You can get in touch through our live chat service or by email, and search our FAQs for answers to your questions.
Palace Green Library
Palace Green
DURHAM
DH1 3RN
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0)191 334 2972
Email: pg.library@durham.ac.uk
The resources of Archives and Special Collections are rich in texts in a great variety of languages, both in print and manuscript, dating back over a thousand years and more, and in books and archives reflecting the many cultures outside the British Isles. There is also much on the development of MLAC as an academic subject at Durham University, and on the appreciation of these language and cultures throughout the North East, and beyond.
General
Resources for some specific areas are highlighted below, but resources for many more specific topics can be discovered by searching for the appropriate topic (such as French or German or Italian or Chinese etc) 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’.
MLAC as an Academic Discipline
The 2020 school makeup of the subjects of Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Hispanic, Italian, Japanese, Russian, and Visual Arts and Film have had a varied development as academic disciplines within the university.
Since the very beginning of the university in Durham in 1832, an appreciation of Modern Languages has been part of the syllabus offered by the university with James Hamilton being the first Lecturer in Modern Languages in 1833. Perhaps intriguingly, it was actually only the early engineering students who were required to undertake a course in French and German. Others could attend but otherwise their focus was meant to be on the classical languages. French and German language and literature was on the BA syllabus by the 1870s and the first Professors of Modern Languages were appointed in Durham (Charles Herdener) in 1911 and in Armstrong College in Newcastle (Albert Latham) in 1910. Their successors (Arthur Sells in Durham in 1930 and Cuthbert Girdlestone in Armstrong in 1926) were Professors of French Language and Literature as the range of languages had by then expanded to include Spanish. Diplomas were then also offered in Foreign Languages and Arabic. By the time King’s College in Newcastle became the independent Newcastle University in 1963, the German department there also included Scandinavian Studies with lecturers in Danish, Norwegian and Swedish. Meantime in Durham, French and German were separate departments in 1939. They were joined by Spanish in 1958, Russian in 1960, and Italian in 1999, which had appeared within Spanish in 1984. All became the School of Modern European Languages in 1986 and then the School of Modern Languages and Cultures in 2004.
Hebrew had been established as a separate department in 1939, expanding to Hebrew and Oriental Languages in 1941, and becoming just Oriental Languages in 1948 with Thomas Thacker as professor, and also a reader in Turkish and lecturers in Hebrew and Arabic. It morphed further into Oriental Studies in 1951, and became a school in 1987, by which stage it comprised Egyptology, Hebrew and Ancient Near Eastern Studies, Arabic and Islamic Studies, Persian Studies, Turkish and Central Asian Studies, India, and Chinese Studies. In 1989 it became the separate Centre (by 2020 Institute) for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies and Department of East Asian Studies, which latter closed in 2007 when its then Chinese and Japanese teaching were transferred to MLAC.
On the Arts side, the Newcastle School of Art, founded in 1837, had become part of the College of Physical Science in Newcastle in 1888. Fine Art and Architecture became part of the university’s syllabus, with the appointments of Richard Hatton as Professor of Fine Art in 1918, Wilfrid Edwards as Professor of Architecture in 1943 and Joseph Allen as Professor of Town and Country Planning in 1946. These were all separate departments of the university at the time that its King’s College became Newcastle University in 1963 leaving no legacy of these subjects in Durham.
The development of the subjects and school of Modern Languages and Cultures in the university is reflected in the university’s own archive, in central, faculty and departmental files (with an extensive archive of the former Oriental Studies department), 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 subjects, and the university’s publications of such as the Gazette, Calendar, Journal, and Vice-Chancellor’s Reports, and newsletters and the like.
Printed Works
The Archives and Special Collections section of the Library in the historic Palace Green Library, includes major collections of rare books in the Bishop Cosin (nationally-designated), Routh, and Bamburgh libraries. These contain historic foreign language books (especially French in Cosin) and books on foreign travel, history and literature, and many examples of continental printing, especially from the Venetian publishing houses. These are supplemented by the book collections of such as Winterbottom (French, German, Italian), Wilson (French), Kellett (French and Italian medicine), Gilroy (Newton in France), and Waggett (South America).
ASC also provides access to arguably the most extensive surviving medieval monastic library in this country, that of the cathedral, which contains medieval manuscripts in Anglo-Norman/French, and also manuscripts from France and Italy. The Cosin, Elliott and Ushaw College manuscripts also contain medieval French manuscripts, and there is especially quite a range of Continental Books of Hours. This material is supplemented by numbers of medieval documents in Anglo-Norman/French and the occasional medieval German and Italian item, in mainly the archive of Durham Cathedral, and also the papers of the Lords Eden.
A range of Continental material in a variety of languages is also available in the rich Catholic resource of the Big Library at Ushaw College, including the book collection there of the former English College in Lisbon (with much in Portuguese) and also the collections of various Catholic parish libraries, including Weldbank, Dodding Green, Durham St Cuthbert, Middlesbrough and Lancaster Diocese. These collections are further complemented by the French-rich libraries at PGL of the female religious communities of the Poor Clares in Darlington, and the Canonesses of the Holy Sepulchre whose library was largely built up in exile in Liege from 1642 to 1794.
Further linguistically and culturally wide-ranging printed collections are those of the Pratt Green collection of hymnody, with hymn books in a variety of continental languages, and the Cremation Society with journals relating to the process of cremation from all round the world.
The Oriental manuscripts collection has material in a range of non-European languages, including Amharic, Arabic, Armenian, Hebrew, Persian, Turkish, Chagatay, Hindi, Pali, Sanskrit, Telugu, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Tibetan, and Urdu. Similarly, the general SC printed book collection has books in various Middle Eastern and East Asian languages including Amharic, Chinese, Japanese and Korean.
Archival Sources
The archives in Palace Green Library include the papers of various individuals travelling Europe and Asia, such as the Wharton family (18th century European Grand Tourists), the Headlam family (mid 19th century European tourists), W.J. Hicks (1909 traveller in Egypt, Spain, India, China, Japan, Canada, Burma and Malaya), Y. Hunter (also 1909 traveller to China, Japan, Canada), J.D.H. Stewart (1870s traveller to India and China and working in Anatolia), and Keith Armstrong (late 20th century poetry readings round Europe). In addition there are the papers of those who were based overseas for a while, generally on diplomatic service for the British government, often reflecting on the culture of their then location, including Albert Henry George (1851-1917), 4th Earl Grey (Governor-General of Canada) and Evelyn Baring (1903-1973), 1st Baron Baring of Howick (India, South Africa, Rhodesia, Kenya). Also significant in this area are the papers of John Viscount Ponsonby (1770-1855, Argentina, Brazil, Belgium, Turkey, Austria), John Lambton 1st Earl of Durham (1792-1840, Russia and Canada), Malcolm MacDonald (1901-1981; Canada, Malaya, India, Kenya), and the Wylde Family (especially William 1819-1909, East and West Africa). The collections also include the papers of a group of mid to later 20th century writers variously imbued with and commenting on the cultures of such as South Africa, Indonesia and Japan, including William Plomer (1903-1973), Louis Allen (1922-1991, university French lecturer), and Sir Laurens van der Post (1906-1996).
In addition, there is a tremendous amount on the languages and cultures of Egypt, Sudan, and the Middle East in the extensive nationally-designated Sudan Archive and the papers of such as Khedive Abbas Hilmi II (1874-1944; Egypt, with much in French), Sir Reginald Wingate (1861-1953; Egypt and the Middle East, with a fair amount in French), Sir Donald Hawley (1921-2008; Sudan, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria, Iraq, Oman, Malaysia, with also a collection of printed material in Arabic), E.T. Richmond (1874-1955; Egypt, Palestine). The collections also include the papers of T.M. Johnstone (1924-1983) who was Professor of Arabic in the University of London and a distinguished authority on Arabic dialects in Eastern Arabia and Oman. Then there is much on the culture and languages of Persia/Iran in the collection of Ann Lambton (1912-2008), Professor of Persian at SOAS, and David Brooks (1940-1994), Anthropology Lecturer at Durham University and authority on Iran and its nomadic Bakhtiari people.
Visual Arts and Film
There are extensive photographic collections in Palace Green Library, including local photographs of Edis and Fillingham’s available online, an extensive database of images in the Sudan Archive available on site in the search room, 19th century photographs of ecclesiastical architecture in the Greatorex collection, 1920s ornithology and the Himalayas in the images of Bentley Beetham, and a range of miscellaneous photograph albums available now online.
In terms of fine art, ASC has also recently acquired the papers of the eminent North-Eastern sculptor Fenwick Lawson (b1932). Cosin’s Library at the core of the Palace Green Library complex contains a significant range of portraits from the time of its construction in 1668, along with the painted roundels above the bookcases depicting the authors of the books below.
Film is held in the collections principally in the Sudan Archive in a range of cinefilm and home movies taken by the British administrators of Sudan in the middle part of the 20th century. The university archive also has various films produced largely for promotional purposes, along with a sequence of videos/DVDs of its Congregation ceremonies dating back to 1989. The papers of Sir Laurens van der Post (1906-1996) also contain a quantity of audio-visual material of and papers about his various film, TV and radio broadcasts, and the papers of the philosopher Mary Midgley (1919-2018) also have much on her radio broadcast work.
