The Queen's College Record 2023

Reports and College Activities
A YEAR IN THE ARCHIVE
Michael Riordan
College Archivist
Much of the work we do in the Archive contributes to longterm
projects. I’ve been concentrating on our project to
recatalogue the entire Archive according to modern
international standards, whilst our Assistant Archivist, Amy
Ebrey, has been working on projects that include digitising
student files and providing archival boxes for the books in
the Archive. This year we commissioned 48 bespoke boxes
from the Bodleian; they measure each volume with the
book equivalent of the device for measuring children’s feet!
Amongst this routine work there have, however, been a
few highlights. These include some important and exciting gifts from Old Members.
Alan Mitchell (Engineering, 1968) has given us two leases that he purchased at
auction. The first dates from 1592 and is a lease of College land near Newbury. It
has the signatures of the Provost and senior Fellows and would have been given to
the tenants. The College once had a counterpart copy signed by the tenants, but
given that the College also had the lease copied into a ledger (which is still in the
Archive) the College was unfortunately persuaded to sell its early modern leases in
1930 and most of them have ended up in the Special Collections department of the
University of Kansas!
The other lease dates to 1792 and relates to a house in Southampton. It is signed
by the tenants Nicholas and Elizabeth de Carteret, though Elizabeth signs with a
cross, so was presumably illiterate. This was the copy given to the College and so
must have once been in the Archive; it was presumably part of the leases sold in
1930, but somehow got separated from the rest of the collection. It’s wonderful to
have it restored by Alan to the Archive, along with the earlier lease that makes up
for the loss of its counterpart to the other side of the Atlantic.
A selection of material presented to the
College by Paul Jackson
Another exciting acquisition comes to the
Archive from Old Member Paul Jackson
(PPE, 1974), whose extensive personal
‘archive’ of material includes correspondence,
lecture cards, buttery tickets, menus,
ball invitations, photographs, and other
material, and spans his time as an undergraduate
at Queen’s from his initial offer
letter all the way through to invitations to
post-Finals parties. Paul’s interest and
participation in student politics and drama
shine through, and the material offers
44 The Queen’s College | College Record 2023