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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
General
Resources for some specific areas of business are highlighted below, but resources for many more specific types of business can be discovered by searching for the appropriate business in Discover and by restricting the search to ‘Durham Archives’ or by searching the printed catalogue by selecting ‘business’ or ‘trade’ or ‘merchants’ as a subject keyword and restricting the search to ‘Special Collections’ or ‘Ushaw College’.
Printing and Publishing
Rupert Hart-Davis’s papers detail a publishing business of the 1950s and 1960s, the Surtees Society has been publishing documents for longer than anyone else in this country, but the whole of the rare book collections of ASC are redolent with the products of North-Eastern, British, European, and worldwide printing and publishing businesses. For example, the renowned Venetian Aldine Press is well-represented in the collections, as a search for ‘Aldine press’ in the printed catalogue will reveal, and David J. Hall’s collection is a rich resource for private press books.
The Backhouse Papers relate to the family of Jonathan Backhouse junior (1779-1842), Quaker banker of Darlington, and include correspondence, papers, accounts, bills, ledgers and vouchers relating to business and banking matters.
Other relevant collections include the Baker Baker Papers, the Baring (Howick of Glendale) Papers, the Cookson Family papers, the Papers of Charles Robert, 5th Earl Grey and Sir Donald Hawley’s papers relating to some of the early activities of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation.
Publications of and about local banks can also be found in such as the Grey pamphlets and also the printed Local collection.
Solicitors
Solicitors’ records cover not just their own legal businesses, but also often their administration of others’ estate and business interests. Records of a number of solicitors’ businesses operating in Durham and beyond are held by ASC, including those of Clayton and Gibson (Co Durham, Newcastle and the wider estates of the Marquesses of Bute), Booth and Lazenby (Co Durham, Yorkshire, Derbyshire, including mining and tile-making interests), Mawson (Co Durham estates, especially those of the university but also such as a paper mill), and Smith Roddam (especially Bishop Auckland).
Local business records
Relevant collections include the business records of the Backhouse family from Darlington, and the Baker Baker Papers, which relate to the business affairs of the Baker family of County Durham covering such as alum, coal and lead mining, banking and investments.
Other local businesses include those of local photographic businesses of the twentieth century including the Edis family and Fillinghams.
The Ushaw College archive contains material concerning the business affairs and financial administration of the College, which was largely self-sufficient during its time as a Catholic seminary from 1808 to 2010.
The archive of the university itself of course the records of its Business School which has been teaching business skills to an increasingly diverse student body of potential and actual entrepreneurs since the 1960s. Then there the spin-out companies and the business activities with which the university has been involved, such as the North-East Centre for Scientific Enterprise.
There are also some histories of local businesses in the printed Local Collection, and much to be found on their development and activities in such as local directories and local newspapers, much of the latter accessible on microfilm.
The physical set up and activity of many local business are also to be found in the extensive probate archive, especially the inventories, and the identity of many local business people are to be found in their wills in the same archive, and also in their titles or names in documents such as deeds going back well into the medieval period in such as the Durham Cathedral Archive. The records of the Durham guilds and freemen also provide much information about business people and their activities in the city.
Business Activities of Large Organisations
Most of the larger archives held by ASC include the administration of estates that supported the main activities of the organisations, which were thereby in effect being run as major businesses. They might also have carried out other business activities which were vital parts of their portfolios of income. For example, Durham Cathedral’s Archive’s extensive medieval records include quantities of material on the running of the monks’ agricultural businesses on their manors, and also series of livestock accounts and accounts for their coal-mines. These business activities continued well after the Dissolution.
The Church Commission deposit of Durham palatinate and bishopric records relate to the financial administration of the Palatinate of Durham prior to the nineteenth century. For examples of the coinage that facilitated these financial records, there is also the Durham Palatinate Mint Coin Collection.
The Earls Grey were also involved in various business activities in connection with their Northumberland estates including mining, quarrying and harbour developments.
The Sudan Archive contains material relating to the running and administration of business activities in the Sudan in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and also papers on the work of some members of its department of Economics and Trade.
The papers of Shuqair, S. relate to Sudan Government finances, the Bank of Abyssinia, and Palestine and Syria finances 1918-1919 whilst the papers of Cummins, J. W. include official documents relating to Sudan finance during periods of war. Other relevant collections include Carmichael, J. and Bulkeley, R. I. P.
Some information on business affairs in Egypt can also be found in the Abbas Hilmi II papers.
Papers of various diplomats are also held in the collections for the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Stationed around the world, part of their role was supporting British global trade, information on which can be found in such as in the papers of various members of the Grey family, the Eden family, the Wylde family and Malcolm MacDonald.
Thielman Kerver’s device on the title page of Testamenti novi with distinctive unicorns, representing his printing business, except that he had died by this date and the business was carried on by his widow Yolande Bonhomme, an early example of a woman running a printing business (SB 2525).
