Sheffield Archives - History of Archive Collecting in Sheffield - 1945 - 1960

1960

After the war the collections were brought back to the Central Library and the reading room, which had been closed for the duration, was re-opened in November 1947. A turning point came about a year later on 31 October 1948 when, with the City Librarian's active support, a meeting of the National Register of Archives was held at the Central Library with the late Lord Scarbrough in the chair; at the meeting it was decided to set up a South Yorkshire committee of the National Register.

Colonel G. E. G. Malet, the Registrar of the National Register, was faced with a particular South Yorkshire problem at this time. The great Fitzwilliam mansion of Wentworth Woodhouse was about to be let to the West Riding as a college. There was an immediate need to find a repository willing to receive the whole of the family archives (except the muniments of title) many of which lay stacked in the corridors there. The City Librarian and the Libraries committee agreed to accept them into custody on loan deposit and on 26 and 27 January 1949 three large furniture vans transported the archives to Sheffield. It is difficult to remember how they were housed until two new strong rooms with 1800 feet of shelving were made ready for use early the following year. During the summer of 1949 a document repairer was appointed and given a period of training at the Public Record Office.

Following the announcement in the press of the deposit of the Fitzwilliam archives, scholars from both sides of the Atlantic began to make their way to the Library, initially to study the Rockingham and Burke papers. Professor T. W. Copeland arrived in May 1949 and five Americans were working on the papers that summer. Two years later Chicago University Press undertook to sponsor a new and full edition of Edmund Burke's correspondence, with Professor Copeland as general editor. For the next 18 years the 'Burke factory' was working in part of the Sheffield Local History and Archives Department on this project.

The ten years following 1949 saw the deposit of several large family and estate archives, including the Duke of Norfolk's Sheffield and Worksop estate records, as well as other types of records. The full-time appointment of an archivist as the National Register of Archives, South Yorkshire committee's representative (working from the Central Library) for about eighteen months during 1953-4 was a great asset at this time. Early in 1956, as part of the City Libraries' centenary celebrations, a Guide to the Manuscript Collections was published.