written by Kathryn Hannan and Kaja Marczewska 

At UCL, we actively develop our Special Collections through acquisitions, by donation, bequest, transfer, and purchase.  We add to our collections regularly, across our collecting priorities, to enhance, complement, and diversify our existing holdings for research and teaching.

This blog is part of a new series, showcasing selected new additions to our collections from across UCL’s archives, records, and rare books. We hope you will enjoy learning a little bit about them!

 

White Lion Street Free School, Papers of Nigel Wright.  

Imagine a school with no compulsory lessons and no strict timetable, where pupils shop for and help prepare school lunches, take part in building maintenance, cleaning and tidying, and where decisions are made at a weekly meeting where teachers (known as workers), parents, and children all have an equal voice. This is how the White Lion Street Free School in Islington, London operated from 1972 – 1990. The school was free to attend with non-selective admissions, based on a local catchment area. 

We recently received an exciting donation of archival papers about the White Lion Street Free School, now part of the Institute of Education Archives here at UCL Special Collections. These papers were collected by Nigel Wright, who worked at the School for four years (1979-1983) and wrote a book about his time there. The papers include his research and reflections on the school, correspondence about the running and funding of the school, copies of School Bulletins, and a publication by the school “How to Set Up a Free School: A Handbook of Alternative Education”. As you can imagine such an experimental school created a lot of controversy and press coverage. The collection also contains press cuttings, both praising and criticising the school. 

Archive collections of material from such radical experiments in education during the 1970s – 1980s are rare as, so often, these experimental schools were short-lived. This adds to the value of this collection for research. And we are also already actively using the collection in our teaching too. Items from the Nigel Wright Papers were used this term in a module on ‘Radical Education’ on the Education Society and Culture BA. The students were fascinated to read first-hand accounts of such an experimental school and see photographs of its everyday life in the school bulletins. 

To find out more about the collection, see the catalogue record for Papers of Nigel Wright. 

 

 

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 In 2024, we have also so far added over 200 new items to our rare printed collections. Included here is a preview of some of these new additions.  

Two new volumes in our Laurence Housman collection:  

Laurence Housman (1865-1959) was the brother of poet and scholar A.E. Housman, and a versatile artist, scholar, and social reformer. At UCL, we hold a collection of books and periodicals by or with contributions from Housman. The collection was part of the library of Ian Kenyur-Hodgkins, an antiquarian bookseller, which was purchased by the College in 1978. This year, we added two new items to the collection:  

Of Aucassin and Nicolette : a translation in prose and verse from the Old French; together with Amabel and Amoris / given for the first time by Laurence Housman; with drawings by Paul Woodroffe; engraved on the wood by Clemence Housman. 

This new item is a lovely first Housman edition of the anonymous medieval French chantefable, or a ‘sung story’, which traditionally combined prose and verse. Of Aucassin and Nicolette has long been popular among book designers and illustrators and many editions exist. This Housman edition was printed in London, by John Murray, in 1902 and includes 3-full page illustrations – engravings on wood, by Clemence Housman, from the drawings by Paul Woodroffe. It is Clemence’s contribution that makes this item particularly interesting. Clemence Housman (1861-1955) was Laurence Housman’s sister and herself an author, illustrator, and activist in the women’s suffrage movement. Together with Laurence, she was the founder of Suffrage Atelier, an artists’ collective committed to campaigning for women’s suffrage in England, which specialised in printmaking, banner-making, drawing, and stencilling. Clemence and Laurence collaborated often, and we hold in our collection other examples of volumes illustrated by her (e.g. Moonshine & clover).    

While we hold another copy of the same edition, this new acquisition is a presentation copy, given by Housman himself to his friend John Baillie, subsequently regifted by Baillie and passed onto his friend, James Boswell in 1925.  

To find out more and to request this item, please consult our catalogue record for Of Aucassin and Nicolette.  

 

Palestine Plays by Laurence Housman. 

In his four Palestine Plays, Housman explores the dangers of superstition in interpreting the Bible and offers unconventional takes on the Old Testament. In his reworkings of Biblical narratives about prophecy and social justice, Housman draws on his contemporary political activism and his engagement with radical social movements, including women’s suffrage, pacifism, and socialism.  

The copy we recently added to our collection is the first edition of the Plays, published by Jonathan Cape in 1942. It was Laurence Housman’s own copy of the volume, signed by him, and includes his annotations as well as corrections to the text. The volume also includes an inscription, pasted on the back endpaper which reads, somewhat ironically perhaps: “Please keep this copy very clear, as it is a special edition. L.H.” and a pasted, undated flyer advertising Houseman’s reading from his plays at the New School Hall, King St. Methodist Church in Derby. As is the case with Of Auccasin and Nicolette, we hold more than one copy of this edition of Palestine Plays, but the newly acquired item offers a rich and unique insight into Housman’s writing and editing practice and the circulation of the book.  

To find out more and to request this item, please consult our catalogue record for Palestine Plays. 

 

 

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Twelve Original Woodcuts by Roger Fry 

This item includes 12 plates of woodcuts by Roger Fry, hand-printed by Leonard and Virginia Woolf at Hogarth Press, in their Richmond home in 1921.   

Fry was, alongside Virgina Woolf, a member of the famous Bloomsbury Group, a Bloomsbury-based collective or artists, writers, and intellectuals active in the early 20th c. He founded the Omega Workshop in 1913, a design enterprise which brought together members of the Bloomsbury Group, set up to break what he considered to be a false division between decorative and fine arts, and to encourage the expression of Bloomsbury Group aesthetics in graphic and product design. Fry also had links with UCL, having taught art history at the Slade. And while he is today considered one of the most important art critics of his time, he was also a painter and a skilled printmaker in his own right. He printed many woodcuts in the early 1920s, mostly inspired by the modernist aesthetics of the German Expressionism.   

Twelve Original Woodcuts is a wonderful example of many different areas of Fry’s practice coalescing. The volume is an expression of Fry’s keen interest in printmaking and in woodcut as a printing technology as well as a statement on his place in the Bloomsbury Group community, and its often collaborative and collegial approach to artistic practice and production. Here, Fry doesn’t print the work himself, but rather relies on the Woolfs printing press and distribution channels of Hogarth Press to produce and promote his work.  

In a letter of 2 December 1921, Virginia Woolf noted that “the first edition of Roger’s woodcuts sold out in two days, and another [is] to be printed, folded, stitched and bound instantly” (Letters, II, p.495). The first printing to which Woolf referred, included 150 copies only. The second impression, which we hold at UCL, was printed on superior paper stock and without the titles of the woodcuts. The size of the second printing is unknown, but very few examples can be traced today. This was also the last book to be printed by the Woolfs to incorporate original woodcuts.   

Our copy of Fry’s Woodcuts was part of Albert Ronald Morris’ library. Morris was a former Slade School student, and the item was donated to UCL by Romilly R. Morris, his son. 

To find out more and to request this item, please consult our catalogue for Twelve Original Woodcuts.

 

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 The Ojibway Conquest: a tale of the Northwest by Kah-ge-gah-bowl or G. Copway, chief of the Ojibway nation. 

Kahgegahbowl, also known as George Copway was born in 1818 in Upper Canda, to Mississauga chief. Although brought up in a Native American community, Kahkakakahbowh’s parents were converted to Christianity in 1827. Copway went to a church school in Illinois and later became a Methodist missionary in Canada. Following an embezzlement scandal, he was expelled from the Canadian conference of the Methodist Church and moved to the United States, where he enjoyed an extraordinary carried. His autobiography, considered to be the first book by a Canadian Native American, was published in 1847 and proved an immediate hit. The Ojibway Conquest, the copy of which was recently acquired by UCL Special Collections, followed in 1850.  

Published under Copway’s name, the work wasn’t in fact written by him. Julius Taylor Clark claimed in 1898 to be the author who had allowed Copway to publish it under his own name in order to “raise fund to aid him in his work among his people.” A later, 1898 edition includes Clark’s preface which outlines the book’s publication history.  

The copy we hold is the first, 1850 edition, published in New York and includes Copway’s portrait. Interestingly, it is a presentation copy, which was gifted by Copway himself to Dudley Arthur Mills, the British Conservative MP, in 1850.   

To find out more and to request this item, please consult our catalogue record for The Ojibway Conquest. 

 

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 Dialogo della bella creanza della donne, dello Stordito Intronato.  

Also known as La Raffaella, this volume was a popular 16th century work on women, social life, youth, love, and desire, considered quite scandalous in its day. Dialogo was written by Alessandro Piccolomini (1508 – 1578), but published under the pseudonym Stordito Intronato. Piccolomoni, very well known in his time for both his comic and scientific writing, was an active member of the Academia degli Intronati, an important meeting place for the aristocracy in the Republic of Siena. On entering the Acadmia in 1531, he took a name of Strodito, under which he published. His Dialogo was written as ironic, provocative, and playful entertainment for his fellow members of the Academia, but revealed also a wealth of detail on Renaissance women’s social lives, and often problematic modes of their representation in literatures of the period.  

First published in Venice in 1539, the volume was republished many times during the 16th century. UCL holds its 1560 edition from Milan. There are only two other copies of this edition recorded in the UK; Universal Short Title Catalogue identifies only four additional copies internationally. That is, this is a very rare item, and the UCL copy is made even more special as it retains its original 16th c. full soft pigskin binding with black lettering on spine. 

This item was part of the collection of Professor Charles Randolph Quirk, the Quain Professor of English Language and Literature at UCL from 1968 and 1981. His collection was donated to UCL by his widow Gabriele Stein, lady Quirk, and is now part of UCL Special Collections.  But our copy also includes traces of its other owner, the costume historian and British Museum curator John Lea Nevinson. Both an inscription and Nevinson’s playful bookplate are present in the volume, alongside a leaf inserted at the end with notes on edition of this work, in what looks like Nevinson’s handwriting.   

To find out more and to request this item, please consult our catalogue record for Dialogo. 

 

 

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 All our collections and collection items mentioned in this blog are available to all and can be viewed in our reading rooms. More information about what we hold and how to book an appointment is available on our website.  

We often work with donors and accept new acquisitions, where these supplement and enrich our existing holdings and speak to our collecting priorities. If you have an item or a collection, no matter how big or small, which speaks to our collecting remit and might need a new home, please contact us on spec.coll@ucl.ac.uk to discuss a possible donation to UCL Special Collections.   

UCL Library Service’s annual exhibition for 2024, “‘I Planted a Seed’: Childhood, nature, and creativity”, has recently opened in the Main Library!  

This exhibition explores how children’s imaginations are inspired by nature in their storytelling, exploration and creative world. The exhibition starts with the classroom and how nature supports creative learning in children. It then moves on to examine children’s own creative output and how nature is reflected in music, dance, play and textiles.  

On display are items from the IOE Archives and the Folklore Society collection, as well as material from outside of Special Collections including the IOE Rare Books collection and the IOE Curriculum Resources collection.  

‘I Planted a Seed’ is located in the Main Library Stairwell and 1st floor. It is free and open to the public. External visitors can book a ticket on the exhibition webpage. You can also access the exhibition catalogue and digitized collection items online.  

Our new Main Library exhibition “Hidden in Plain Sight: Liberating our Library Collections” is now open! The exhibition is free and open to members of the public.

Across UCL Library Services, staff members, students and volunteers have been working together to discover, record and celebrate the diverse voices in our collections. Through a number of projects, overseen by the Library Liberating the Collections Steering Group, we have gained a better understanding of our collections and improved their accessibility. However, we are at the early stages of this important initiative and there is still more work to be done.

The exhibition is located in the Main Library Staircase and First Floor. It is open to the public – just speak to a member of the Main Library front desk about getting a 15 minute pass to see the exhibition.

A catalogue for the exhibition is available online.

Items in the exhibition have also been digitised.

This post was written by Dr Shirin Hirsch, who was one of the 2022 UCL RIC Visiting Fellows.

Bengali lives are at risk whilst they are at Morpeth – we are punched, kicked and spat on. Enough is enough.

On a Monday morning in January 1986 one hundred Bengali students walked out of their secondary school in Bethnal Green, Tower Hamlets. That weekend they had drawn up a poster calling on all children to strike with them until their demands were met. In Oxford House just off Bethnal Green Road they set up an anti-racist alternative school. Three days later, the students returned to Morpeth with the school management agreeing to their demands. The strike was partially won. Young people, in taking action on their own behalf, had forced a change in the school.

Just over a decade later, I attended the same school. Bengali students were now a large part of the student intake and the school had new management. There were brief institutional histories given on dark days when fascists had attempted to organise and build their ranks inside the school. Then a new head teacher was brought in and it was said that he had transformed the school, later knighted for his efforts. But nowhere in these official histories were the actions of the students themselves remembered. Years later, when I stumbled upon a news report covering the strike, I was full of questions. Why did the students walk out of their school? Was the action connected to other strikes? What impact did the strike have on the school? And why had the students been forgotten for so long? I wanted to dig into the history of my old school, from a year before I was born, to try and find out more about where I was from and how young people had transformed their environment.

There are many challenges in researching the resistance of young people. For one thing, their lives are often remembered in words, documents or collections owned by adults. What is seen as ‘significant’ by older people might be different to young people’s views and experiences. Protests by young people are often against powerful institutions or people who can make decisions about what is and isn’t recorded. This was certainly the case in the Morpeth school strike, with the school management inviting ILEA press officers to the school to ensure the story was tightly controlled. Thames TV entered the school on the day the students returned from their strike but they were only able to interview selected staff and not students. That does not mean young people’s actions have been entirely erased. The local press did report on the Morpeth strike and documents from the strike were kept by a member of ILEA, which have since been donated to Tower Hamlets Archive.

Morpeth was not the only school where young people were struggling against racism. For my UCL Special Collections fellowship here, I have been spending time with two collections: the Marina Foster (MF) and Ken Jones (KJ) papers. Marina Foster was a Black teacher who had left South Africa as a refugee in the 1960s and in London became an advisory teacher at the ILEA for many years, focusing on multi-ethnic education and tackling institutional racism. Ken Jones was from the 1970s until 1990 a teacher in London secondary schools and active in the politics of education and in issues of curriculum, pedagogy and trade unionism. Both collections illuminate the debates, policies and projects on multicultural and anti-racist education taking place in London schools. There are documents that show imaginative ways of creating an anti-racist classroom, with teacher organisations like Campaign against racism in education (CARE) All London Campaign Against Racism and Fascism (ALCARF) as well as documents from ILEA (Inner London Education Authority).

The collections also illuminate the serious racism that existed in London schools. Daneford school, nearby to Morpeth, in Tower Hamlets, was the most publicised example of this and there are a number of documents on this in UCL special collections. The Guardian reported in 1986 that three quarters of the students at Daneford were of Asian origin and there had been a spate of racist attacks inside the school. The school gates were plastered with National Front stickers and posters, and a 12 year old Bangladeshi student had been viscously attacked with a razor blade by four white students. Another time, twenty white young people at a football match ‘spilled over into the school’ shouting viscous racist abuse. One teacher, Norma Hundleby, told the press: ‘Boys were coming out of all the classrooms to join them. It was totally out of control.’ Kumar Murshid, Chairperson of Campaign against racism in schools (CARS) explained that only ‘the dedication of the anti-racist teachers and pupils who have organised themselves against these attacks’ had helped to ease the tensions at Daneford. The racism, alongside the resistance, would receive national attention following the arrest of Daneford teachers and a school student who were protesting outside the Tower Hamlets ILEA office over the refusal of ILEA to take serious action against racism at Daneford school.

The reports at both Daneford and Morpeth schools challenged a version of schooling which saw young people as passive objects, who should simply ‘do what they are told’. Sajid, 18 years old, summed up the feeling when he explained to the press in 1986:

If we can’t go to school peacefully and study in safety, then we have to fight back. We have as much right as any white kid to go to school.

The voices of young people are sometimes hard to hear within these collections, but that does not mean they are completely silenced. In the Marina Foster collection there is a ‘Black Youth Annual Penmanship Awards’ with records of Black children’s writings from 1981, with essays on ‘What is means to be Black and British’ and ‘Being without Employment in Britain today’. The winning essay questioned the very nature of the school system, the student directly asking ‘does it prepare me or help me tackle the blatant and insidious forms of racism that, I am afraid to say, I will invariably encounter?’ The frustration at the school system, as well as wider society, was powerfully expressed by many of these young Black authors.

The resistance at Morpeth secondary school in 1986 emerged out of this context and was not an isolated act. The Miners’ Strike had ended in March the previous year, a bitter defeat not just for the miners but for the whole of the labour movement. The year following the strike the numbers of days lost to strike action in Britain was at its lowest since 1967. However, school student strikes were not included in these figures. In April 1985 there was a national school student strike in response to the government’s attempts to make the Youth Training Scheme compulsorily for 16-17 year olds and to take unemployment benefits away from any young people refusing to participate. Alongside these strikes, the British government were openly attacking ‘hard left education authorities and extremist teachers’, as Thatcher put it. Parents were also resisting, and the Black Parents Movement, born in the 1970s, had begun to win serious changes in the schools. In 1981 and 1985 uprisings involving young people against the police had taken place in inner cities across England. Meanwhile teachers in 1985-6 entered disputes over cuts to schools and pay agreements. Gus John, a key activist and founder of the Black Parents Movement, in a speech he gave to teachers in 1986 which was later published as a pamphlet (M/8/63), explained:

The struggles waged by the black community outside of school and in relation to what was going on inside the school, gave school students the confidence to exercise their own power within the school. The school became for them the site of struggle against racism and against the treatment they were subjected to because of their class.

That relationship between students, community groups, teachers and wider political shifts is what I am interested in further exploring. This fellowship has given me the resources and time to piece together archival material and to explore these topics. I now hope to speak to some of the participants themselves. I am gradually trying to recover the resistance of young people against racism so as to remember and learn from their struggles.

Hidden in the Institute of Education’s Baines Archives is a small book entitled Gavin’s book of witches (BA/1/9/78).

The Baines Archives includes items related to the work of George and Judith Baines, who pioneered new teaching methods in the 1960s-1980s. The archive includes examples of student work from Eynsham County Primary School where George Baines worked as the headteacher. There are a number of small books written, illustrated, and bound by the students. One former pupil described the process:

‘A prominent memory that I have is of the book binding which not only completed a study but also became a feature. The technique is a cherished memory: the meticulous scraping of the lino block, the roller thick with sticky paint, the binding and the glue oozing out in all the wrong places, the pride of producing a book contained within a hardback.’

Gavin’s book of witches is one such example of student work. It was produced by a young pupil, probably named Gavin, who was probably still learning to write. The teacher has written the text for Gavin to copy underneath. It was then illustrated with original drawings.

The book is very short – just six pages in total. A transcription of it follows:

 

 

 

My witch is flying. She is going to the witches party.

 

 

 

 

 

She gets there first then all these come.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The witches are singing and eating at their party.

 

 

 

 

 

Gavin’s book of witches is the perfect Halloween story.

If you’d like to see more examples of workbooks from the Baines collection, ‘A Book of Bones’ and ‘My Book about the Potato’ are both featured in our online exhibition ‘Word as Art: Beauty in the Archives.’

Have you ever wondered whether our Rare Books team have favourite items, or with what kind of mysteries our archivists are grappling? Or perhaps you’ve hoped to catch a glimpse of one of our unique and beautiful manuscripts? Then Special Collections Presents… is the event for you!

We are pleased to announce that UCL Special Collections will be running our annual ‘open day’, Special Collections Presents…, as part of UCL’s Festival of Culture on June 5th 2019. This popular event is free and open to all.

We will be presenting a wide selection of items from the collections in half hour slots.  Visitors can choose an area of interest and book a free slot.

Visitors will be able to choose between a varied programme of displays that showcase many areas of interest and research:

• Geography textbooks from the 18^th and 19^th century from the UCL Institute of Education Library
• Works from the fascinating Ogden collection, whose recent cataloguing has revealed a wealth of hidden detail lurking behind their respectable titles (these item were part of Charles Kay Ogden’s private library, described in his own words as presenting “semantics, meaning, word magic…sign systems, symbol systems and non-verbal notations…universal language, translation and simplification”)
• Items displaying UCL’s own students’ voices from the past; student magazines, debating society minutes, petitions and more from the College Archive
• Treasures of print, including some famous publications; a rare and very early King James I Bible (1612), Hooke’s Micrographia (1667) and Chertsey’s The crafte to lyve well and to dye well (published in 1505 by Wynkyn de Worde who was known for his work with William Caxton)
• Marking the launch of a new online catalogue, items from the recently catalogued Alex Comfort Papers will be on display (Comfort was a writer, Director of research in Gerontology in the Zoology department at UCL in the 1960s and ‘70s, an activist in many areas including nuclear disarmament – perhaps best known as the author of the cult publication The Joy of Sex).
• Items exploring alternative youth movements from the Forest School Camp and the Woodcraft Folk archives, held at UCL Institute of Education
• A collection of archival items from the Huguenot Library that provide unique insight into the lives of Huguenot immigrants and refugees in the 17^th and 18^th
• Autograph letters from 19th and 20th century writers; tales of success, failure and domestic life.  Among others, this will include Dickens, Orwell, T S Eliot, Graham Greene, Iris Murdoch, Radclyffe Hall.

 

This event is open to all – but especially the curious…

Book your free ticket.

Our first Late was a sold-out success, so we’re very pleased to be able to announce the next event in our evening programme.

Inspired by the seasonal burst of many-hued blossoms outside our windows, we’d like to invite you to join us for The Colour of Spring, featuring a talk on how coloured light can reveal hidden secrets in Mediaeval manuscripts, a history of the educational movement the Woodcraft Folk, and displays of original material from UCL Special Collections.

Get your ticket now!

The Colour of Spring

Date: Tuesday, 7th May, 6.15-8pm
Venue: UCL Haldane Room, Wilkins Building, Gower Street, WC1E 6BT

A Colourful Heritage: Multispectral Imaging Manuscripts and Rare Books from UCL Special Collections

Multispectral imaging involves capturing images of an object illuminated in ultraviolet, visible and infrared light. Capturing images in different colours, including light that is invisible to the human eye, can reveal features on the books which cannot usually be seen. This talk by Cerys Jones, final-year PhD student in Medical Physics at UCL, will present a brief introduction to multispectral imaging in heritage and show several examples of recovering lost features on manuscripts and rare books in UCL Special Collections.

Politics and Pedagogy: How I made use of the Woodcraft Folk Archive.

Rich Palser, a retired Further Education lecturer, is currently writing a book on the history of the Woodcraft Folk in the inter-war years which draws heavily on the organisation’s archives now held at UCL Institute Of Education. He will be talking about the archive’s relevance to his own interest in the relationship between politics and pedagogy, but also suggesting ways in which the archive may be relevant to the research of others.

Guests will be able to view a number of items for UCL Special Collections, including medieval manuscript fragments, material from the newly acquired Woodcraft Folk Archive, and an emblem book once belonging to Ben Jonson. There will be a brief colourful interlude, courtesy of our conservation team, and there will be plenty of time to enjoy a glass of wine (or soft drink) and nibbles, included with your £5 ticket. Click here to book your place now!

Not quite three French hens, but one French lesson, at the Open Air School in Regent’s Park, c1919. Schools like this were opened to promote better health in children – all lessons took place outdoors whatever the weather, to give students maximum exposure to fresh air.

IOE Archives, reference LFB/24

The IOE holds the archive of the British Forces Education Service/Service Children’s Education Association. The BFES/SCE provided education for the children of British Forces personnel initially in Germany, but later worldwide. The Association was established to enable BFES/SCE teachers to keep in touch. The collection contains papers from countries all over the world including Germany, Belize and Hong Kong. With the withdrawal of British troops from Germany over the past few years we have received many new items for the archive. I recently created an exhibition on the history of the organisation for the Assocation’s reunion dinner and thought it would be good to share a short version of it here.

Beginnings
On 9 February 1946 a meeting was called at the War Office where a working party was established to investigate the how to create a Central Education Authority to work under the Control Commission for Germany and Austria. At this point, the question of whether the families of British Service personnel serving in Germany should join them, had not been decided upon. A survey was undertaken by the Chairman of the Working Party, Lieutenant Colonel F J Downs and Mr W A B Hamilton, Assistant Secretary at the Ministry of Education.

The results showed that the total number of children aged between 0 and 15 in these families would be about 6000. The greatest requirement would be for primary education. In June 1946 the Cabinet agreed that families should join serving personnel as long as the education the children received was ‘at least equal to’ that they would have received in the UK. At this point the British Families Education Service was established by the Foreign Office.

Local Education Authorities were asked to co-operate to help recruit teachers to work in the schools in the British Zone of Germany. It was estimated that the number needed would be 200. Two thousand applied and the first teachers arrived in Germany in November 1946. British families started arriving from August 1946 onwards and small informal schools were set up in some areas before official BFES schools opened. The first official BFES schools opened in early 1947.

Expansion
Although the BFES originally provided education for the children of British Forces families in Germany, in the following years BFES/SCE schools were opened in countries across the world including Hong Kong, Cyprus, Malaysia and Mauritius.

A change of hands
In the winter of 1951-1952 the Service was taken over by the Army and became Service Childrens’ Education Authority (SCEA). In around 1989 a new administration was introduced and in the short-term the organisation was named Service Children’s Schools (SCS) before adopting its current name Service Children Education (SCE).

The Association
The BFES Association was founded in 1967 to enable BFES teachers to keep in touch. In the 1980s it merged with the Service Childrens’ Education Association (SCEA), which had changed its name to SCE, to become the BFES/SCE Association.

 

The Archive at the UCL Institute of Education
While the collection documents the history of the organisation very effectively, its richness comes from it being mostly collected by teachers who worked for the BFES/SCE. This aspect of the archive gives researchers an insight into the lives of those who were part of an incredible organisation.

The collection comprises:

• Administrative papers of the BFES/SCE Association including minutes of meetings, papers regarding events and publications;
• Recollections, diaries, photographs and school publications of former BFES/SCE teachers working in Belgium, Cyprus, Germany (West Berlin and West Germany), Egypt, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Mauritius, Sri Lanka and Yemen;
• Records of the BFES/SCE itself including teaching resources, information for staff and families living abroad, and publications. Most of these papers have been donated by members of the BFES/SCE Association but relate more generally to the work of the BFES/SCE rather than the work of individual schools.
• A small number of publications issued by the British Forces and community

Researchers can arrange to access the collection at our reading room at the UCL IOE.
ioe.arch-enquiries@ucl.ac.uk

We’re excited to announce UCL Special Collections Presents… – a day of talks and displays in UCL’s South Junction Reading Room on Tuesday, June 5th.

Join our team of friendly archivists and librarians at the South Junction Reading Room to hear about some of their favourite Special Collections items in an informal setting. Come face to face with exquisite treasures, learn about the work of our conservators, and discover which curious tomes our volunteers have been studying.

We are running a range of sessions throughout the day, including:

11am-11:30 and 11:30am-12pm:
Protest songs for equal pay
A balloon’s eye view: historical maps of London
Maps from the Jewish Pamphlets collection

12-12:30pm and 12:30-1pm:
A history of the book
“Confessions of a Down and Out in London and Paris”: gems from George Orwell’s archive

1-1:30pm and 1:30pm-2pm:
UCL’s student disruptors
Small Press magazines on vinyl

2-2:30pm and 2:30-3pm:
Jeremy Bentham and Lord Brougham, social reformers
Enid Blyton’s Teacher’s Treasury

3-3:30pm and 3:30-4pm:
Medical and Scientific Manuscripts and Rare Books
A 14th Century Haggadah, and other Jewish and Hebrew treasures

When: Tuesday, 5th June, 11am-4pm

Where: South Junction Reading Room, Wilkins Building, University College London, WC1E 6HJ

Book your free tickets now!

“Nativity”, in: R 221 DICTIONARIES DYC 1748: Dyche, A new general English dictionary (London, 1748)

A substantial amount of Special Collections’ work is in teaching and teaching support across a broad range of subjects: classics, law, library studies, architecture, history, maths – the list goes on. Sometimes this is a single class on using historical and primary materials, but this may also be a series of sessions, as with the Archival Research and Oral History in Education (AROHE) module, taught at UCL Institute of Education.

This year AROHE students have explored the topics of international education, special educational needs, progressive education and multi-racial education, using items from Newsam Archives, to focus on areas like visual sources, curriculum, biography and learners’ voices.

One of the visual sources picked out by students was this photo from the Amelia Fysh collection:

©UCL Institute of Education Archives [AF/1/3/A/25]

Although they weren’t given any contextual or identifying information about the photography, it was immediately recognised as a school nativity play. Mary, Joseph and chorus of angels were all correctly identified, and after some discussion, so were the Three Wise Men and the shepherds. (The shepherds are very well dressed; fortuitously, the Three Wise Men can be distinguished by their crowns.)

However, when it came to dating the photograph, the students came somewhat unstuck. The wearing of costumes make it impossible to use fashion to estimate when the photograph was taken, and likewise most of the children’s heads are covered, so nor can their hair styles be used as a guide. In the end, it was suggested that the photo was probably “old”, because it was black and white.

This gave me something of a shock. Not the assertion itself; it may have been a little misguided (black and white film is still in use today, not to mention the black and white or sepia filters of digital photography!) but learning how to draw on others’ research, context clues and our own personal knowledge to understand objects is at the very heart of using archive materials. No – what stunned me was the realisation that many of today’s students are too young to recognise the product of a 1990’s style black-and-white photocopier…

In case you’re wondering – the image is from a booklet from Beech Green Nursery School, featuring photos from 1956-1973 (the booklet itself was created in 2002). Whether you think this can be considered “old” or not is up to you – although colour photography was definitely around by the 1950’s!