Historians fear for the future of ‘irreplaceable’ collection as libraries budget faces 25% cut

Published: 19th May, 2011
by DAN CARRIER

FROM muskets that weighed down the shoulders of the Hampstead militia during the Napoleonic wars to maps of every drain in the borough. From love letters to a Second World War soldier to every copy of the New Journal. The shelves of Camden’s Local Studies Archive are packed with information about the borough.

The archive at Holborn Library is one of the largest collections of its type in the country, and in London bettered in its breadth and size only by the archives at Westminster. 

But as the results of a library consultation are number-crunched and the Town Hall considers how to cut about 25 per cent of the service’s budget, the archives look likely to be merged with Islington’s or closed. 

The consultation found that 38 per cent of people replying felt the archives could be sacrificed.

Historians are battling to ensure the collection is protected for future generations.

Former chief archivist Malcolm Holmes, who retired four years ago, recalls how, had they been consulted earlier, the archives could have saved Camden Council serious sums of cash in the 1970s when the Rowley Way and Alexandra Road estate was being built in South Hampstead – an episode which shows their financial value is not always obvious.

He said: “The builders hit a stream when they were building the estate. They had sunk bore holes and had essentially missed the stream. 

“It took me three minutes to dig out old Ordnance survey maps that showed the streets the estate was replacing, and even went back to times when it was all fields.”

One map showed the stream snaking across the site. “If they had looked at the map first they would have understood what was there and would not have had to rethink their plans. It was hugely costly – around £150,000 in 1970s money,” he said.

Mr Holmes believes this is a good example of how the archive could help save cash in the long term.

“For example, people are often asking architects to draw up plans for their homes, when they exist here,” he added. 

The archive includes council records and parish notes dating back hundreds of years, as well as thousands of photographs.

Mr Holmes said: “People are interested in their past. I have seen people find out the history of a house and give it to their friends as a  present. It costs little and helps people learn, and therefore care, about the area they live in.”

His views have been echoed by Kentish Town historian Gillian Tindall, whose seminal work The Fields Beneath, tracing the story of the area, has become an internationally renowned best-seller.

She criticised the way the questionnaire asked people to make difficult choices.

“The tick-box survey is no doubt well-intentioned, but unfortunately the subject of which library services might be cut with least distress to fewest people is far too complex for this simple-minded treatment,” she said. 

“Trying to fit into one format the priorities of those who go to a library ‘because there are plenty of computers’, those who use a reference library for serious research and those who take a toddler to a children’s session is like trying to evaluate the relative merits of sandwiches, Tube trains, and parks – all are good, but they are different things. 

“No one wants to see a library closed, but the fact is, provided you retain the building, you can open it up again by restocking it. This is not the case with archive collections that have been built up over many years and are irreplaceable.”