The British Steel Archive Project
The Teesside Industrial Memories Project held its AGM in January. After the meeting, Dr Barry Doyle, Assistant Dean Research, Faculty of Social Sciences and Law at the University of Teesside, talked about the British Steel Archive, a project in which TIMP might become involved. This is a summary of his talk.
The key objective of the British Steel Archive Project is to preserve, conserve, catalogue and make accessible the archives of the 40 or so companies, dating back to the 1850s, that came together to make British Steel Teesside. The archive is a mirror on the industry which built both the economy and the identity of Teesside. As such, the collection is more than just a pile of dusty ledgers it is a gateway to the heart of Teesside’s social and cultural heritage.
The archive has been gifted to Teesside Archives in Marton Road, Middlesbrough by Corus who continue the long history of steel making in the Tees Valley. Barry Doyle and Joan Heggie from the University of Teesside became involved in the archiving project through Barry’s work on the history of hospitals in Middlesbrough which revealed that the archive existed but was unusable by historians due to a lack of resources to catalogue and conserve the collection. Joan and Barry brought together a group of people from across the University to work with Teesside Archives to identify what would be needed to open the collection up to the public. With the help of £10,000 from the University, they were able to employ a trainee archivist to organise and map the collection and get a rough idea of what was required in terms of preservation and conservation costs. On the back of this Joan worked with Linda Polley from the Centre for Regional and Local History to mount a very successful Local History Open Day at the University in mid September 2006 where the project was officially launched by Vera Baird, QC, MP for Redcar.
The collection includes standard business records (ledgers, finance records, production figures, legal arrangements and directors’ minutes) covering 40 companies involved in every stage of the business from mining and other extraction work, through iron and steel production to the fabrication and construction steel structures for which Teesside became famous in the mid-twentieth century. There are extensive employee records covering staff (especially pension records) but also production workers, some of the material dating back into the 19th century. Central to the survival of Teesside metal making was the development of a successful bridge building division and there are numerous deposits related to this part of the business, especially the Sydney Harbour Bridge contract. The Archive is greatly enriched by a substantial body of visual images, including around 25,000 print, glass plate and negative photographs, thousands of maps and plans and many working drawings. Additionally there are almost 100 films dating back to the 1920s. As such, the collection covers everything and everyone involved in the iron and steel industry in the region, reaching out to encompass working conditions, social and leisure activities, politics, welfare and even family life through the large collection of material relating to Dormanstown. It is a community resource and one the project aims to make accessible to the community.
And we have made considerable progress towards that aim. Through the Open Day and launch we made contact with a number of groups and individuals who wish to contribute to the work of the project as volunteers, as interviewees, as financial backers and by contributing extra material to the archive. We have also been building partnerships with a number of bodies who have or may offer support. Crucially Corus have pledged their support and contributed a sum of £60,000 (£20,000 per year over three years) towards the preservation costs. Middlesbrough Council has also offered its backing, though the precise nature of the commitment is being negotiated. The trade union Community (formerly the Iron and Steel Trades’ Confederation) has been very supportive and we are negotiating with them for a significant financial contribution to fund a community engagement worker. Amongst voluntary organisations, the Economic History Society has committed funds to pay for an external consultant and towards research assistance; the Friends of Teesside Archives we hope will play an important part in supporting Teesside Archive staff in the area of preservation and, of course, we hope Teesside Industrial Memories Project will assist us with our planned oral history engagement activity.
So where do we go next? We aim to apply to some key funding bodies to provide the core support for the project. Most obviously we are in negotiations with the Heritage Lottery Fund who have expressed support for our plans. Linked bids will be made to the Esme Fairbairn Trust, who specialise in supporting archive projects, and to Northern Rock. To support this work we are developing an application to the Museums, Libraries and Archives (MLA) Association to get the collection designated as of national and international significance. We are also bidding for some funding from Tees Valley Partnership to begin our community engagement programme, starting education work and training volunteers. This will lay the foundation for our major access programme which will involve oral history, reminiscence therapy, school and college education activities and cultural interventions of different types. In the end we aim to save, preserve and conserve the archive; make it accessible to local, national and international historians of all types through a dedicated website with catalogue access and selected digital images; and open it up to the people of the Tees Valley through education and outreach activity which brings the contents alive and allows the community to engage with and feel pride in their industrial heritage.
(Photograph courtesy of Teesside Archives and the British Steel Archive Project)
