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Booklet contentsForewordThe first forty yearsCompletion of the Wills Series Looking to the FutureFinancial Support to the Record Office Appendix AAppendix BAppendix CAppendix DAppendix E |
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The first forty years of the FriendsIn 1979 (shortly, as it was to turn out, before the biggest crisis and the turning-point in our history) the Friends produced 'a brief review of the first 25 years and some thoughts for the future'. As this is no longer in print, it seems right not merely to take the Friends' story as from that date, but to use that record in compiling an account of the whole of our 40 years' life. We feel some pride in being almost certainly the first of the, by now, many groups of Friends of County Record Offices. In 1992 there was a National Friends' Conference, at which we were represented, and it is pleasant to know that we have helped other such groups - most recently Gloucestershire - to come into being. These newer groups have perhaps been wiser in choosing names with a more specific flavour, such as 'Friends of the Record Office', which makes their role clearer and avoids some of the misconceptions which our vaguer name has encouraged. Some years ago we considered changing our name, but it seemed to us that the substantial practical problems this would cause would outweigh the benefits. |
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Early years - FoundationIn 1953 the Essex Record Office, recovered from the trauma of the wartime years, was under the inspirational leadership of F.C. ('Derick') Emmison, supported by a redoubtable band of juniors, many of whom were later to make their mark as heads of other county record offices. One of the most remarkable of Emmison's imaginative achievements in these vintage years was the agreement then reached with Lord Petre for the lease for 21 years (later extended to 28) of the east wing of Ingatestone Hall, and its use as an alternative home for the Record Office, in particular as a home for exhibitions. This created a focus for the Record Office for nearly three decades where scholars and students could work in delightful surroundings, where the skilled archivists of the Record Office could set up a unique series of annual exhibitions of documents and illustrations on a selected aspect of Essex life and where many of the public, adults and schoolchildren alike, could for probably the first time in their lives be exposed to the delights and the rigours of documentary historical research. These exhibitions were a fertile source of recruitment to the Friends, and those of us lucky enough to have retained the admirable illustrated brochures produced for them cherish them as a valuable souvenir. The present generation, too young to have had the opportunity to enjoy these exhibitions, cannot possibly realise what they have missed: these exhibitions set an example most unlikely to be bettered. In his article on "The Big Intake' in the Essex Journal for Winter 1991 Derick Emmison has given us an insight into the early days of the Record Office and of the flood of records into the Office from many of the leading Essex landowning families. By 1953/4 this 'big intake' was perhaps a thing of the past, but many valuable sets of records were still lost to view - and often almost lost to memory - in estate muniment rooms and lawyers' back offices. Action was necessary to rescue these records from their perennial enemies - fire, damp, worm and the ever-threatening new brooms who failed to realise their historical significance. It was by then already evident, and since then has become still clearer, that there was much advantage in that informal approach to the holders of these records which was to be one of the chief original purposes of the Friends. Landowners and their professional advisers who had already deposited their records voluntarily could pass on to their confreres the message of the advantage of so doing far more compellingly than could even the most honeyed words of a County Archivist. It was also clear that there were many services that a body of willing volunteers could perform at such a centre as Ingatestone Hall - the provision of refreshments, the organisation and manning of a counter selling copies of suitable exhibits, postcards and other souvenirs and knick-knacks. The Hall, and particularly the Long Gallery, was a fine setting for recitals, lectures and other special events only loosely linked with the exhibitions. To leave this work, or at least a substantial part of it, in the hands of a voluntary body would spread the load in a way that must appeal both to the County Archivist and to the County Treasurer. It was the insight of Mr. Basil Brooks J.P., at a time when Friends' organisations, in whatever field, were much thinner on the ground than they are now, to see that such a body would in all these ways - and others - be of service to the Record Office. In conversation with Dr. Emmison about Ingatestone Hall, Mr Brooks said "The Council will need some extra money for this very good scheme, as well as for buying special manuscripts, and I am willing to form a 'Friends' Society". Mr. Brooks' offer was indeed opportune. A letter signed by himself, Mr. D.A.J. Buxton, Dr. Marc Fitch F.S.A., and Mr. Laver Clarke (then Chairman of the E.C.C. Records Committee) was sent to over 50 influential Essex personalities inviting them to a meeting in the Long Gallery at Ingatestone Hall on 4 Dec. 1953. Nearly 40 were able to attend, and a Committee was formed to draft a constitution. At the first General Meeting on 27 March 1954 the Society's name was adopted and honorary officers, a Committee and suitable VicePresidents were appointed. Mrs Margaret Emmison was invited and agreed to serve as Hon. Secretary. Mr. Brooks was chosen as its first Chairman, and Sir Francis Whitmore K.C.B., C.M.G.,then Lord Lieutenant and Custos Rotulorum of the county, honoured the Society by becoming President. It was decided, as well as seeking to achieve our principal objectives, to arrange social and musical events and lectures in the Long Gallery and elsewhere and that it should be sought to hold Annual General Meetings in Essex houses not normally open to the public. Mr. Brooks marked the occasion by' a generous donation and gave the Society an ancient iron 'Armada' chest to attract voluntary donations from visitors to Ingatestone Hall. The aims of the Friends were then set out as:
Sadly, within days of his appointment as Chairman, Mr. Brooks and his wife were killed in a major air disaster. In his place Brig. J.T. de Horne Vaizey of Halstead, a leading County Councillor and, naturally, one of the founder members, was asked and agreed to take the chair. It was his vigorous - and very determinedly informal - approach which inspired the early days of the Friends. |
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Ingatestone HallThe activities of the Friends during these first years were much centred on Ingatestone Hall. To the casual visitor the Friends' most conspicuous activity was in producing and selling a range of souvenirs of visits to the Hall. A stock of picture postcards - originally of the Hall itself, of the portraits of Sir John and Lady Petre, and before long of the virginals, introduced the range. Before long other items followed, including skilful reproductions of several Great Seals of England, of the beautiful seal of Waltham Abbey and of other local seals. Many of these were the handiwork of Miss Olwen Hall, now Mrs Abbott, to whose devoted efforts for so many years the Friends owe a great debt. The profits from all these sales at the Hall and donations by visitors were important sources of revenue to the Friends. To enhance the furnishings of the Hall the late Dr. Marc Fitch presented a valuable collection of 18th century Chinese armorial porcelain, all the plates of which were made for Essex families. By remarkable good fortune in 1958 a playable mid-16th century pair of virginals were offered to, and purchased by, the Friends. The Long Gallery was the natural and fitting home for such acquisitions. Here lecturers and talks, many by Dr. Emmison, Mr. Newton and other leading Essex scholars were given: other lecturers were eminent academic figures like the late Sir John Summerson and Professors Hurstfield and St. Joseph. Visits were made, many to the leading privately-and publicly-owned Essex country houses for the Annual General Meetings, and also to museums and other places of great historic interest like the College of Arms. There was no lack of occasion for anniversary celebrations at Ingatestone Hall. To celebrate the quatercentenary of Queen Elizabeth's Progress into Essex in 1561, when she stayed with Sir William Petre there, we invited the Essex Archaeological Society (as it then was) to join us in an 'Elizabethan Feast': we also paid the lecture fees of a number of distinguished Tudor historians. In 1970 the Friends commemorated the 350th anniversary of the Pilgrim Fathers by a 'Mayflower Dinner' at which several notable American historians were our guests. We were also very conscious of the Hall's links with William Byrd. The year after the virginals were offered us and acquired, they were used in a BBC Transcription Service recital. They were played at recitals by our own musicians like Dr. Emmison, and also by leading recitalists of the day such as Thurston Dart. Dr. Emmison was persuaded to allow himself to be recorded playing them, and the record has an honoured place among our archives. |
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Other ActivitiesBut although these were the most publicised works undertaken by the Friends, they were not the most important part of what we did. It was in 1964 that the new Record Office in Victoria Road South was opened; these more capacious premises gave us a new home, and thus an alternative, though as yet still secondary, focus to our loyalties and energies alongside Ingatestone Hall. Then and later we contributed funds towards improving facilities at both. Our chief concern was rightly always the enhancement of the services of the Record Office and the enlargement of its stock of archives. Along with this went the support of publications which widened the public's knowledge of the history of the county. As early as 1957 we purchased maps of the Barrington estate at Hatfield Broad Oak for presentation to the Record Office. The same year we bought Humphrey Repton's 'Red Book' of Stanstead Hall, Halstead. A long-lost volume of Great Waltham parish registers (see frontispiece) surprised everyone in 1961 by coming on the market, and this was similarly purchased for the Record Office. Very sadly the well-loved Essex Review, dating from 1893, finally ceased publication in 1956. Two years later the main unsold stock of back issues was bought up by the Friends for sale to members and to the general public. Some years later the Essex Archaeological and Historical Congress, which had taken over the rights to the title, brought out the Essex Journal as a successor to the Review. It has been a regrettable, but readily accepted, obligation borne by the Friends from time to time right through to the present day to be ready to help the journal through one or other of its periodic financial crises. The Friends have also given substantial aid to publications, particularly those published by the Record Office. In 1958 we paid the cost of the blocks for some of the illustrations in the late Hilda Grieve's masterly study of the 1953 floods The Great Tide. We also gave financial support to the publication in 1961 of Dr. Emmison's Tudor Secretary, a biography of Sir William Petre, and, as mentioned later, to the first three volumes of his series on Elizabethan Life. We made a contribution towards the indexing of the Transactions of the Essex Society for Archaeology and History. Throughout these years the Friends' membership had been increasing in
numbers up to a maximum of 803 individual members in 1961. A list of those
who were founder members of the Friends and one of those who have been
members for 25 or more years, is given in Appendix E. (Though this number
seems very high by comparison with our membership in more recent years,
it should be borne in mind that in the 1980's we switched to a pattern
of family membership, and this accounts for much - though certainly not
all - of the reduction from the peak number.) |
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Elizabethan LifeDr. Emmison had long realised how exceptionally rich the Essex county archives were for the Elizabethan period. During his career as County Archivist he had had little opportunity to research or publish work based on this vast body of records, and he saw no hope of the Record Office staff, inevitably pressed by all their other commitments, being able to prepare them for publication in the normal course of their work. This outstanding series comprised the Quarter Sessions Records, the Archdeacons' Court Books and, above all, the great series of over 10,000 wills. In 1967 the County Council agreed that he should be allowed to retire at the age of 62, and to commission him to put the most suitable selections from this material into three volumes of normal length (to print it in extenso would have required up to 40 volumes). Volumes i to iii of Elizabethan Life were the fruit of this agreement, and the Friends gave the County Council large contributions towards their cost. As a follow-on to this, the Friends purchased from the Public Record Office photostat copies of the most significant absentees from the great stock of Essex Elizabethan wills held in the Essex Record Office. These were the wills - normally of nobility, gentry and substantial merchants who held property in more than one county, and of their wives and widows - which had been proved and held by the Prerogative Court of Canterbury (PCC). An index to these was prepared and made available to students: it was much welcomed and in great demand. Elizabethan Life achieved both critical approval and good sales, particularly Vol. iii, which gained national publicity from being seen on a photograph of H. M. the Queen Mother's reading desk, and was also commended in one of the quality Sunday papers. This, together with the interest shown in the PCC wills index, encouraged Dr. Emmison and the Friends to consider the possibility of extending the series further by publishing a volume of the PCC wills. As Vol. iv of the series they were published in 1978. Though the PCC wills were those of the topmost ranks of Elizabethan society, the Essex Record Office wills included many of gentry and merchants of comparable wealth and standing, and the case for a fifth volume containing such a selection was a very strong one. This was prepared for publication but not for the first or last time the stringency of local government finance stood in the way of its publication, and the Friends found themselves having to meet the whole cost of this Vol. v, which was published in 1980. In 1975 the Executive Committee of the Friends organised a 'coming-of-age' party to coincide with the Annual General Meeting (this was before the age of majority was reduced to 18). This colourful event was held, by the most kind agreement of our then President, Sir John Ruggles-Brise, at his home, Spains Hall, Finchingfield. The dinner was preceded by a display of morris dancing and a performance by 'The Elizabethans' of dramatised and hilarious versions of many incidents recorded in the earlier volumes of Elizabethan Life: repeat performances were later given at Horham Hall, Thaxted and at the University of Essex. But a still more significant anniversary was soon to follow. This was the 25th anniversary of the Friends, which was marked by a special Annual General Meeting in the Council Chamber at County Hall, Chelmsford. A presentation was made to Dr Emmison: there was an exhibition, a meeting at Ingatestone Hall to mark the anniversary, and later in the year a concert there. By a fortunate coincidence the international Archive Week was held in November 1979, and the Friends took a leading part in several events to mark this. The figures in the appendices give some indication of the financial resources and of the expenditure of the Friends over these years leading up to our twenty fifth anniversary. It has been calculated that in these 25 years just under £15,000 was paid over in grants or promised as firm commitments to the Record Office for its own needs or towards publications it sponsored: grants were of course also made to other bodies. |
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Essex WillsBut the prevailing desire of Dr. Emmison and of the Friends as a whole was to make progress in bringing the whole corpus of Elizabethan Essex wills to the knowledge of the interested public. The wills held at the Record Office - those proved by the Archdeacons' and the Commissary Courts - covered a wide range of the society of the day, from all but its very topmost ranks to people in very modest walks of life who had just a little property or a few goods to leave. They were of great potential value to scholars in many different fields - social, economic, agricultural historians, architectural historians because of the buildings described, and likewise to interested owners of old houses, and above all the rapidly increasing army of family historians. It was first necessary to establish by means of a trial run what proportion of the population of Essex at that time would figure in a transcript of all the surviving wills of the period, whether as testators, beneficiaries or witnesses, and how satisfactorily the information gleaned from the wills would interlock with that from the other surviving bodies of documents of the period. The parish of Ingatestone was chosen as being as nearly representative as was practicable, and having very complete surviving sets of parish registers and court rolls, which could be used to compare the recorded population, name by name. The very detailed data thus put together showed such a high measure of correspondence as to emphasise the likely usefulness of a complete transcript of all the wills. One small group of these Essex wills was held, not in the Essex Record Office but in the Guildhall Library in London; these were the wills of the eight Essex parishes nearest to London. Transcripts of these were published in a small separate volume in 1983,
thanks largely to the generosity of our member Mrs Rose Caunt, in memory
of her late husband George Caunt O.B.E. |
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The Loss of Ingatestone HallBut before any of these volumes were actually published the blow had fallen. The County Council's lease on the east wing of Ingatestone Hall had come up for renewal in 1980. Understandably the Petre family had to look for a higher price, reflecting inflation and the changed market prices for such properties, and the Council was, as ever, under an obligation to make economies. The 1979 exhibition, fittingly on 'The Petre Family in Essex', was sadly the last of the great series. A short-term agreement was reached whereby the Record Office had the use of the Hall up the summer of 1981, but in the circumstances it did not prove possible to mount further exhibitions. The Friends' papers show the many efforts in which we were engaged, sometimes in the leading role, to achieve some more modest arrangement which would preserve the use of the suite of rooms in the east wing to the Record Office. But all these efforts foundered on the costs that would be entailed. This blow left the Friends widowed and deprived of much of the role we had hitherto enjoyed. Ingatestone Hall had taken up not a little money, the lion's share of our energy and perhaps yet more of our emotional commitment and loyalty. This could not easily transfer itself to the Record Office in Chelmsford. Much of the Friends' income had been earned at the sales counter at the
Hall but a large part of the stock held for sale there had to be sold
off. Furthermore many donations to the Friends, and not a little of our
membership, had been gained from appreciative visitors to the Record Office's
exhibitions. Another cause for regret was that there was now no home for
the virginals, nor for the other furniture and furnishings which had been
presented or purchased with Ingatestone Hall in view. In the buoyant market
of the 1980's we were able to sell them at a favourable price, the virginals
to the University of Cambridge and the other items to suitable buyers,
and this benefited the Friends' funds substantially. But these windfalls
could give no pleasure, even to the Hon. Treasurer, unless there were
some other fitting cause to which the Friends' resourses could be devoted. All however was not gloom, and other initiatives were flourishing. The Essex Primary Schools Award, which Mrs. Elizabeth Lamb has made her particular commitment, was introduced as a means of encouraging state junior - and occasionally infants - schools' project work in local history. Our spirits were also brightened at this time by one of the most valuable one-off achievements of the Friends. Dr Emmison's researches had revealed the remarkable quality of the late 16th and early 17th century estate maps of the Walker family of East Hanningfield, and had made them something of a talkingpoint among Essex historians. Later Gus Edwards and Ken Newton's pioneering book, published in 1984, brought this knowledge to a wider audience. It was therefore of great interest when in 1986 a hitherto unknown - and particularly fine - map of Belchamp Walter appeared on the market as it were out of the blue. As chance would have it, at that moment the Record Office budget was fully committed and no sort of emergency subvention was available from county funds. Fortunately the Friends were to hand with cheque book at the ready, and through us the map was gained for the Record Office. The map's quality was such that there was no hesitation on the County Council's part in agreeing that they would foot the bill as soon as funds were available - but the incident had proved, were there any doubt, the importance and value of the Friends to the county and to the Record Office. |
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Recent Years - The New ConstitutionWhile pointing to the usefulness of the Friends, such incidents did not provide us with a clear new role. A new direction and new vigour were needed, and fortunately they were to hand. The Friends had for a long time been conscious that our constitution, devised by Brigadier Vaizey in the early days, was unsatisfactory in current circumstances in several detailed respects. The stated objects of the charity fitted better the time when what was needed was to prevail on landowners, and other record-holders like the long-established county solicitors, to deposit their record holdings, and also to give practical back-up support to the Ingatestone Hall exhibitions. In some cases there was room for doubt whether certain initiatives, which the Friends had undertaken or might wish to undertake, came within the scope of our powers as conferred by the constitution. The constraints on continuity in chairmanship and membership of the committee militated against continuity of knowledge and of policy. The Lord Lieutenant was also obliged - albeit as a matter of form - to resubmit himself annually for re-election as President, and this was hardly fitting. Efforts had been made in earlier years to revise the constitution, but for whatever reason they had foundered. A revised constitution was accordingly drafted in 1987 and discussed with ¢ members of the Friends. It became evident that, since the Friends are a registered charity, some aspects of the draft required the approval of the Charity Commission, and that this would not be a mere formality. However, with the Commission's valuable help a Scheme was drafted, publicly advertised and in due course agreed, giving the necessary legal authority for those of the changes proposed which needed this sanction. This done, the draft of the constitution was amended to embody the wording of the Scheme where this was required, and the amended draft was submitted for approval at an Extraordinary General Meeting held immediately before the 1989 AGM at Hatfield Peverel. This, inter alia, made it possible for Kenneth Neale to be re-elected as Chairman despite his having already competed his three-year stint of office, and gave committee members a five-year term of office instead of three years as hitherto. The most important change - not exactly due to the new Constitution, but enshrined within it, and representing both the wishes of the Friends and the advice of the staff of the Charity Commission, however was the emphasis on the role of the society in the eduction of the people of Essex in the history of their county. This fitted in readily with the outcome of our own internal reappraisal. We were, and remain, conscious that we are an ageing membership, to a modest extent still representative of those leading Essex families who were our original members and, by now to a much greater extent, of those with a specialised knowledge and interest in local history and particularly of its documentary sources. This is not the stuff of the normal local history society, nor ordinarily of the family historian - though it certainly is that of the genealogist. Therefore, despite suggestions to the contrary, we have consciously decided not to compete with the local history society in offering a programme of regular meetings, speakers and excursions in the summer. In any event, with out membership resident all over the county and beyond, we should be at a considerable disadvantage if we were to offer such a programme. This is not to say that we have seen ourselves as superior to those with more popular tastes. Each year we have offered a few outings, often to libraries and other important depositories of records. In 1988 we visited the Bodleian Library at Oxford and in 1991 the Cambridge University Library, and it was interesting to compare these two great libraries: the former exclusively a reference library with closed shelves, whilst the latter has open shelves and permits the bulk of its stock to be borrowed. We had the privilege of being the only visiting group in 1990 to whom all the archives of Hatfield House were opened on our visit there - a privilege for which we were very grateful to the Most Hon. the Marquess of Salisbury and his librarian, Mr. Harcourt Williams. In 1991 we were delighted to return to our old stamping ground at Ingatestone Hall, now opened to the public, to be the guests of the present Lord and Lady Petre for a talk by the eminent American historian of Essex, Prof. Marjorie McIntosh. |
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Completion of the Wills SeriesThese social events, though valuable and enjoyable, are fringe activities. The support of Essex history, the maintenance and enhancement of its archives, and the promotion of education in Essex history are the centre of our concern. Lacking as we do a County Record Society of the kind possessed by so many counties, we must give special priority to publishing the records, and recordbased historical studies, which provide the authoritative account of our county's history. Dr. Emmison's studies of Elizabethan Life and the Wills Series are a noteworthy example of this type of work. But they need to be supplemented over the years by works of comparable importance and merit covering other periods. As was mentioned earlier, our enterprise in the Wills Series came to be at risk of collapse when the Boston Society found itself unable to continue the project. But, persuaded of its great value, we then decided that we would accept responsibility for seeing this project through to completion. As an earnest of this we immediately took over the work on, and the publication of, Volume 4, which was substantially ready to go to press. But if we were to accept this liability, we had to ensure that we held funds sufficient for it. Accordingly for the first time in our history we made in 1987 a public appeal for finance to the amount of £10,000. This appeal was made to interested members and to learned and other bodies with a particular concern for historical records. Its purpose, fully explained in our appeal literature, was to provide an endowment which should, by the use of its capital and interest, provide sufficient funds to meet the costs of typing, proofing and publishing the nine outstanding volumes in so far as they could not be recovered from the sales income over the period whilst publication was still in hand. The outcome of this appeal exceeded our most optimistic forecast. We received very generous contributions from the Society of Antiquaries, the Pilgrim Trust and the Essex Society for Family History, all of which showed the value they attached to our enterprise. Dr. Emmison played a large part in seeking these funds for the task, and added to them from his own generosity. There were numerous other substantial private donors, to whom we are most grateful, and many more gave smaller, but still very welcome, sums. In 1989, just over a year after the appeal had been opened, it was closed having raised some £ 13,000, a truly magnificent result. With this dedicated resource behind us, the work of producing the Elizabethan Wills Series has gone forward. Vol. 5 was published in 1989, Vol. 7 (which outpaced Vol. 6) in 1991 and Vol. 6 in 1992. These volumes completed the first section dealing with the Archdeaconry Courts and the wills proved in them. The remaining five volumes will cover the Commissary Court and the wills proved in it: Vol. 8, the first of these, was published in December 1993. At the time of writing, the costs of printing and publishing each volume are of the order of £5,500. We plan to complete the series by 1997. We believe that the Wills Series is a valuable and important contribution to the history of the Elizabethan age, and this view has been confirmed by reviewers in the learned press. These last years of recession have held back sales, chiefly on account of the tightness of the budgets of academic and public libraries; but as each volume appeared it has been in steady demand. They were not published in the expectation, or even the hope, that they would become best-sellers, but we are confident that the series will be a valuable tool to students and researchers for many years to come, which is the primary purpose of the enterprise. |
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Other PublicationsThough perhaps our flagship, the Wills Series does not represent anything like the whole of our interest in publishing. As Appendix A shows, there are many Essex Record Office publications to whose printing and publishing costs we have made contributions, and we regard this sort of financial (and where appropriate other forms of) support as the normal and natural medium for our assistance in this field. But it is not only Record office publications which we support. Another of Dr. Emmison's long-term commitments has been to complete the publication of the Feet of Fines for Essex, whose rather uninformative title hides a very valuable official record of the transfer of land titles from the twelfth century right through to the Tudor period and indeed beyond. Four volumes of these were published by the Essex Archaeological Society between 1899 and 1964. It was the ambition of Dr. Emmison and of Dr. Marc Fitch as co-editors to complete the series up to the end of Queen Elizabeth's reign. The two volumes were a long time in gestation, but Vol. V was published by the Leopard's Head Press in 1991 and Vol. VI in 1993. These two volumes could not have been published without the generous financial support of Dr. Fitch and of Dr. Emmison, and also a substantial contribution by the Friends. We also made a large contribution to the two festschrifts An Essex Tribute (1987) in honour of Derick Emmison and Essex Heritage (1992) in honour of the late Sir William Addison, both of which were sponsored by the Essex Archaeological and Historical Congress and published by the Leopard's Head Press. |
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Educational and other supportIn the more strictly educational field we have continued our support of the Primary Schools local history Award. Though the number of entrants year by year has been modest, it has not been a case of the same schools continually reentering, and winning entrants have ranged from small village schools like that at Great Chesterford to urban schools like Newlands Spring in Chelmsford. Even more important, the standard of the work has been consistently high, and much interesting and valuable work has been produced. We have displayed the entries at successive Annual General Meetings and at our stand at the biennial Essex History Fairs, where they have evoked much interest and commendation. Our one wish is that there could be a larger entry, and unfortunately the prizes had to be put into abeyance for 1993 when, probably for reasons connected with the introduction of the National Curriculum, there were none at all. In the work on these awards we have owed much to the enthusiasm not only of Mrs Lamb, but also to that of Mr. Ian Mason, the Archive Education Officer. We award each year a bursary called the Emmison Fellowship for postgraduate
research in local history based on county records: this is open to students
from all over the world. On the opening of Cressing Temple in 1989 by Essex County Council one of the events was the Book Fair organised by the County Library Service. We and they agreed that one aspect of this should be some three 'Essex Book Awards' to be given to the most distinguished books published on an Essex theme, whether historical, topographical, fiction or otherwise, over the preceding two years, and we joined with the Library Service and commercial sponsors in sponsoring these awards. Care was taken to ensure that at least one of the awards was reserved to productions by local societies with only modest resources. In the light of the success of the 1989 competition it was agreed that awards made should be biennially. We took the lead in 1991, and the Library Service again in 1993/4. There has been an increasing number of entries in each of these years - in 1993 as many as 105. We have been most grateful to Lord and Lady Petre for making the family wing of Ingatestone Hall available to us for the award ceremonies in each of these years. |
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Help to the Record OfficeOther parts of our help to the Record Office are strictly practical. Some of this is physical help at the biennial Essex history Fairs, Open Days, 'Roadshows' and other events. But we are also trying to give the Record office such assistance as is within our power in indexing and calendaring archives held there, working under the guidance of their staff. In particular two projects are in hand which ought to be of value to future students of Essex history. One of these is a more comprehensive index to Morant's History being organised by Mrs. Margaret Cornwall - a vast task in view of the masses of genealogical and topographical information which this great - and lengthy - work contains. The other, of almost equal bulk, is an index to the typescript (unpublished) calendar of the Essex Quarter Sessions rolls from 1556 to 1710. In addition individual Friends are undertaking or have undertaken calendaring or similar projects at the Record Office. Our Vice-President, Mr Peter Wright, a qualified librarian, has been reclassifying the Record Office Library. Despite all these changes, we still see the support of the county Record Office as being our primary task - and perhaps with today's financial constraints it is more needed than ever. It is now less frequently that we secure further deposits of archives - though it still happens from time to time. By now the range of archival material is of course much wider than it was even when the Friends were founded. The range of documents itself is wider, embracing so many industrial and social activities, but even more importantly photographs, oral history and much else are now sought as readily and valued almost equally with the written document. Appendix A includes a few examples of the more significant of the acquisitions we have enabled the Record Office to make. To meet possible, but necessarily unpredictable, emergency calls on the Record Office's resources we always ensure that a sizeable part of the Friends' funds is kept in liquid or readily realisable assets. Along with other archive groups we are keeping a wary eye on the Governments' proposals for the reorganisation of local government. We are ready if necessary to use all the influence and professional knowledge at our disposal to seek to ensue that the decisions to be taken do not prejudice the services provided by the Record Office to the whole of the ancient county of Essex. |
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Our Expanding RoleWith this wider range of activity, both direct and by means of grants, it is no surprise that there has been a marked upward turn in both our level of activity and the extent of our expenditure. The new constitution, the new emphasis on education, and our increasing financial commitments arising from the Wills Series and elsewhere, all made it necessary that we should modify our pattern of organisation to reflect these new obligations. It was not practical that all these matters should be put before the full executive committee, and the obvious solution was to create subordinate committees. Some of these were ad hoc to deal with particular issues, but others are permanent committees working to remits given them by the main committee. At the time of writing we have three subsidiary committees dealing respectively with the Wills Series, other publications and with promotional activities. We are most grateful to Frank Herrmann and to Bill Hewitt for their leadership of the latter two committees respectively. Michael Crellin and David Elphick have in succession supervised our finances with commitment allied with good judgement. With these developments it has been inevitable that the upturn in our
expenditure has been markedly beyond that to be explained by the fall
in the value of money. This is shown by the figures in Appendix A. In
1991/2 the sums we actually spent, by way of direct expenditure or grant,
reached the remarkable level of £21,172, together with further commitments
to spend amounting to £12,450. Fortunately our resources have kept
pace with this expanding role. This is above all due to the success of
the Wills Appeal, which freed our other resources from that particular
commitment. The high interest rates of a few years ago also helped. Even
so we realised that this level of expenditure could not prudently be maintained,
especially with interest rates falling. We therefore decided that no new
commitments to spend should be entered into in 1992//3. This has restored
our finances, and our support of new Record Office initiatives and of
other bodies' activities has resumed in 1993/4, though our expenditure
is unlikely readily to return to the giddy levels of 1991/2. |
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Looking to the FutureAs was mentioned earlier, we in the Friends are conscious that we are a society much of whose original purpose was brought to naught when the Essex County Council's lease of Ingatestone Hall was not renewed. It seems to us that we have found a renewed purpose in our broadly educational activities, together with a wider interpretation of our long-standing support role for the Record Office. Nonetheless we still have to feel our way forward and to be prepared to recognise that not all of our initiatives will bear the fruit that we looked for from them. We must not, in particular, lose sight of the fact that we are sitting on substantial funds - funds which would be the envy of almost any of the other 'Friends of Borsetshire Record Office' groups which have followed us into being. We have a duty to be trustworthy stewards and responsible dispensers of these funds. |
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EducationOur new constitution commits us to a responsibility for the education of the people of Essex in the history of their county. But our role here in fact dates back to the days of the Ingatestone Hall exhibitions which, though valued by many of maturer years, were none the less designed for school parties. As mentioned above, we have retained this role in such activities as sponsoring the Essex Primary Schools local history Award. We hope and trust that its non-award in 1993 will prove to have been a merely temporary difficulty and that, at least next year, there will again be a competition and a worthy winner of the Award. We are likewise committed to different ways of implementing this primary objective of the Friends, such as the bursary and the 'school packs' and hope that over the years we shall find many other ways of making the history of our county better understood by our young people. We cannot pretend that even a fairly wealthy society such as the Friends can have sufficient resources to do more that to touch the fringes of education in local history. The most we can hope for here is to do something by way of pumppriming - to establish by example what is likely to be valuable if done more widely: and likewise sometimes to find that other projects are unlikely to prosper. We think that, on this basis, our contribution, though modest, is still useful and welcome. |
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ResearchWe have referred elsewhere to what is now in hand. But there is much more to do. We hope that the opportunity for new tasks of this sort will emerge to use the talents of all those with the time and energy to spare for them. The present day trends of earlier retirement mean that there are more and more highlyqualified people with time, and we should hope the inclination, to undertake this valuable voluntary work. And with the resources of the Record Office ever more strained, we can be sure that archivists will now welcome the services of such volunteers, working under professional guidance. |
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PublicationsWe should have fallen short of our duty had we not, in the course of the years we are reviewing, taken full advantage of Dr. Emmison's unique knowledge of the Elizabethan world. But this has inescapably given our publications a leaning to that particular period which will need to be corrected in the decades to come. Some texts of other periods have already been published, either by the Friends alone, or the Record office with financial assistance from the Friends, for example, Dr Jennifer Ward's edition of the Lay Subsidy of 1329 and the latelypublished Maynard Lieutenancy Book. Others will follow, provided only that there is a supply of scholars of the necessary calibre to provide the edited texts. Our main commitment will continue to be to give assistance to the Record Office in respect of those books which it wishes to publish. There seems to be an ever-growing market for books on local history, and books of very varying quality are being published to meet it. The Record Office has gained a unique reputation for its large and distinguished range of publications at the top end of this market. Its books are of course scholarly, but despite this very real commitment to scholarship it cannot ordinarily undertake, in fairness to the mass of ratepayers, the task of publishing works of pure scholarship with little or no popular appeal. The Friends are equally committed to scholarship but have no County Treasurer to keep a watching brief for the ratepayer, and thus we can hope to supplement the Record Office's range of books. These obligations to the Record Office certainly do not exclude our giving assistance to other scholars who wish to publish books of sufficient scholarly merit on Essex topics and based on Essex records. We are fully satisfied that this commitment to publication is a very natural and fitting extension both of our original, and continuing duty to support the Record Office, and of the commitment to education which is emphasised in our 1989 constitution. |
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Financial Support to the Record OfficeThe figures given in Appendix A to this booklet show the increased level of our financial assistance to the Record Office in the course of our forty years of life to date. Naturally the funds which we have made available cannot possibly begin to compare with the funds levied from the ratepayer which the County Council has given over the same period. Similarly, we are well aware that, with the beginnings of a world market for at least the most important archives, we must find ourselves ever less likely to be able to offer really significant help towards a major purchase. Even so, we believe that the help we have been able to offer has been more valuable than the bald figures would indicate. This, it seems to us, is for three reasons: in the first place, it has been to hand for special urgent purposes when there has been nothing available from the Council's voted funds (the Walker map - see page 9 - is to us the classic case). Secondly it has been available for pump-priming. Thirdly, and in the long run perhaps the most important, it has given the Record Office just that little bit of freedom of action that is conferred by the County Archivist's ready access to an alternative source of modest funds for which he is not beholden to the County Treasurer. The pivotal statement of the Friends' Business Plan must always be 'to maintain close and harmonious relations with the Essex Record Office so that all their resourses, business, financial and otherwise, can be used to the greatest advantage of the county and to ensure, so far as may be, the preservation of, and the greatest possible dissemination of the knowledge of, its historical heritage'. On this basis the Friends are proud of their forty years of service to the county. It may be that our biggest task is just ahead of us, when decisions have to be taken on the future of its organisation under the new structure, whatever it may be, after the Local Government Commission has reported. If so, we shall be prepared to face up to it. FOOTNOTE: The Executive Committee is very grateful to the Hon. Secretary, Michael Beale, for the authorship of this booklet. |
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