I was recently asked to rehouse a new accession to the CRC special collections; a beautiful belt previously belonging to a Scottish Suffragette made from a strip of ribbon, embroidered with enamelled motifs, with a metal buckle. You can find out more about this belt in this blog post.

Suffragette Belt

Due to the huge amount of attention this item received on social media, I knew that it would be very popular, and likely to be requested multiple times for seminars, tours and researchers. As such, I wanted to create a housing solution that would reduce the handling of this item, as well as protect it whilst in storage.

Repeated handling can be very damaging to objects as the bending and flexing causes mechanical stress, which can lead to fractures at stress points. It is often assumed that white cotton gloves are worn when moving all archival collections. But that is not the case. Cotton gloves tend to reduce manual dexterity, and can get caught on tears on paper. Here is an excellent article on the misperceptions of wearing white gloves.

Handling certain objects, such as gilt frames, photographs and bronze sculptures without gloves, however, can be detrimental as the salts and oils on our fingertips can cause metals in corrode and leave marks on photographs. Normally nitrile gloves are worn when touching these items. Clean, dry hands that are free of creams and lotions are usually the best for most other objects, but ideally they should be handled as little as possible.

To reduce handling of the belt, I made a box with from unbuffered card and two rigid base boards that were padded with domett wadding and calico cotton. One base board can be used to lift out the belt from the box. The other can be placed on top and used to flip the belt over, so that the reverse can be viewed without touching it at all.

The slide show below shows the stages of taking the belt out of the box.

This new storage will allow the Suffragette belt to be safely consulted for years to come.

Emily Hick

Special Collections Conservator

Latest time lapse video from Malcolm Brown from the Digital Imaging Unit at the Centre for Research Collections captures the progress of works at St Cecilia’s Hall.

For those who know our location, the building site is tight, so Malcolm has had to be creative in capturing his videos and images. Malcolm has persevered through hours of standing on the pavement of Niddry Street and South Bridge as well as eating countless roasted chicken dinners at Zuhus restaurant in order to capitalise on various views of our building.

Look for more videos to come of the construction of the new entrance to St Cecilia’s Hall.

Last week I had the pleasure of visiting the Lothian Family History Society, who meet just outside Edinburgh in the Lasswade Centre. It was a lovely opportunity to meet some of the people who have interests in the Statistical Accounts, and another chance for me to delve into the content of the Statistical Accounts and explore the kind of interesting descriptive details they contain. A great deal can be gleaned about our ancestors in the late 18th and early 19th century through these reports.  I thought it would be fun to focus on the parish in which we were present, so had a look at the two Lasswade accounts.

Lizars Map of the County of Edinburgh, published with the Second Account (vol 1)

The name Lasswade “signifies a well-watered pasture of common use”,* according to the Rev. M. Campbell MacKenzie, who complied the parish report for the second account. And well it might, given the position of Lasswade directly on the river Esk, in what is now the green belt around Edinburgh.

In the first account, we learn that the population in 1791 was more than 3000 inhabitants, so the village was a good size. There is plenty of work: agriculture is thriving and bleachfields, coal mining and paper making are the main (non-agricultural) industries with 260 people employed in the latter two. Around 150 women are employed as coal bearers underground. Only 50 people were claiming poor relief: the income from the church collection and fees (for weddings etc.), we learn, was supplemented by the heritors of the village:  “This mode they prefer widely to an assessment, a measure which ought always to be avoided, if possible, as it never fails to increase the number of claimants. There is a laudable spirit in the common people of this country, which keeps them from applying for aid out of the poor funds, so long as they can do anything from themselves. This arises from the apprehension that these funds depend for their supply solely on the voluntary contributions at the church door.” One of the common pastimes, the minister notes, is gardening: “the attention of the gardener is chiefly directed to the cultivation of strawberries, than which he has not a surer or more profitable crop […] It may be observed that it was in this parish that strawberries were first raised in any quantities for the public market.” So one of Lasswade’s claims to fame might be as the home of the commercially grown strawberry!

Half a century later, in 1841, Lasswade had a population of 5022: it had not quite doubled in size, but it had certainly increased. The growing parish had also been divided into two by this point, at least quoad sacra  (in a spiritual sense) but ‘temporal matters’, quoad civilia, were still common to both. Manufacturing in the area is now dominated by paper (c. 300 people) and carpets (c. 100 people). But despite the growing populace, and the 75 on the roll, and a considerable number of people who receive occasional assistance. There is an assessment, so the Heritors have evidently given up on their custom of supplementing the Church collections, which is perhaps unsurprising given the 50% increase in claimants. Gardening continues: “vegetation is both early and luxuriant” and by this time, we learn, the green charms of the area have rendered “the village of Lasswade a place of considerable resort to the inhabitants of Edinburgh and Leith numbers of whom annually spend the summer months in this delightful locality.”  Perhaps in keeping with its growing reputation as a notable locale in the area, the Lasswade report in the second account devotes a significant proportion of its pages to discussion of the lives of ’eminent characters’ and fascinating antiquities. The former include the poet William Drummond of Hawthornden, Mr Clerk of Eldin, author of an important essay on naval tactics, and the late Lord Melville. The latter feature notable sights such as the caves below Hawthornden which could hold upwards of 60 men and were used to conceal troops during “the contest between Bruce and Baliol” and “the famous sycamore tree which is called the fours sisters and is about 24 feet in circumference at the base. It was under this tree that Drummond the poet was sitting when his friend Ben Jonson arrived from London, and hence it is also called Ben Jonson’s tree.” Such points of historical interest might appeal to the kind of metropolitan visitor that Lasswade was now attracting, and – like the second account report for neighbouring Roslin, which is given over almost entirely to a description of the ornamental chapel – it reads more like a tourist guide than a survey of the people and the land!

*All quotations in this post are taken from the Lasswade parish reports, which appear in the OSA, Volume 10 p. 227 – 288 and the NSA Vol 1, p. 323 – 337