partership and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). The placement engaged him to work with part of the extensive Manvers Collection, …
A Blessing and A Curse
November 8, 2023
The Rushall Psalter is a remarkable manuscript in many ways: it is an undoubtedly beautiful volume which has lived a long and unusual life – not to mention the fact that it is the subject of a 600 year old curse… As suggested by its name, the volume’s content is largely religious in nature, consisting …
Marginalia in a Medical Manuscript
October 25, 2023
This is a guest post by Tabitha Gresty, who volunteered at Manuscripts and Special Collections between April and September 2023, cataloguing medicinal herbs and their uses in remedies from material held here at Manuscripts and Special Collections. Since working on the Early Modern Recipes Research project, I have been constantly amazed by the breadth of …
Advocates for animal welfare: The Three Rs
June 30, 2023
Debate has long raged about the use of animals by humans, both as food and for the advancement of science. The National Anti-Vivisection Society was founded back in 1875 and the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection in 1898, by Frances Power Cobbe, campaigner for women’s suffrage and anti-vivisection activist. The Cruelty to Animals …
Reading the correspondence of the Duchess of Portland
May 18, 2023
This is a guest blog by Arts Faculty Placement student Nabiha Iqbal, who in 2023, worked on cataloguing the papers of Dorothy Bentinck, Duchess of Portland (1750-1794). I was granted the unique opportunity to revisit the lives of the noble men and women of 18th century England through their primary means of communication: letters. Each …
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