Baggy Greens do the Full Monty

As the 2009 Ashes campaign reaches its climax in the final test at the Oval this week, West Yorkshire Archive Service looks back to the visit of two Australian touring teams to the Leeds factory of Montague Burton, “The Tailor of Taste” in the 1930s.

The visitors seem to have attracted quite a crowd!  Here is C.W.Walker being taught to use a sewing machine, to the obvious delight of a sea of female admirers.

The Australian Cricket Team visit the Burton's Factory in Leeds, 21 July 1938

On the same 1938 tour, the Australian captain, Don Bradman, was photographed being measured for a ‘Full Monty‘ in a Burton’s store. 

Don Bradman being measured for a suit in a Burton's store, 6 May 1938

The day before the 4th Ashes test at Headingley, the 1938 team’s interest in tailoring may have been somewhat limited…

The Australian Cricket Team visits the Burton's factory at Leeds, 21 July 1938

The 1938 team were not the first Australians to have been welcomed at Burton’s Hudson Road empire.  The Burton’s archive (WYAS Leeds, WYL1951) also includes photographs of the visit of the Australian team prior to the 1934 Leeds test, and of the Australian Prime Minister, Joseph Lyons in 1935:

The Australian Cricket Team at Burton's factory, Leeds, 18 July 1934

Lyons, the Australian Prime Minister (on right), visits the Burton's factory in Leeds, accompanied by the Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress of Leeds (Alderman and Mrs W. Hemingway), Sir Montague and Lady Burton and Sir Ben Turner, 13 July 1935

And the results?  Well, in 1934, Australia took the series 2-1, drawing the fourth test after their visit to Burton’s but winning the final (timeless) test at the Oval by 562 runs.  Australia won again at Headingley in 1938, but England triumphed in another timeless test at the Oval by an innings and 579 runs to level the series, although Australia retained the Ashes won down under in 1936/37.

 The cricket fans on the staff at West Yorkshire Archive Service hope for a repeat, later this week, of England’s first innings total from the equivalent match in 1938 (903 for 7 declared)!

All images courtesy of Yorkshire Post and reproduced by kind permission of the Burton Family.

West Riding County Council records

The Collections Team are currently working on the records of the West Riding County Council (WRCC).

The West Riding County Council (based at County Hall, Wakefield) administered public services in the West Riding of Yorkshire from 1889 to 1974. The major responsibilities of the West Riding County Council were education, health, welfare, highways, libraries, police and fire services, planning, smallholdings, and the registry of deeds.

This is a large, complex collection. The collection takes up about 57 M³ of space –  that’s nearly 3000 archive boxes of material relating to all aspects of the WRCC’s work.

The County Council was structured around committees and departments. The committees were involved in policy and decision-making whereas the departments carried out the day-to-day administration. Some departments such as the Clerk’s Department and the Treasurer’s Departments carried out administrative work on behalf of a number of departments.

Each committee or department is listed separately, and in order to arrange the final catalogue we have had to ascertain which records were created by which committee or department.

Particularly tricky is discovering where material was created by a department and where it was created by the Clerk’s department. It is important to know who created a record as it needs to be seen in the context of other records created alongside it to make sense. In this instance the process was made easier because Jenny and Helen had previously been through all the accessions paperwork from when the WRCC collection was deposited in the archives. We were also helped a lot by finding some speeches in the collection written by the WRCC Clerk himself which talk at length about the role of the Clerk’s department and its responsibilities.

The Collections Team have some experience of cataloguing clerk’s papers. Over the past couple of years we have been involved in the cataloguing various Town Clerk’s departments (see previous post) as well as some initial work on the WRCC Clerk’s records. These borough clerk’s departments operated on a sectional basis and therefore follow to some smaller degree a structure very similar to that of the Clerks Department of the West Riding.

Now in August we have almost completed listing the departmental records. After listing the remaining Clerk’s Department records (about another 700 + boxes worth!) we will have a full overview of all the WRCC material. We will then be able to concentrate on the way in which the material is arranged and how to make it easily searchable. Watch this space for further updates…

Cataloguing Projects @ WYAS

 Cataloguing is just part of the work the Collections Team does; amongst other things we are involved in improvements to our online catalogue, producing guides to our collections, encouraging new deposits and working with volunteers. However, cataloguing is an important aspect of our work.

 The Collections Team undertakes cataloguing work which benefits WYAS’s 5 offices (Bradford, Calderdale, Kirklees, Leeds, Wakefield). The team currently focuses on material from public sector organisations, such as council records, hospital records, and police records. At the moment, we are working on the archives of the West Riding County Council (1888-1974).

Our cataloguing work involves a number of stages –

With a large collection, initially we look to see whether parts of the collection have already been catalogued and then we will “box-list” all the uncatalogued records so we have an overview of what a collection contains. We might also do some tidying up - removing duplicates, blank pieces of paper etc – at this stage (part of what archivists call “appraisal”). We may also need to do further research into the history of the collection which could involve looking at not only the records themselves but books, websites, accession paperwork (the documentation which is completed when a collection is deposited) from which we can draw up detailed administrative histories and flow charts.

Once we know more about the collection and the way the records relate to each other we can decide how the records should be structured in the catalogue. If the records have already been listed in the past sometimes the Collections Team may need to also “retroconvert” old paper lists lists onto our cataloguing database. These lists often need to be restructured to make them easier to use and to conform with modern cataloguing standards.

Once the structure is decided records are organised in our cataloguing database and the records can be marked up in pencil with a collection reference number which matches the number it has been allocated in the catalogue. It may also be appropriate to repackage some or all of the collection, for example, by putting items in acid-free folders or removing rusty paper-clips.

To give a flavour of what the Collections Team do here is some of the material that the team has worked on in the past few years:

Town Clerk’s Department records for Bradford Borough, Batley Borough, Leeds, West Riding County Council, Morley Borough, Huddersfield County Borough

Leeds and Bradford Police records

Calderdale township records and local authorities including: Hebden Royd Urban District Council, Hebden Bridge Urban District Council and local board, Mytholmroyd Local Board/Urban District Council, Hepton Rural District Council, Todmorden Rural District Council (including Todmorden Rural Sanitary Authority), Halifax Borough and records relating to Brighouse, Elland, Halifax, Heptonstall, Ripponden and Sowerby Bridge

Hemsworth Board of Guardians

Leeds local authorities including: Pudsey Borough, Calverley Urban District Council and Farsley Urban District Council

Stanley Royd hospital records

Welcome to the Catablogue…

Calling all historians, genealogists, archivists and anyone with an interest in history or the preservation of historical records!

This is a space for us to share information about the wonderful archive collections held at West Yorkshire Archive Service and update you on our cataloguing progress.

The Archive Service holds and preserves historical records of all kinds dating from the twelfth century to the present day on behalf of the 5 West Yorkshire local authorities – that’s over 4200 cubic metres of archive collections!

So sorting and listing them all, as you can imagine, is a major task!

Luckily many of our collections have been listed in the past, however, these were not always catalogued in a user-friendly way, so making old catalogues easier to use is also part of our job. In the past, most archival catalogues were paper-based meaning they could only be viewed in person at at our archive offices. Therefore, staff are involved in “retroconvering” old catalogues onto our  cataloguing database CALM so that they can be viewed on our online catalogue.

Hopefully the Catablogue will provide an insight into our collections work; what we do and how we do it…

Initially posts will be mainly by the WYAS Collections Team i.e. Kirsty, Jenny and Helen and our Collections Manager Alexandra, but in the future you can expect posts from all our staff about the interesting collections-based activities they are involved in.