Report from the chair (April 2025)
Dear all, and welcome to our April newsletter.
Spring is finally here but it is still chilly venturing into the “stacks” at the archive. The log burner is busy keeping the reading room cosy and warm for us to work in and is being well used by our volunteers and visitors most days of the week.
Our photography room is nearing completion with just a few “tweeks” to make before it is how we want it. Our first experiments showed that we had a problem with glare and reflection when photographing glasses. Fortunately for us Aaron, one of the lecturers at Stockport College who uses us for research, offered some useful advice on lighting and as a consequence we are painting the walls and ceiling white to act as reflectors. Once this is done Aaron is going to help set up our studio lights so that we can get great pictures of the items we want to showcase on our website.
Two very recent acquisitions that have arrived have been really exciting, not only for the material for the archive but for the lovely people who took the trouble to bring them along to us.
The first was a car full of railway magazines that came from “down South” and are the first instalment of three which are coming to us. June and Ian who brought them were going to make a short break out of their visit and after their grand tour of the archive and tea and biscuits went on their way for a few days stay in beautiful Buxton. Trip number two is already in the diary and I look forward to what is in the next instalment.
Our second donation came from Grantham and was brought along by Helen and Phil and is a collection of the children’s newspaper the “Junior Mirror”, once collected by Helen’s father. On close examination it was realised that this was a complete run of 75 issues from first to last. Look out for the blog piece that our trustee Craig Horner is going to put together on this most fascinating collection.
At our latest trustee meeting, and as part of our rolling five year plan to look at ways of raising the £8,000 a year we need to raise to keep our doors open, we have decided to turn four of our monthly open evenings into more of an event by putting on a talk and charging £5 entrance fee. These talks will take place in March, June, September and December each year and hopefully will bring in some much needed revenue. Look out for our monthly invite for further details of each talk. We have also decided to make a £3 charge for cake and hot drinks at our open evenings.
For those of you who are unable to attend our open evenings you can help support the archive in other ways, either by becoming a regular donor or by donating to one of our special purchase projects. Both of these can be found on our website with the current project being to purchase a 1904 Automobile Exhibition catalogue. This catalogue will fill one of the gaps we have from the very early days of automotive history and will join our excellent run of UK automobile show catalogues.
Please look at the latest acquisitions reports in the rest of the newsletter for more details on all of the items recently arriving.
Take care and all the best.
Richard Roberts and the team at the Richard Roberts Archive
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Collection Statistics
The Richard Roberts Archive collection statistics
Tuesday 1st April 2025
TOTAL items catalogued and in the collection stands at 227,142 made up of:
Collection database
Total items 167,280
- of which Magazines 142,502
Product folders
Total folders 192
- circa number of adverts 24,707
Breweriana
Total folders 554
Beermats 34,272
Transport photograph database
Total items 883
Volunteer hours
Total to date 78,700
