Treasure trove of memories that keep past alive

A Yorkshire university’s library holds an extraordinary historical store – and they’re there for everyone. Sheena Hastings reports.

HIS name was W R Teddiman, known to his pals as Bill. He was a corporal with the King’s Own Scottish Borderers and he left behind a sweetheart named Jean when he went off to war. He died in the sodden fields of the Battle of Ypres in 1915.

His family and fiancee were later sent a few of his personal effects, and among them were a roll of sharply observed cartoons documenting the awfulness of life in the trenches, often with an excoriating speech bubble or two which betrayed a certain resentfulness in the ordinary squaddies’ attitude towards the officers. The general inference was that the boss would be leading from behind.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

What does a family do with such a precious cache of wartime memorabilia? Like many women bereaved by war, Jean remained single for the rest of her life and is long dead. The beautifully drawn cartoons with their sharp comments or snatches of conversation that showed how jokes could be found in the middle of the bloodiest situation, lay rolled up in cloth and ribbon for decades.

They’ve now been donated by Aunt Jean’s (and my husband’s) family to the Liddle Collection at Leeds University’s Brotherton Library. The Liddle Collection is one of the Library’s special collections, and it documents the lives of those in the field of battle in the First World War as well as those left at home.

As each successive generation moves further away from these wars, it’s comforting that Bill’s cartoons are being looked after properly, and to think that future generations might be informed by them in some small way.

Katy Goo drum, who left the West Yorkshire Archive to take over as head of special collections at the Brotherton last April, carefully unfolds a large blue paper wrapper to reveal First World War personal belongings donated by former corporal J V Salisbury, who was a medical orderly at Gallipoli in 1915.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

They include a leather-bound Bible he was carrying in a pocket while he assisted in an operation. His diary, the pencil markings now rather faint, describes how his Bible saved him as the shells rained down on the operating theatre and a lump of shrapnel is still embedded in the pages of the holy book.

There are contributions from among 6,000 experiences of the Great War collected together at the Brotherton Library. As the centenary of the war looms, there is already great interest in this precious collection – from family historians, authors, broadcasters and those who are writing their history dissertations for degrees right now. A great surge in requests to view this vast resource is expected in the next 12 months, says Ms Goodrum.

While the primary use of the Brotherton’s special collections is to serve the needs of academics and students at Leeds University, the man whose collection forms the backbone of the Library’s treasure trove also wanted the amazing books he amassed – as well as the other material around it such as the Liddle Collection – to be available to all, a public resource.

Lord Brotherton, a chemical industry magnate whose business was based in Wakefield, was encouraged by a niece who was a writer and would-be rare book collector. He began in the early 1920s to invest his wealth in precious books across a wide range of fields. After his death his collection was donated to Leeds University, along with an endowment fund to ensure that it was developed in the future. His vast array of books was transferred from his home at Roundhay Hall in Leeds to the specially-built oval Brotherton Room in the University Library that also came to be named after him.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

“We are lucky that the collections here are so superb,” says Goodrum. “Very few higher education institutions outside of Oxbridge and Manchester have the same breadth and depth of material. We are the British Library of the North, and we’re here for everybody – although not everybody knows that.” You don’t even need an appointment to view the rare and beautiful manuscripts and books.

“It’s actually hard to describe the great variety of the collections here,” says Katy. “Among Brotherton’s collection are works of English literature, books about printing, political volumes and rare science books, as well as letters from and to the Brontës.”

Katy brings out, reverentially laid on a cushion with lead “rosary beads” to hold the pages open, the 1623 Shakespeare First Folio – one of a limited number of first copies of all of the Bard’s works in one volume. Lying around it are an early work by Caxton, a 1520s edition of Chaucer’s Troilus and Cressida and The Canterbury Tales, exquisitely illustrated with woodcut pictures, and a 1482 edition of Euclid’s Geometry, acquired from an anonymous donor.

The collections include 200,000 items, arranged on 10km of shelving. This doesn’t include the Brotherton’s huge cache of artworks. Katy brings out a William Morris 1890s attempt at a return to medieval print techniques at his Kelmscott Press with a reproduction of the works of Chaucer illustrated by the pre-Raphaelite Sir Edward Burne-Jones. Next to this is one of 12 books of hours (richly illustrated prayer books, usually devoted to the Virgin Mary, with prayers for different times of day) that Brotherton bought.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

This one is from the 1500s and its 300-odd pages of manuscript are perfectly written in Gothic script by some monkish scribe. The artwork is embellished with gold leaf, and the whole enterprise must have taken years to complete.

The money from the Brotherton endowment means the library is able to add to its special collections regularly. Recent acquisitions have included the original manuscripts of contemporary poets associated with Leeds – Simon Armitage, Tony Harrison and Geoffrey Hill.

In among the seemingly endless bookshelves are a vast collection of cookbooks, with a complete set of Mrs Beeton’s manuals and, going back to 1597, A Book of Cookrye. Among its instructional pages is: “The order of how meats should be served to the table with their sauces”.

Apparently a first course at the feast can include potage, chicken, goose, pig, veal and custard, and the second course can include capon, roast lamb, pea hen and baked venison. A regular delight was stewed lark, as was a pudding of tench stuffed with beets, herbs, eggs, bread, salt and currants.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

“We want more people to come and enjoy the collections,” says Katy Goodrum. “Yes, they are here for academic study, but other people can come out of sheer curiosity to see what we have, or to look up material to do with a particular interest of theirs. We are in the process of digitising everything, so in future it will be easier for anyone to look up what we have. As Brotherton said, the collection is for everyone.”

• More information: library.leeds.ac.uk/special-collections

How a fortune made in chemicals helped fuel a passion for books

Edward Allen Brotherton, 1st Baronet Brotherton, was born near Manchester in 1856, moving at the age of 22 to Wakefield, where he founded a chemical manufacturing company that had become the largest privately owned chemical firm in the UK by 1900.

He was MP for Wakefield from 1902-1910 and 1918-22, and in 1913-14 he was Lord Mayor of Leeds. Brotherton’s collecting of rare and precious books began with disappointment in February 1922 when, encouraged by his niece Dorothy Una Ratcliffe, he hoped to buy the Towneley manuscript of the Wakefield Mystery Plays to present to his own city. Unfortunately he was outbid by an American book dealer.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

He instead bought a copy of Andrew Marvell’s Miscellaneous poems (1681). Brotherton hired his own librarian, J A Symington, a former professional librarian who had great experience of books and a good list of contacts.

Brotherton’s ambitions quickly grew, and he had the wealth to feed it. By 1926 he had acquired the four 17th-century Shakespeare folios and many other rare and celebrated works of English literature, a dozen superb medieval manuscript books of hours, manuscripts by the Brontës, hundreds of letters written to Victor Hugo. Brotherton’s collection was presented posthumously to Leeds University in 1936 together with a financial endonment to ensure its future growth.

Related topics: