Archives Closure Period
Posted on 23rd Jul 2024 by Thomas McGrath
We’ve just completed our first week of our annual closure period, during which we shut to the public and do essential maintenance work with our collections. We’ve had a busy first week and all the team were involved in different tasks – let’s have a look!
Strong Room Auditing
One of the most important tasks we’ve been doing is auditing the collections in the strongrooms. These new rooms were created in 2021 during the ‘Revealing Wigan Archives’ Heritage Lottery funded project. We’re just making sure that all the boxes are listed and therefore, easier to find.
You might be wondering why we’re wrapped up in our winter clothes in the middle of July! Well the strong rooms are temperature controlled. So they’re generally around 14-16c and about 50% humidity. This is lovely when you’re just popping in and out, but it can get quite nippy when working in there for any length of time.
Maps and Plans
We’re continuing to organise our maps and plans collections, which is a task which occurs monthly anyway. We’ve rediscovered some beautiful items which you can see below. This includes rejected plans for Leigh Town Hall by J. C. Prestwich, medical buildings in Wigan by George Heaton, and this lovely advertisement for John Sumner and Co.
Urban District Council Appraisal
It is quite fitting that we’re going through boxes of Urban District Council material this week, as it was 50 years ago this year that the councils were merged into the Wigan Borough. Some of this material hasn’t been handled in decades! We’ve found lots of gems, from dance nights and coronation events at Formby Hall in Atherton, to slum clearances in Ince and Tyldesley. We’ve also come across these photos of Chanters farm from the 1960s. Did you know there were plans to demolish the house in 1967? Luckily these were withdrawn as the building, constructed in 1671, is the oldest in Atherton.
We’ve also come across some interesting items deposited in the boxes long ago. This includes these old stamps from Abram Urban District Council, and this tiny seal which is reputedly the oldest version of Wigan’s seal – we’ll need to fact check this one!
The majority of the items we’ve come across are from the mid-twentieth century onwards. Some of the more unusual discoveries include this ‘restricted’ pamphlet tucked in between notes on meetings and minutes. In the next box we discovered a letter from the desk of Joan Collins stating that her favourite classic British films is ‘Great Expectations’!
Social Media
Speaking of Joan Collins we’ve been doing a bit of filming in the search room this week too! We’ve had artists Anna F. C. Smith and Helen Mather in to record some material about their latest artwork which was displayed in ‘Creating Place II’ at The Turnpike Gallery earlier this year.
Their work ‘explored the new green heritage of post-industrial landscapes; how we think about these spaces now, and how they become part of our contemporary civic identity’ and we look forward to showcasing more about this soon!
Exhibition Conservation
Yesterday our colleagues from the Museum of Wigan Life joined us so they could conserve, clean and polish some of our favourite objects in our exhibition. We're very grateful for their assistance and they've done a wonderful job.
