Lockdown silver linings

In the last newsletter I talked about the archive of the Dukes of Buckingham and Chandos, which LMA was able to make available for the first time this year, by adding historic catalogue records to our online catalogue during lockdown. This was not the only one of LMA’s catalogues to be improved, or made available for the first time, thanks to work done from home during the last two years. Here, therefore, is ‘Lockdown Silver Linings part two’, a round-up of more work done by LMA staff while at home, to improve the content of our online catalogue.

The catalogue detailing the archives of St Thomas’ Hospital in Lambeth is already very extensive, but during lockdown we were able to add detailed information to the catalogue for several series of title deeds, not only to the hospital’s Lambeth and Southwark land and properties, but also to the hospital’s estates elsewhere in London and Middlesex and in other English counties. Three series of these deeds were previously catalogued only to bundle level in the online catalogue, with no details of the properties or parties involved in individual deeds. We did however have a handwritten index to individual deeds for parts of these three series, compiled by a former member of LMA staff in the 1980s. This index was input to the online catalogue during lockdown and researchers can now find details of each individual deed available to search via LMA’s online catalogue. That is a total of over 2,100 deed descriptions added to the catalogue. The earliest deed dates to 1304 but the bulk date to the 17^th and 18^th centuries. The three series involved are H01/ST/E/065: deeds to London property in the City, Southwark, Hackney, Wapping and Lambeth; H01/ST/E/066: out-county property in Middlesex, Surrey, Wiltshire, Essex and Kent; H01/ST/E/067: expired leases for properties throughout London and other English counties.

In addition to the deeds and leases for St Thomas’ Hospital we also added newly-automated catalogue records for series H01/ST/E/056, a run of estate reports from 1710-1849 consisting of views, valuations of repairs etc for the hospital’s Southwark, Middlesex and out-county estates. Series H01/ST/A/166, consisting of architects’ drawings of the hospital, was also added. This series dates from 1865 to 1915 and includes plans of the new Lambeth site to which the hospital moved in 1871, block plans of the hospital, plans of the nurses’ home, treasurer’s house, medical school, chapel and power station, as well as drawings of structural ironwork, masons’ and plasterers’ details and also seating arrangements for viewing the coronation of George V in 1911.

The next collection we tackled was the Worshipful Company of Merchant Taylors. This City of London livery company collection possessed a word-processed list for three of its series of legal documents, but sadly catalogues entered into word-processing software cannot be imported to cataloguing software like ours, which uses a database format. The whole therefore had to be re-keyed during lockdown. The three series are CLC/L/MD/F/016: expired leases of company property dating between 1300 and 1973; CLC/L/MD/F/017: property transactions including deeds and leases for all the company’s property within the City of London and in Hertfordshire and Kent, as well as Oxford and Cambridge scholarships, all dating between 1610 and 1930; CLC/L/MD/G/094, plans of Merchant Taylors’ Hall and other properties owned by the company in the City of London as well as convalescent homes in Bognor and the company’s Irish estate, 1765-1969.

During the second and third lockdowns we became even more ambitious and began to tackle the card catalogues for LMA’s reference library. Regular users of LMA’s public rooms will remember seeing, and maybe using, the cabinets of card catalogues which were our only finding aid for the library of around 100,000 books which LMA has available to view or to order onsite. These card catalogues, one in subject order, and one alphabetical by author, were added to regularly until the mid-1990s when LMA moved to using an Microsoft Access database for its newly-acquired library books. In latter years LMA’s new library books have been entered into the online catalogue of our sister institution Guildhall Library. At one point therefore we had three separate finding aids for our library – far from an ideal situation! The Access database was eventually incorporated into Guildhall Library’s online catalogue, which just left those card catalogues. A total of 16 members of LMA staff worked on typing the cards into Excel spreadsheets while working at home, and not long after the end of the third lockdown this work was finished. Our colleagues at Guildhall Library worked with their software provider to import the Excel spreadsheets into their online catalogue. LMA is now very happy to report that all its library books are now available to search through Guildhall Library’s catalogue. This is a remarkable achievement and LMA is very grateful to all its own staff who typed up the cards, and also to our colleagues at Guildhall Library who facilitated the addition of the new data to their online catalogue.

There is one more chapter to this ‘Lockdown Silver Linings’ story just coming to its end and I hope to be able to bring you details of yet another catalogue enhanced by at-home inputting in the next newsletter.