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Palace Green Library
Palace Green
DURHAM
DH1 3RN
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0)191 334 2972
Email: pg.library@durham.ac.uk
Biosciences as an Academic Subject
Medicine had been an integral part of the university’s academic offer right from the beginning with William Cooke appointed Reader in Medicine in 1833, but it was the bringing into the university fold of the College of Medicine in Newcastle (founded in 1834) in 1852 that made it a major part of the university’s attraction until the then King’s College became the independent Newcastle University in 1963. Meantime, the College of Physical Science had been founded, also in Newcastle, within the university in 1871, with Henry Nicholson soon appointed as the Professor Natural History in 1873, followed by Michael Potter as Professor of Botany in 1892. Zoology and Botany took rather longer to be established on the Science site in Durham, it not being until 1951 that professors were appointed of both subjects, respectively James Cragg and David Valentine. Botany was first established in Durham as a department in 1939, followed by Zoology in 1945. The two were merged as Biological Sciences in 1988, becoming the School of Biological and Biomedical Sciences in 2001, and the current Biosciences department in 2016.
The wider development of the subject and department of Biosciences in the university is reflected in the university’s own archive, in central, faculty and departmental files, in the records of the meetings of its various committees from Senate and Council down, in the exam papers, pass lists and mark sheets for the subject, and in the university’s publications of such as the Gazette, Calendar, Journal, and Vice-Chancellor’s Reports, and newsletters and the like.
University People
Of the many celebrated academics of bioscientific disciplines at Durham University, a number of them are represented in the archival holdings of Palace Green Library, such as the marine biologist Sir Fred Holliday (1935-2016), Warden and Vice Chancellor, whose papers include material on the use of animals in experiments, and involvement with government developments on SSSIs and England’s nature resources.
The famous botanist David Bellamy (1933-2019), university Botany lecturer and a founder of the Durham Wildlife Trust, features in many photographs and press cuttings of events connected with the University.
Student societies
The collections house the minutes and other printed ephemera of the various Bioscience-related student societies, such as those of the DU Biological Society, and the DU Natural History Society.
Printed books
There are numerous copies of rare and antique printed works within the collections dealing with biological sciences over the last 5 centuries; there is a particularly rich accumulation of natural history volumes at Ushaw College Library. For example there are holdings at both Palace Green and Ushaw College of John Parkinson’s 1629 work Paradisi in sole paradisus terrestris, Parkinson being Royal Botanist and apothecary to Charles I, and a figure whose work marked the ending of herbalism and the beginning of botanical science.
Early agricultural and fisheries sciences may be explored through antique volumes such as Traité général des pesches, 1769-1782, with its comprehensive illustrative and descriptive account of European fisheries.
Other works include John Worlidge’s 1687 Systema agriculturae, the mystery of husbandry discovered offering an insight into the latest in 17th century crop science and animal husbandry, and Nehemiah Grew’s The anatomy of plants, 1682, with its descriptions of the key differences of morphology of stem and root, and its inclusion of the first known microscopic description of pollen.
George Sinclair’s Hortus gramineus woburnensis, or, An account of the results of experiments on the produce and nutritive qualities of different grasses and other plants used as the food of the more valuable domestic animals (1829) is another fascinating printed work scrutinising the niche subject of grasses for fodder, reflecting the 19th century demand for an increasingly scientific approach to the development of crop and food knowledge, alongside many other pioneering sciences of the time.
Archives
Also available for study are the papers of C.E.M Kellett (1903-1978) – notes, drafts of lectures, photographed illustrations etc. produced, as well as a large accumulation of lantern slides on the history of Renaissance medicine – for his researches in the history of 16th and 17th century medicine, particularly developments in anatomical teaching and illustration.
Moor House National Nature Reserve
The establishment of controlled areas in Britain in which indigenous plants and animals could be preserved for study dates back to the founding of the Nature Conservancy by the government after the Second World War, associated with open fell and mountain tops. A field station was established at Moor House in the North Pennines in 1952, and substantial input to the systematic experimental field work there was made by geologists, botanists, zoologists, and other researchers from the University of Durham, as well as those visiting from other universities. The Records of the Moor House National Nature Reserve, held by Durham University Archives and Special Collections, is a set of the official records of the reserve, mainly consisting of reports and detailed datasets arising from experiments and surveys conducted at the site between 1951 and 1980. The collections also include papers (Add.MS. 1596) of the inquiries in the 1960s into the then proposed nearby Cow Green Reservoir and the opposition to this development by local and national naturalists.
Botanic Garden
The Botanic Garden on the Hollingside Lane site in Durham was created primarily for teaching and research, and archival records from the various head gardeners there are in the University’s archive collections. Administrative files for the Botany department contain reports such as “The Grounds and Botanic Gardens of the University of Durham” by horticultural officer C.D. Sayers, on the management and development of the University's landscape, woodland and Botanic garden
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