LOCAL RECORD OFFICE: A JUNIOR’S PERCEPTIONS

UNIT II

· Read the text.

My first mainline job, starting in 1955, was as one of the two assistant archivists in the Devon Record Office. The two other members of staff were a County Archivist and a repairer. We all shared a broad corner room, well lit, with a big table in the middle for readers. I was the only one who could, or would, use a typewriter (I acquired, by dubious means, a huge Imperial, which occupied most of my desk). In the quiet of dull afternoons, the clatter of my machine caused fury in my colleagues.

The occasions for these outbursts were frequent, for we rarely had readers in, over the year an average of about one or two per week. When these were serious researchers, who would spend extended time with us, we were accustomed to share our tea and coffee, carefully avoiding the documents on the table, and I remember times when grateful readers would bring in a cake at teatime. The lack of readers worried us a lot, and we put much effort into stimulating public interest. Devising exhibitions gave us the opportunity for developing our standing feud with the City Archives of Exeter, just down the road. Quarrels like this, born of insecurity - collect at all costs, we felt, at some level of consciousness - did seem to be very characteristic of our professional life at that period. As we all know, this is an aspect that is still strongly alive, though it has been somewhat obscured by the growing custom of defining collecting areas. After the Devon experience I sought to join the peace makers, and think that these are now dominant.

Devon was the favourite and original base for W. G. Hoskins, who both lived and worked there, and we launched ourselves enthusiastically into fostering the 'new' field of academically respectable local history. We had some success at this, developing extra-mural classes in several of the big villages of the county; but times were not propitious. Devon was still predominantly a backward agricultural county, and the inland villages were often in what seemed a state of terminal decline. The great transformation caused by the motor car, the wealthy retired and the coming of rural industry had not yet taken place. In our time the public showed little sign of responding, despite our earnest work with the Townswomen's Guild. When it did come, of course, the response of the public was overwhelming, but it did not take any of the forms that we had visualised at that time. That we felt free to despise genealogists rather openly was one of the least defensible, and indeed inexplicable, of our attitudes.

(Cook M. Changing Times, Changing Aims)