Building and preserving our collections

A parish register awaiting conservation at Gwynedd Archives, to whom we outsource most of our conservation work. The following pictures show its transformation.

The primary role of the Archive Service is to preserve our documentary heritage for the benefit of future generations, receiving additional gifts and deposits of archive material while maintaining and developing the greatest degree of access to the collections in our care. There are several strands to this work, including seeking out and receiving newaccessions of archives, cleaning, boxing and conserving what we already hold, then cataloguingand publicising our collections.

Most of our conservation work is carried out under contract with the conservation unit of Gwynedd Archives at their main headquarters in Caernarfon. The pictures in this section show how conservation work thereon our collections brings our documents back into a useable condition.

During the year, the Archive Service has continued to collect material of archival value relating to our two local authority areas from institutions and individuals. Afull list of accessions received is to be found belowin Appendix 2 and several of the most interesting accessions are featured in our local history articles further on in this report. Here are some key highlights of the year 2022/23.

The Covid pandemic has had the unfortunate effect of hastening the closure of some of the chapels in our local area. Such occasions are inevitablythe source of sadness to the remaining members and it is important that the extant records are preserved, in recognition of the efforts of the congregation and the place the chapel held in its community, and in viewof their value as a resource to family and local historians. Two notable collections were received, from Gorphwysfa in Skewen (Calvinistic Methodist) and Bethel,Llansamlet (Welsh Independent), which are described in more detail in an article by AndrewDulley later in this report.

In 2018, to commemorate the centenary of the end of the First WorldWar, the service digitised and indexed the rolls of honour it holds. This in its turn has prompted the donation of many more rolls of honour. Three were received during the reporting year, from Gorphwysfa, Skewen, Tabernacle in Cwmrhydyceirwand Bethania, Neath. Among them arefine examples of calligraphy and artistry, and the information about the men from their congregations who went tofight in the war is invaluable. They are being added to the online resource,which willbe updated in time for thisyear’s Remembrance Day.

Arguably the most illustrious and well-travelled of our local male voice choirs is the Morriston Orpheus Choir, and it was with great pleasure that the Service received the choir’s sizeable collected and collated archive earlier in the year. These consist of minutes, programmes, photographs and cuttings and constitute a coherent and vital record of one of the region’s cultural icons. The records are being listed at the moment and it will be a short while before they can be made available.

Changes to the lawin relation to the registration of marriages were mentioned in last year’s report. This change rendered redundant all the long-form marriage registers that had been used, in one form or another, since 1837, and all the current registers were then returned to the local registrar for closure, before being offered either to the incumbent, minister or secretary, or to the Archive Service. As a result, and following somethingof a concerted campaign, we have received a full set of marriage registers from most of the churches and many of thechapels in Swansea Registration District. The consequent discussions with members of the clergy have resulted in the deposit of other types of registers as well, including a hitherto ‘missing’ Llangyfelach baptism register, which was shared for a time with Morriston, and further records from Swansea St James, Oystermouth and Ystalyfera.

Some important photographic collections have also been received during the year. For example, there is an album compiled by G. Elfed Jones of Cwmbwrla, which shows many previouslyunseen views of the town, including a tennis match at St Helen’s in 1939, illuminations to celebrate the coronation of George VI, and an interior shot of the CwmfelinWorks. This collection is the subject of an article in this year’s report by Emma Laycock.

In a similar vein, we received more of the collection of Derek Gabriel, an amateur photographer who skilfully documented the changes he witnessed taking place incentral Swansea and his home suburbof Sandfields. He had arranged his photographs thematically into a three-volume compilation entitled ‘Lovely Ugly Swansea’, which stretch from the 1960s to the 1990s, a period when Swansea’s initialpost-war rebuilding was complete, but further work to rationalise and modernise the city was ongoing. There are images of buildings before and afterdemolition, panoramas and street scenes, iconic shops,churches and other prominent buildings, and even shots of circus animals, camels and elephants, walking along St Helen’s Road in the 1970s.

Of allthe photographic archives received during the year, possibly the most important is the Swansea Library Photograph Collection. It is extensive and was amassed over many decades. In scope, it is similar to the photograph collection amassed at Swansea City Archives (now at West Glamorgan Archives), and while considerable duplication was expected, in reality there is very little and the majority of thepictures arenewto our holdings. Original order has been maintained throughout: there are aerial views, portrait photographs of celebrities and important local people, photographs of buildings, docks, parks and gardens, streets (alphabeticallyarranged), transport and the SecondWorldWar. There is a list at file level, but a detailed item-level catalogue isin the process of being prepared to facilitate access.

The earliest records received during the reporting year were donated through the kindness of a researcher who purchased them in an onlineauction. They are early title deeds, whose provenance is obscure, but their state of preservation and the geographical area they come from suggests that they all comefrom the same source, which might have been a solicitor’s office. They are title deeds of various properties in and around Neath and the upper Swansea Valley, and they date from Tudor times down to the nineteenth century. Theirfaded script records the lives of Neath residents who were contemporaries of Elizabeth I and whose names are not known from other records. Listing these will be time-consuming, but the finished catalogue will include a traditional calendarof the deeds, to help to provide access to them.

2026 will see the centenary of the first Adoption of Children Act, which made adoptions legal in England andWales, leading to the setting up of agencies for adoption and later local government involvement. Since the earliest records willalso soon be 100 years old, archives across the country are investigating the survival and whereabouts of these earliest records and advocatingfor theirdeposit in local archives. They will be of interest to both family and social historians. The success of the project will be very dependent upon the co-operation and support of a wide range of record-keeping and care professionals across local government and the independent sector to ensure that national datasets of adoption records are bothfull and accurate.