A collection of documents dating back to at least the 17th century, which was discovered in a chest in Rushcliffe village last year, is being donated to the University of Nottingham’s archives.
The documents have the potential to provide a detailed picture of a community from more than 300 years ago.
The collection largely relates to properties in Upper Broughton, Nottinghamshire, featuring the names, trades and information about the relationships between individuals, providing an insight into the lives of local people which would otherwise not survive.
The university’s Manuscripts and Special Collections department, which looks after 3.5 million archive documents and 80,000 rare printed items, will house the collection. The Upper Broughton deeds will sit alongside the university’s extensive collections about the history of the East Midlands, including other documents relating to the village and its inhabitants.
Researchers from the University of Nottingham may be able to use the collection to pinpoint the places where the people in the documents lived, or the property they owned. These invaluable documents will be made available for academics, family and local historians to access for the first time in the department’s Reading Room.
The chest had previously been gifted to the Upper Broughton History Group by Nick Connors, whose father had discovered them at Broughton House, a farmhouse in the centre of the village.
With the support of a grant from Rushcliffe Borough Council, the group began the painstaking process of extracting key information, such as the dates of the documents and the names of individuals – a process which will continue at Manuscripts and Special Collections, as the team work to uncover the collection’s many secrets.
There is plenty yet to discover, with approximately 250 documents, many of which are in Latin, specialists at the university will continue to investigate to find out just how far back the collection dates.
Dr Rebecca Gregory, Assistant Professor in Historical Linguistics and Onomastics, said: “The Upper Broughton History Group were kind enough to allow me to look at these documents in the chest where they had been housed, and there really is nothing like unfolding a document for the first time to see the handwriting, names, and snapshot of history it contains.
“The local community, with the support of Rushcliffe Borough Council, has done such important work cataloguing and caring for the documents until now, and their choice to entrust them to the university means that a valuable part of the picture of the local area will be added to our existing collections covering that area of the county.”
Kathryn Steenson, Senior Archivist at Manuscripts and Special Collections at the University of Nottingham, said: “In celebration of their remarkable gift, we were delighted to welcome members of the Upper Broughton History Group to Manuscripts and Special Collections for a tour of our facilities and to view a selection of the items we already hold relating to their village – which has now been hugely enriched by their fantastic discovery.”
Carol Mounteney, one of the members of the Upper Broughton History Group, reflected on how spending time with the documents has changed her understanding of history. She said: “Finding out such things as land was power. Land ruled the lives of the people of over past centuries, disputes arose between owners of the land and family disputes of that ownership. Even the monarchy of the day would be asked to intervene in these local disputes passing judgements to resolve these matters.”
