Warwickshire wins national grant for archive
Warwickshire County Council is celebrating the news that the public will get even closer to a unique historical collection.
Letters to relatives of Lord Byron and Robert Peel, medieval deeds and early plans of Leamington Spa’s Newbold Comyn area are all among the Willes family archive which is held by Warwickshire County Record Office.
Thanks to a winning bid, the Willes collection has been awarded £30,000 from the National Cataloguing Grants Programme. This means that thousands of documents will be professionally explored and described so that the public can use it more extensively. The project will require the expertise of qualified archivists who will describe thousands of documents, including deeds written in Medieval Latin.
The Willes collection in Warwickshire is one of eleven archives to be selected nationally for the National Cataloguing Grants Programme which is administered by The National Archives. The Willes archive, consisting of the records of a Warwickshire landed family, extending over 800 years, is of major national and international importance.
Following a high-profile fundraising campaign, the collection was acquired in 2007 by Warwickshire County Record Office for £72,000. Although the purchase enabled the collection to be brought back to Warwickshire for future generations, public access was limited without the funds to catalogue it.
Caroline Sampson, Head of Heritage and Cultural Services (Archives), said: “It was a major achievement when we acquired the Willes collection at Sotheby’s in 2007 but now, with the National Cataloguing Grant, we can truly complete what we started by being able to show local residents and researchers from around the world the wealth of information.”
The Willes collection contains maps, deeds, accounts and other documents dating from 12th to the 20th centuries. Much of the material provides a history of the Willes family for several generations and provides evidence of their contribution to the development of Leamington Spa; there are papers relating to the creation of Jephson Gardens, canals, local churches and architecture.
One of the great strengths of the collection is the extensive correspondence (some thousands of letters) to and from several generations of the extended Willes family which begins in the 17th century and includes a series of letters written from Oxford, Ireland, India, America and off the coast of Africa. Although the letters are largely unsorted, limited inspection has revealed much of interest.
Anyone wishing to view the documents can do so by visiting the record office, the address is Warwickshire County Record Office, Priory Park, Cape Road, Warwick. CV34 4JS.