The Plume Librarian, Mrs Erica Wylie, took up the matter with the National Portrait Gallery, who confirmed that the Plume Library portrait is certainly that of Ralph Brownrig. We are left, therefore, with two questions: why did Plume own this portrait, and is it possible to say where it may have come from? Read more

Recovery of documents from the site of the collapse

On the Third of March 2009, the building housing the Cologne City Archive (Kölner Stadtarchiv) collapsed killing 2 people and causing huge damage to the documents and books housed within. The building was a 6 stories, purpose built Record Office dating from 1971 and the cause of the collapse is thought to be the construction of an underground train line running alongside the building. Cologne City Archive’s holdings totalled 26 shelve kilometres and included a large number of important parchment charters, the earliest from 922 as well as being a repository for modern day government records.

In the weeks following the disaster Cologne City Archive appealed for volunteers to assist in the massive rescue operation and Thomas Plume’s Library sent their Conservator, Tony King. Tony travelled with a group of archivists from Essex Record Office who spent a week helping at the scene of the collapse and learning how to deal with a disaster of this scale. 

Recovery of documents from the site of the collapse

Although 6 weeks had passed since the collapse, the site was still unstable and constant streams of documents were being recovered from the rubble by a large team of firemen. Once removed from the ground by hand and mechanical digger, the documents were sorted by volunteers into dry and wet material. Dry documents and books had the worst of the debris and dust removed by shaking and were then boxed and shipped to a warehouse where sorting and cleaning would take place. Any wet material needed to be dealt with as soon as possible as mould had set into many documents, helped by the warm temperatures. Wet items were taken to the mould station where they were wrapped in cling film, briefly documented and placed in a large metal cage. These metal containers were then taken to an industrial freezer and quickly frozen to stop the mould growth until they can be defrosted and conserved.

The archivists and conservators are still in the first phase of re-building the archive, once all the material is out of the ground, the scale of the loss can be assessed and conservation can begin. There are plans to put together a team of 5 conservators in the City with the aim of planning a programme of conservation which is expected to take many decades to complete.

Mould station

17th century book with extensive physical and water damage