A talk by Mark Purcell

Libraries Curator of the National Trust

On 10th November, 7.30pm

At the United Reformed Church, Market Hill, Maldon

Free admission, All Welcome

Hannah Salisbury (left), Frank Herrmann (centre) and Chairman of the Friends Mr R A Doe (right).

The Friends of Thomas Plume’s Library are pleased to announce that this month they have made the first grant of the Award. The winner is Hannah Salisbury, who submitted an essay of just over 4,000 words entitled ‘A World of Heat and Clamour: the life and times of an Essex Vicar’. This recounts the salient facts of the life of Hippolito du Chastelet de Luzancy d. 1713, who was a French convert to the Church of England from Roman Catholicism in about 1674/5, and was vicar of Harwich from 1678 to 1702 and then vicar of South Weald until his death. Both parishes are in Essex.

Soon after Luzancy’s arrival in this country he was forced to recant at knife-point by a Jesuit. This caused a great clamour in Parliament, leading to the issue of a Royal Proclamation against this man, Pierre St Germain, who then fled the country. The essay examines Luzancy’s writings both concerning these events and his subsequent attacks on Socianism and goes on to place him in the context of the religious and social upheavals of his day and the likely reasons that Dr Plume collected three of his books, namely his fight against separation from the Church of England. It also draws our attention to Plume’s relationship with another Roman Catholic convert to the Church of England at this time and compares the careers of both men.

There were no other entries for the Award on this occasion but the judges were unanimous in deciding that the essay handsomely met the criteria listed on our website, adding that it was very well researched and very well written Our cheque for £500 was presented at a simple ceremony recently and a more formal event to mark this occasion will be held later, when hopefully Mr and Mrs Herrmann will be able to be present. Mr Neil Wiffen the editor informs us the essay will be published in the Essex Journal next Spring.

We continue to invite entries for the Award, which should be submitted as stated in the website by 31st March 2012, the new closing date.

The 2009 Plume Lecture Why do we need so many old books? by David Pearson

 is published as a 22-page booklet, with twenty colour plates ISBN 978-0-9509905-1-4.

Price £5 plus £1 postage and packing.

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