Come and See!

Since moving back to Newton Park in June, we've been delighted to welcome a range of visitors to the Archive office in the Castle.

From current students having a wander around campus, to a local walking group stopping for a chat, it's always good to meet new faces. Current students can tell us about the student experience today, and in every group of women there is the chance that one of them trained here in the past. Such was the case recently, and those women were interested to see the new student accommodation, the 'Gardens', nearing completion. Its fascinating to hear the ways in which the student experience has stayed the same in some ways, yet changed out of all recognition in others. They may have different work patterns, expectations and burdens, yet they still report being awed by the landscape, woken by the cows and finding lifelong friends here.

Last week, we welcomed a large group of visitors into the office. The Holburne Museum Trustees had enjoyed a tree walk around the lake before dropping in to see the exhibition we're currently preparing, and having a strong interest in history, were most interested in finding out more about our beautiful setting and the university's history.

The Holburne Museum Trustees during their recent Archive visit. 

The Holburne is Bath Spa University's partner museum in Bath, and many of our students - from a wide range of courses - volunteer, work and carry out projects there. The university also hold our 'Centre for History & Culture' monthly lecture series there, in which notable historians and speakers deliver their recent research.

The Archive exhibition itself, now ready, will be open during the first week of November, from 10am until 3pm, Monday to Friday. Those already on campus can pop in any time, and visitors can come along to the office, on the ground floor of the Castle. You'll need to pick up a visitors parking permit at the Security Lodge on your way in, or better still, take any of the frequent buses from the centre of Bath. We're a short stroll up from the library bus stop.

BSU Archive exhibition - almost ready to open!

We hope to welcome you soon.

Kate

Last week at the archive...

One thing we could say about the archive work, it's varied. Last Monday saw us putting the finishing touches to our exhibition. On Tuesday we discovered some wonderful old papers. On Wednesday, we finally began Phase 2 cataloguing. Thursday, the 1st day of August, was a catch-up day, and next week we'll be back to the cataloguing.

Working on the exhibition images

On a normal catch up day I'll be picking up a few of the 'dropped plates' from the archive - those tasks which need to be done to keep things ticking over but which sometimes get sidelined. Last week it was oral history interview proof reading, chasing up some almost overdue transcriptions, replying to blog comments and emails, and some supplementary research.

Wonderful old documents to discover!

Phase 2 cataloguing

The research is for a conference in September, hosted by the Centre for History and Culture at the university, and taking place in the centre of Bath. Some of the PhD students will be giving a 'Poster Presentation' of their work, and my offering is about the 18th century development of Newton Park. During my research stint last week, I found a few snippets from newspapers of the time, describing the building work of 1761 and 1762.

November 1762

January 1762

Last week's blogpost was about Graduations, and yet again, a couple of comments from alumni have set us off on a new trail of information. We now have added details about other graduation ceremonies, to add to the archive. Thanks for the comments!

During the past year or so, I've also been involved, along with Dr Roberta Anderson, in the writing of a book about our institutional history, and this is now going through the editing and proof reading stage. It was fascinating to write, and even more fun to source all the images. This task was a reminder of just how rich and varied our story is, and what a lot of great images we have here in the archive. Much of this material is what we've collected or been given in the last year, since the archive started to take off, and its tempting to wonder how much more we''ll have by this time next year, or in a few year's time.

Keep it coming, everyone. We'd love to hear your stories too!

TTFN

Kate