the seal of the medieval priory
The Collection

In the 1980s the late Miss Elizabeth Ralph, City Archivist of Bristol from 1936 to 1971, sorted the Shrine's archives. She had been confronted with boxes, bags and files full of papers, books and photographs, all piled together over many years, written by many different hands. Out of all this she created a classification scheme for the collection and prepared the first formal catalogue.  Since then much more material has been added from many sources. Fr Peter Cobb has amended the details of the catalogue during this time, and now another archivist has taken over the care and development of the collection.

The history of the Shrine comes to life in the pages of Our Lady's Mirror and its successor journals: edited extracts from these are on other pages. As well as documents and photographs, there are a few early video and audio recordings, and those commercially produced in recent years.

We hope to expand the collection (especially to fill in gaps in series), to make its contents safer from the ravages of time and temperature and gradually to make available here much of the information contained in the records, including definitive information and accurate dates of people, appointments, buildings and so on.

Our top priority is to secure and preserve what remain of the records to the end of the Second War, and then those of the period 1945-1958, until Fr Patten's death. Later material will be dealt with in due course.

This archives website has been created as a vehicle for exhibiting the archives and disseminating the information within them. As the archives cannot for logistical reasons be opened to public access, the archivist is happy to answer enquiries (some of which end up on the Enquiries page).

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Update in July 2007

Click here to read the latest plans for the development of this website as a vehicle for giving access to the archive collection.

 
 
CONSERVATION

We have been very fortunate in receiving an anonymous donation of conservation materials for the archives.

The archives have been well kept in terms of temperature and security over the years, but of necessity they have been stored in whatever envelopes and covers were available at little cost (which in the very long term would have a detrimental effect on the collection). Most of the records are kept in a locked filing cabinet and the rest are in storage boxes and cabinets around the archive room, which is also kept locked.

The gift of conservation materials includes high-quality acid-free storage boxes, polyweld storage sleeves in different sizes for photographs and fragile documents, thirteen sizes of acid-free paper envelopes, files made of acid-free cardboard, archival tape, brassed paper clips and many other stationery items as used in record offices. These will enable us to keep high conservation standards for the benefit of generations to come.