An early Christmas present for the Archives

In the current climate, there is always plenty of competition for grant funding, so we were delighted the other day to receive news that Brent Archives has been awarded a grant of more than half the cost of a conservation project , which will allow us to make a fantastic archive collection available to the public once more.

In October the Archives submitted an application for a grant from the National Manuscripts Conservation Trust for funding towards a project to conserve papers from the North Collection.  The North Collection of Willesden Parish papers is amongst the oldest material at the Archives, and this grant will enable a conservator to do specialist repair work to ensure that it survives for many year to come.

Until the mid nineteenth century, the parish was the basic unit of local government in England.  Parishes looked after the poor, maintained the highways and church, and oversaw law and order.  Each year, officials were appointed or elected from the parish population to oversee various aspects of its function: the churchwardens would look after church property, the constables had general duties relating to the watch and law and order, the overseers of the poor were responsible for poor relief and the highway surveyors for the maintenance of roads within the parish. 

Willesden parish was centred on St Mary’s Church in Church End and covered Church End, Willesden Green, Neasden, Stonebridge, Cricklewood, Harlesden, Kensal Rise and Kilburn. This fascinating collection consists of the papers relating to the administration of the parish, from 1733 to 1870, from rate assessments to the local constable’s records, to the overseers’ accounts, showing how ‘poor relief’ payments were made to the less fortunate parishioners.

The papers were collected by local historian William North in 1904, and eventually became part of the collections here at Brent Archives. Most similar collections for the area that is now Brent are held at London Metropolitan Archives in Farringdon, but we are very fortunate to have such a rich historical resource in the collections here at Brent. 

Before the North Collection was moved to its current home in a secure and environmentally monitored store, it was unfortunately damaged by damp, and it was only possible for around half the items to be treated by a specialist archives conservator at the time.  This picture shows the receipt for the payment made by the parish for local man James Palmer, to be treated at the Smallpox Hospital in St Pancras – you can see the mark from the water damage.

Since then the remaining material has been in too poor a condition to allow public access; but now, with the award of the NMCT grant, a conservator will soon be able to start work, to repair the damage as much as possible and stablise the collection so that we can make it available to the public again.

It is painstaking work involving very specialised techniques, as the documents are individually cleaned and repackaged without causing damage to the paper or inks. There are thousands of individual items in the collection, so the project is likely to take around two years. We will be posting updates to let you know how the work is going – and we’d love to hear what you think, and answer your questions about the project, so do get in touch!

Posted by Kate