Report from the chair (April 2024)
Dear all, and welcome to our April newsletter.
Our March open evening attracted six visitors and the highlight of the evening was talking to Julie Dawson about the prospect of a generous benefactor offering to pay to have the correct body recreated on her 1910 Rothwell car. The car came into the ownership of Hartley Schofield (grandson of Fred Rothwell whose company made the car) and then went to Peter Stott who restored the car. Julie, daughter of Hartley Schofield, purchased the car in 2008. Julie donated the car to Gallery Oldham in 2018 and it can now be seen by the public there. At the time the car was restored, a body of similar design, but not exactly correct, was fitted to the chassis. This is now going to be corrected and I look forward to seeing the car with its new body when the work is completed.
As mentioned in the last newsletter we have started to sell duplicate adverts on eBay and I am pleased to say that sales are doing well. We currently have over 1,300 adverts listed. Two interesting tales have come out of these early sales. Firstly, an advert was sold from 1951 for Arthur A. Miller who ran a furrier’s shop in Dundee, and I was contacted by Sandy who bought it. It turns out that Arthur A. Miller was his great-grandfather. Sandy subsequently sent me a short biography of Arthur Miller and gave me permission to reproduce it here.
“Arthur was my great grandfather. He was born in Vilnius, Lithuania. He was Jewish, his original name was Milarnsky. At the age of 8 he was sent to London to avoid persecution and worked as a tubber in the fur trade in Brick Lane. He became a very skilled furrier and eventually settled in Dundee opening a shop in The Nethergate and then moving to a shop in Reform Street. On his death my grandfather, James Miller, took on the business until he retired in the 1960s. My mother is still alive and was quite emotional when I showed her the advert.”
Our second surprise was when we sold two copies of adverts for Boots the Chemists. It turns out they were bought to go into the Boots Archive and were acquired by Thomas Bell (Records Management and Archives Manager) on behalf of the company. Following on from our contact we were able to supply Tom with digital copies of a number of other Boots adverts that we hold in the archive that they do not have in theirs.
A further trip to Pete Boswell’s has been made by Craig, one of our trustees, and he came back with a large quantity of “Horse and Hound” magazines. A quick look through the pile showed me copies from 1891 and 1962. This is a small part of the run of the magazine and we have several more trips to make to bring back the rest. Ahead of us now lies the Herculean task of getting all of the advertising from these magazines into our product files so that they can be of use to researchers.
Sukriti is busy rewriting a lot of our web pages and, once they have been proofed, they will start to appear on the site. This work should significantly improve our page ranking and enable us to reach many more researchers.
Peter Moss, another of our trustees, is putting together a blog piece on the history of the site that our archive now sits on. Bolton’s Superheater and Pipeworks business appeared in the factory in the early 1920s and were here until 1980. Subsequently the site was divided up into units and we are now in Unit 14. Interestingly, we were visited by Lucy who owns Cheadle Skips next door to us – she is passionate about local history and in particular the site where Cheadle Skips are based. Lucy showed us maps of 1882 (open land) and 1934 (factory site shown and labelled “Bolton’s Superheater Works”. She also showed us copies of the deeds from 1941 when Bolton’s sold a parcel of their land to C. H. Johnson who manufactured machinery of various types, and a letter head from C. H. Johnson from 1955. Lucy’s final contribution was the loan of (and permission to copy) an album of photographs and paperwork that she has collected together relating to the site. It is a really fascinating history that builds enormously on what we already know.
We have sufficient material now for a follow-on article focusing on the C. H. Johnson business.
Until our next open evening and newsletter have a great time and enjoy life to the full.
Take care and all the best.
Richard Roberts and the team at the Richard Roberts Archive
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Collection Statistics
The Richard Roberts Archive collection statistics
Tuesday 16th April 2024
Collection database
Total items 158,661
- of which Magazines 134,674
Product folders
Total folders 160
- circa number of adverts 19,969
Breweriana
Total folders 347
Beermats 20,744
Transport photograph database
Total items 883
Volunteer hours
Total 70,903
- of which this month 447
