Investigating the Archives
7 June 2011
What a great afternoon, thanks to the West Yorkshire Archives Office at Sheepscar in Leeds. That’s where most of the Studley Royal estate records were deposited by the Vyner family in the late 1950s – those that survived the huge fire at Studley Hall in 1946, anyway. The Archives Service are being really helpful and supportive, including allowing us to reproduce images free of charge.
My mission was to take detailed photographs of the three hand-drawn estate maps that the archives hold. The earliest is the 1831 estate map; it is one of the great problems with understanding Studley that this is the earliest map of the garden that exists, drawn at least 150 years after the gardens began. There probably were earlier ones, but those were used until they fell to bits. When are historic maps like buses? When you wait for one to arrive for ages and it’s rapidly followed by another – the next plan dates from just seven years later in 1838, drawn when the government was taking over the rights to medieval Tithes. Finally there’s another estate map drawn in around 1875, providing a link between the first two published Ordnance survey maps of 1852 and 1892.
All of the maps depict Quebec slightly differently. One of our first tasks is going to be to compare the various different depictions and overlay them on the modern OS base. The changes might be the result of mediocre surveying or really represent changes to the feature (following flood damage for example) over time. That’s one of the questions we should be able to answer when we dig in September.
Odd though it seems, hitherto we’ve only had very limited copies of these early maps. We’ve made do with a single black and white photograph of each, taken in 1986. It seems incredible that, although I’ve been working at Studley for almost 23 years, I’ve never seen the things in the flesh before.
They’re perfectly wonderful, covering much more of the surrounding estate than I’d realised before. It’s amazing to use objects actually handled by the people whose history we now work so hard to recover, seeing the places where their fingers wore the sheets thin.
It’s also a revelation that the maps are coloured. This conceals a lot of detail that just disappeared into the black and white photographs. It was particularly exciting to find a whole new depth of information on the paths in the Chinese Garden (and the areas beyond along the Seven Bridges Valley). These have long since vanished on the ground. There’s enough new information to justify a further piece of work clarifying how this little known end of the gardens once operated.
So, we now have the photography we’ll need of the Quebec area, and much else too besides. They really are the treasure maps I thought they would be – rich reward for the aching arms that I’ve got from over three hours of carefully leaning out over the huge, fragile, sheets to take photographs without leaning on them.
Friday, 10 June 2011
Monday, 6 June 2011
Solving the mystery of Quebec. Mark Newman, National Trust Archaeologist
27 May 2011
Fired with enthusiasm from yesterday’s meeting, am today trying to write an article for the World Heritage Site newsletter on the forthcoming project and its motivations. Not quite sure what note to strike: the first version turned out a bit dry and academic, and wouldn’t easily alter – so ended up writing a second full version.
Documentary research never ceases to fascinate me – how texts I’ve been looking at for years still end up capable of providing some new snippet of information one’s always over looked before. It's all down to coming back to the texts asking a slightly different question. An excellent example today, while researching for the newsletter article. I checked what Farrer’s History of Ripon (1801) had to say about Quebec and realised for the first time that its reference to small cannons at the site is in the past tense. I had been under the impression that they were still there in the nineteenth century, and had even wondered if they were a post-Aislabie addition – obviously not. Later guidebooks still include references to them, but there was clearly a lot of cribbing from earlier works going on.
Interesting that the guns went before 1801. In the 20 years prior to this there were other changes in the gardens, mainly relating to increasing numbers of visitors. Perhaps the guns were removed for safety. Maybe they were even pinched!
Fired with enthusiasm from yesterday’s meeting, am today trying to write an article for the World Heritage Site newsletter on the forthcoming project and its motivations. Not quite sure what note to strike: the first version turned out a bit dry and academic, and wouldn’t easily alter – so ended up writing a second full version.
Documentary research never ceases to fascinate me – how texts I’ve been looking at for years still end up capable of providing some new snippet of information one’s always over looked before. It's all down to coming back to the texts asking a slightly different question. An excellent example today, while researching for the newsletter article. I checked what Farrer’s History of Ripon (1801) had to say about Quebec and realised for the first time that its reference to small cannons at the site is in the past tense. I had been under the impression that they were still there in the nineteenth century, and had even wondered if they were a post-Aislabie addition – obviously not. Later guidebooks still include references to them, but there was clearly a lot of cribbing from earlier works going on.
Interesting that the guns went before 1801. In the 20 years prior to this there were other changes in the gardens, mainly relating to increasing numbers of visitors. Perhaps the guns were removed for safety. Maybe they were even pinched!
Solving the mystery of Quebec. Mark Newman, National Trust Archaeologist
26 May 2011
Given that all of this has been so long in the planning, it was surprising what a special day today felt like – the moment when the Green Light finally went on for real.
I’ve been harbouring ambitions for digging in Quebec for probably 20 years now. It’s been such a strange little corner of Studley, although it sounds from the documentary sources that it’s been like that for over two centuries, one way or another.
The logic suggests that there should be really interesting structures surviving on the site. The Marquis of Ripon decision to fill the pond should have sealed the original fabric intact under a good protective layer. I’m not at all clear why he decided to fill it in – the most likely explanation is that, like so much else, it was in declining condition, and the easy option was just to do away with it. That simplifying tendency does characterise so much of his management of the gardens. Not being a fan of imported species myself, I can only be grateful that he didn’t go crazy with rhododendrons as he did on Tent Hill. Given how Quebec floods, if he had there’d be little else growing beside from Skell from here to Ripon!
I wonder what the form of the islands and the ponds will look like. A clay lining seems very likely, and that really should have survived any form of mistreatment. Who knows about the shores though. The perimeter and the islands needn’t be made in the same way, of course. Where we’ve looked at this sort of thing previously, the construction methods have been surprisingly sophisticated – and never the same in any two locations.
The first job today was a site meeting with Justin Garner-Lahire from Field Archaeology Specialists. Justin and FAS have done some excellent work for us previously at Studley, most recently on the Lake Project in 2010. Their expertise will be crucial to this project’s success – and it will be interesting to see how managing an external contractor’s work with visitors, in this level of intensity, will work out.
Much of the rest of the day was spent giving a talk and tour of the gardens to the regular meeting of North Yorkshire Conservation Officers – the latter including talking about the project for the first time publicly.
At 4pm, the last appointment of another busy day at Fountains was the key meeting with Sarah (Conservation Manager), Jen (Visitor Experience and Marketing) and Tessa (Learning and Interpretation). Having designed the project back in the autumn, and then discussed it through the early months of the year, it has recently been reviewed by all key colleagues in the estate – with a certain amount of tweaking in one direction or another. At last we were all able to meet together, and iron out the wrinkles, successfully. The project will now move centre stage, though that’s going to mean a lot of work in the coming weeks.
The idea to include a blog is a great one. The blog for the Dunstanburgh survey was one of the most popular pages ever run by English Heritage. But I do feel a little intimidated. What will people be interested in reading, I wonder? I’ve not been a blog reader so far – obviously I have to start!
I was also really taken with the idea that we should mount the on-site interpretation on panels shaped like figure-silhouettes. The real test of this idea is going to be cost, and production timetable – time is short. Well worth investigating the idea, and an idea to hold in reserve for another occasion even if its not possible this time round.
Given that all of this has been so long in the planning, it was surprising what a special day today felt like – the moment when the Green Light finally went on for real.
I’ve been harbouring ambitions for digging in Quebec for probably 20 years now. It’s been such a strange little corner of Studley, although it sounds from the documentary sources that it’s been like that for over two centuries, one way or another.
The logic suggests that there should be really interesting structures surviving on the site. The Marquis of Ripon decision to fill the pond should have sealed the original fabric intact under a good protective layer. I’m not at all clear why he decided to fill it in – the most likely explanation is that, like so much else, it was in declining condition, and the easy option was just to do away with it. That simplifying tendency does characterise so much of his management of the gardens. Not being a fan of imported species myself, I can only be grateful that he didn’t go crazy with rhododendrons as he did on Tent Hill. Given how Quebec floods, if he had there’d be little else growing beside from Skell from here to Ripon!
I wonder what the form of the islands and the ponds will look like. A clay lining seems very likely, and that really should have survived any form of mistreatment. Who knows about the shores though. The perimeter and the islands needn’t be made in the same way, of course. Where we’ve looked at this sort of thing previously, the construction methods have been surprisingly sophisticated – and never the same in any two locations.
The first job today was a site meeting with Justin Garner-Lahire from Field Archaeology Specialists. Justin and FAS have done some excellent work for us previously at Studley, most recently on the Lake Project in 2010. Their expertise will be crucial to this project’s success – and it will be interesting to see how managing an external contractor’s work with visitors, in this level of intensity, will work out.
Much of the rest of the day was spent giving a talk and tour of the gardens to the regular meeting of North Yorkshire Conservation Officers – the latter including talking about the project for the first time publicly.
At 4pm, the last appointment of another busy day at Fountains was the key meeting with Sarah (Conservation Manager), Jen (Visitor Experience and Marketing) and Tessa (Learning and Interpretation). Having designed the project back in the autumn, and then discussed it through the early months of the year, it has recently been reviewed by all key colleagues in the estate – with a certain amount of tweaking in one direction or another. At last we were all able to meet together, and iron out the wrinkles, successfully. The project will now move centre stage, though that’s going to mean a lot of work in the coming weeks.
The idea to include a blog is a great one. The blog for the Dunstanburgh survey was one of the most popular pages ever run by English Heritage. But I do feel a little intimidated. What will people be interested in reading, I wonder? I’ve not been a blog reader so far – obviously I have to start!
I was also really taken with the idea that we should mount the on-site interpretation on panels shaped like figure-silhouettes. The real test of this idea is going to be cost, and production timetable – time is short. Well worth investigating the idea, and an idea to hold in reserve for another occasion even if its not possible this time round.
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