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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
Resources for many more specific topics can be discovered by searching for the appropriate topic in Discover and by restricting the search to ‘Durham Archives’ or by searching the printed catalogue by selecting the topic as a subject or keyword and restricting the search to ‘Special Collections’ or ‘Ushaw College’.
The university was involved almost from its outset in 1832 in teaching civil engineering, and went on to establish a college in Newcastle for the teaching of the Applied Sciences, including Civil, Mining, Electrical, Mechanical and Agricultural Engineering, which since 1963 has been the independent Newcastle University. Teaching of the Sciences, including Engineering, developed again specifically in Durham from 1922 with the establishment of the current Science site. All this 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 its publications of such as the Gazette, Calendar and Journal, and newsletters and the like.
The open access printed Local Collection at Palace Green Library covering Co Durham, and also Northumberland, Cumbria and North Yorkshire, is rich in publications on the area’s buildings and engineering achievements such as roads, railways, bridges, waterways, shipping, mines, industrial works and the like, with many written and pictorial histories of localities and aspects of the subject. A number of the more historical works on the topic are now in the SC sequence needing to be accessed in the searchroom. The local newspapers held on microfilm also have much to tell on these aspects of the area.
There are also some books on military engineering in the library of the English College at Lisbon, held at Ushaw, and the Big Library at Ushaw also has some 19th century works on engineering.
A further invaluable resource is Pictures in Print, a union catalogue (DUL and various national collections), with viewable images, of printed maps and topographical prints of Co Durham and some of its structures created before 1860.
The Additional Manuscripts series includes Add.MS. 1484/1-4, the working papers of Thomas Schollick, mining engineer and colliery manager in Co. Durham, including technical papers re the Dean & Chapter Colliery, Ferryhill, 1914-1929. Schollick was under-manager at Seaham Harbour Colliery, and then assistant manager and later manager of the Dean & Chapter Colliery, Ferryhill, Co. Durham. Add.MS. 1486 is 54 letters (1844-1859), from Robert Chambers (1802-1871, publisher, geologist) and his brother William Chambers (1800-1883, publisher), to Thomas Sopwith (mining engineer, 1803-1879) about mining, their writings, geology, controversy over the Vestiges of the natural history of creation, stratigraphy and raised beaches, and contact with Brunel. Add.MS.1727 is an 1833 patent of invention granted to William Lloyd Wharton of Dryburn, Durham for “Certain Improvements in Steam Engines for Raising or Forcing Water”. Material is also held for Stanhope’s lead mines.
Amongst the family collections, the estate records of the Earls Grey and Lords Howick, including the papers of the 1st and 3rd earls, contain engineers' records re mining, railways, harbours, other civil engineering, military engineering in Northumberland and beyond. The Headlam Family archive includes records of the attempts to bridge the Tees at Whorlton 1829-1831. Other collections reflecting the coal- and lead-mining interests of land-owning families during the 18th and 19th centuries include the Baker Baker papers (also alum interests), the Backhouse papers, the Clavering of Greencroft manuscripts, the Clayton and Gibson papers, the Cookson Family papers (also iron, steel and chemical interests), the Love, Pearson, Ferens and Marshall papers, the Claxton in Greatham deeds, and the Shipperdson papers.
The Sudan Archive contains official and private papers of British officials which document the Sudan under Mahdist and Condominium rule for the period 1883-1956. There are also substantial numbers of papers relating to Egypt, Arabia, Palestine, Transjordan, Syria and African states bordering on the Sudan. Amongst the various collections that make up the Sudan Archive are some which give details of various engineering projects, particularly irrigation projects. These are listed in brief below. There are also numerous photographs of civil engineering projects throughout the Sudan, available on a database in the Palace Green Library search room, and a variety of printed works on various aspects of engineering in the Sudan.
The Durham Castle Buildings Archive plans, drawings, photographs (negatives, with prints and lantern slides of a selection), and documentary material concerning repairs and alterations to Durham Castle. Structural reports on Durham castle in 1925 and 1927 drew attention to its state of advanced disrepair, and the likelihood that parts of the building would eventually slide into the river unless urgent measures were taken to stabilise the foundations. The contents of this collection relate primarily to the extensive programme of repairs carried out between 1924 and 1939. They are backed up by the records of University College, based in the castle, and also by files of the architect Dennis Jones who did much work on the castle.
The Durham Cathedral Archive includes records of the maintenance of and repairs to one of the world’s greatest Romanesque structures in the cathedral itself, and also other structures within the chapter’s portfolio, such as the various buildings in the College, and Prebends’ Bridge, dating from the later Middle Ages to the present day. The archive also includes early unrealised plans by Salvin for proposed buildings for the new university around Palace Green in the 1830s.
The archive of the university itself has much about the maintenance and development of its built estate covering much of Durham, including the construction of its Science, Hill and Mountjoy sites, and its more recent college buildings such as St Mary’s, St Aidan’s, Grey, Trevelyan, Van Mildert and Collingwood. This material is to be found in the records of the Surveyor’s/Estates and Buildings department, central filing and the colleges themselves, and these records also have information about university buildings predating their university usage, back into the 16th century. The physical development of the Ushaw College site since 1808 is also reflected in its archive.
