Bottesford Local History Archive

An Introduction to the Archive

Return to the archive itself

The Bottesford Local History Archive is conceived as a digital village picture album and scrapbook.

It is an archive of records created by the Bottesford Commuity Heritage Project, which started in 2006, comprising more than 2000 digitised photographic images, modern digital photographs, digitally scanned documents and maps, physical items (e.g. documents) where released by their original owners. More material has been donated than we can place on this website – we cannot keep up with it. But we do our best.

This online archive is arranged as a series of collections according to the individual contributor. However, there is also a ‘search’ facility which allows thematic sets of pictures to be viewed. Copyright to the original photographs and images is retained by the original creator or the current owner of the item; copyright to the digital images displayed in this archive is owned by the contributor and the Bottesford Community Heritage Project, except for all pictures contributed by Ted Rayson, who retains sole copyright to them.

Contributors

The catalogue contains images contributed to the Bottesford Community Heritage Project by Mrs Jill Bagnall, Mrs Dorothy Beedham, Mr Stanely Blackmore, Mrs Ada Bond, Mr Michael Bradshaw, Mr Richard Bradshaw, The Bottesford Local History Society (Dr Michael Honeybone), Mrs Barbara Cain, Mr Leslie Calcraft (the Late) and Mrs Ruby Calcraft, Miss Betty Culpin, Mr Christopher Harris, Miss Angela Marsh, Mrs Joan Peach, Mrs Jean Round, Mrs Beryl Smith, Mr Philip Sutton, Mr Godfrey and Mrs Babs Sutton, Leicestershire Records Office and Bottesford St Mary’s (Overseers of the Poor Accounts), Mrs Margaret Taylor (and the Late Frank Hallam), Mr Peter Topps, Mrs Brenda Turier

When it was created

The archive was started by the Bottesford Community Heritage Project on the 12th May, 2012. Its purpose is to catalogue and present items collected by the project and the recently started Bottesford WW1 Centenary project. Until now, it has not been visible from the Bottesford Living History website, but it has been added to the new version launched late in 2014.

Coverage

Items in the archive cover a wide range of dates from 1771 to the present day. For the most part, they originate and display aspects of the parish of  Bottesford and Muston, in North East Leicestershire. However, it is inevitable that it spreads its net wider. Some pages take us back to the Tudor and Roman periods. Geographical coverage extends to the battlefields of the World Wars, and also in peacetime to Australia, the USA and other parts of the globe.

Catalogue number

  • Top-level – The archive is catalogued using a simple three-level system. The top level has the three-letter code BOT, indicting that the item or group of items forms part of the Bottesford History Archive.
  • Group – Beneath this, items are recorded as Groups. Each group is given a three-digit code. In general, and as far as practically possible and convenient, these are allotted in accession order according to the person contributing the group of items. In same cases however we choose to establish thematic groups, for instance where items relating to a particular WW1 serviceman are concerned.
  • Item – Within each group there are a number of individual items, which can be pictures, maps, documents, audio-recordings, etc. Each is given a three-digit number. As an example, the tenth item in group fifty three will have the catalogue number BOT/053/010. The leading zeros are essential in order to keep the records in the correct order. The system can handle up to 999 groups each with up to 999 individual items.

Storage location

At the time of writing, the archive has two modes of physical existence. Much of the material is distributed in private addresses, mostly under the care of Neil Fortey, Catherine Pugh and David Middleton. Another major part of the physical archive has been returned to the original owners, not least because they items are family heirlooms and personal possessions, only lent on the agreement that they would be returned once they had been photographed, scanned or otherwise recorded. The second mode is that of digital records held on hard disc drives and backed up. This includes scans of photographic prints, scans of maps, photographs of documents. Neither mode is comprehensive. There is considerable overlap between the two, but neither in itself provides a complete coverage of the whole archive.

Additional comments

It is important to add that the archive, physical and digital, began to accumulate before the cataloguing work had started. The cataloguing is no complete yet, because of the persisting backlog and because the catalogue itself has not been loaded entirely on to this website – some it remains for now in an offline PC. Clearly, neither of these are satisfactory, and we hope to bring the catalogue to completion in due course. Please bear with us.

Background Tables

The current stage of catalogue development is indicated by the following three PDF tables (see below) which provide a snapshot of (1) a list of all Groups, (2) an alphabetic list of contributors, and (3) a list of the types of material that have been included.

 

Downloads
Bottesford Heritage Archive (BOT) catalogue-6a 11-10-2016 PDF version
This page was added on 09/11/2014.

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