When I posted yesterday, I delayed sharing my experiences of my first day in Durham in order to provide further information about my project.
I did this for anyone reading this blog, though I also have found it unexpectedly helpful for me, myself to be revisiting my plans from some months ago.
Here, now, is the typed-up version of what happened on Tuesday. I am writing this on Friday morning, a day after making some discoveries that I am itching to follow up on today when I get to the Palace Green Library...
Here I am, starting to share my progress and its frustrations and discoveries and the bits in between - though I shall try to cut down any boring things.
There haven't been any boring things yet however - at least not for me. A heads-up... I really am only claiming to be speaking for myself here.
Today's research day began frustratingly as I had some issues with the blogging platform that I outlined earlier today in my first posting - though it feels like longer ago that that.
Having gone live with the blog, I made my way to Durham from Newcastle, initially for a meeting with the Principal of St Chad's College, the College I'll be affiliated with during my time in Durham.
I always feel anxious looking for new places and trying to look at Google Maps in a rainstorm didn't help. I saw two confident-looking young people ahead of me seeming to know where they were going. They turned into a building along a street opposite the Cathedral which turned out to be the door to St Chad's.
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| St Chad's College, Durham. Photograph sourced from Wikipedia - I should take my own and add those at some point |
I followed them in and the college staff were really friendly and welcoming, including the Principal, Margaret Masson, who showed myself and my fellow Fellows around. The highlights of the visit - beyond connecting with the other Fellows, all nineteenth-century experts spanning several disciplines - were seeing a sent of prints in the College dining room by Nelson Mandela, one of which in particular I plan to look at whenever I eat meals there.
More of that another time - because I want to get the crux of my first day in Durham - the library. I managed two hours there before closing time, and it felt like longer - or at least as though normal time didn't apply.
I had requested a particular set of papers - not for any reason other than they looked as though they might be more readily available than others. This set contained letters sent to one of the Headlam family members: Isabella Margaret Headlam.
At first I was confused as the information on the front of the folder stated that the letters were from 1855-71 and yet the only Isabella I could see in the handwritten family tree that came with the folder was for an Isabella who died in 1853.
I tried a Google search for "Isabella Margaret Headlam" and got a hit for a Gravestones site. Here I found that someone of that name died in 1871 at the age of 56 and appears to have been born in 1815. I lucked out, it seems, as the record was added less than two months ago: on 24 December 2023.
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| Grave monument for Isabella Margaret Headlam in St Mary's church burial ground, Whorlton, County Durham sourced from gravestonephotos.com |
The first letter had a date of 1841 which doesn't match what is stated on the cover of the folder, so I should ask the librarians about that...
That first letter got me wondering whether I was cut out for archive researching. I found the handwriting very hard to read though I did manage to decipher the opening, which suggests that it might not be directly relevant to my research, apart for giving context for the people whose lives I am seeking glimpses into via their letters. How it began is:
I have been out basket hunting
...and so suggests that the author has sufficient familiarity with Isabella to jump in with this news.
Continuing to work through the letters, I found several close to impossible to read. The correspondents whose letters I had looked at so far had taken trouble to fill the whole page they were writing on. This one did that by writing over their initial text at right angles.
What this shows is just how far people would go to use as little paper as possible - either because paper was expensive/in short supply or to avoid paying more postage. I recall hearing something about this years ago but can't remember the details, or where I heard it or who I heard it from, except that it may have concerned correspondence from 18th-century travellers to Greece. Something to find out about later...
It also showed me just how difficult reading actual letters in contrast to seeing them printed out. Another thing it showed me is that one thing determining the contents of letters could be the desire for some writers to fill all the available space.
Then I got to the 13th letter: HHM/B14/13. I could not believe what I was seeing - it seemed too perfect for my project to be true.
For the first time, who the author was was clear, as was their relationship to Isabella as it began saying that it was from her 'brother'.
I looked at the end and the name in the signature was given - but I found the initials hard to read. Then I got it - F.J. Headlam. I looked back at the family tree and saw that this must be Francis John, one of a large number of siblings, whose dates were given as 1829-1908.
I looked along the list of siblings for Francis John and found - woah, I'd missed this (the family tree is detailed and squished up in places to fit everything on one piece of A4)... Isabella.
Isabella's dates are given as 1818-1871 - so not 1815 then?
As for Francis John - he will have been 12. Now I was excited, wondering whether this could be a letter written home from school - i.e. wondering whether it could be one of the letters I was there to consult.
Oh yes - it was. Francis was writing from Eton, where he had not been for long.
But continuing this will have to wait - it has got past 8am and I need to get ready to head to Durham for when the library opens at 10.
More asap!
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