About the Project
About the Partnership
The Borthwick Institute for Archives at the University of York is one of the UK’s leading archives. Caring for a collection of over 725 individual archives that span nearly 1,000 years and over 50 countries, we reach nearly 40,000 researchers per year around the globe, and deliver quality educational experiences to over 700 local students each year. Over the last 10 years we have been a key partner in award-winning projects worth £1.7 million.
In July 2023, we entered into a collaborative archive partnership with the Company of Merchant Adventurers of the City of York. Under this partnership, which runs for 10 years in the first instance, we have:
safely transferred the archive of the Company to the Borthwick, where it is now stored in our EN 16893:2018 compliant archival strongrooms and embedded digital preservation services and architecture.
created a comprehensive online public catalogue for the archive, available through our cataloguing software, Borthcat. You can search or browse the catalogue at https://borthcat.york.ac.uk/index.php/cmay.
Lydia Dean, Project Archivist, coordinated the move of the boxes out of the Merchant Adventurers Hall, July 2023.
Going forward, we will also be working with the Company to:
undertake collections care and conservation activities on the archive, where needed; and migration and emulation work on digital assets where applicable.
provide advice, expertise and capacity in digital preservation.
facilitate access for research of all kinds to the archive, both onsite in our specially designed searchroom; online via digitisation and digital access platforms; and remotely via staff-led enquiry and research services.
support the ongoing outreach and educational work of the Company, including exhibition support and social media content.
drive use of the archive in education, embedding elements of the archive in our own teaching and learning work at both undergraduate and postgraduate level and in formal and informal learning settings.
actively promote the archive, both to the academic community and the wider population of the city, through a collaborative, creative and diverse annual engagement plan.
About the archives
The archive is housed in 290 boxes, and covers nearly 850 years of history. Whilst the Company itself was originally founded as a religious fraternity in 1357, some of the deeds in the archive date back much further. All in all, the new online catalogue contains 3,661 entries, and the archive takes up 4.6 cubic metres of space!
Before the archives came to the Borthwick, they were held onsite at the Merchant Adventurers Hall in Fossgate, where some of them had been since the building of the Hall in the fourteenth century. Thanks to the hard work of a succession of Honorary Archivists, the archive had already been largely packaged to archival standards. The main problem facing the Company was space – it was really limited in the Hall and surrounding buildings, and archives needed to be transferred outside between buildings to allow researchers to see them (which isn’t ideal for long-term preservation). It was this that prompted our archives partnership.
The Honorary Archivists had also worked on creating handlists to the collection, which made the process of transferring the archive and creating a full online catalogue much more straightforward. The early part of the archive had been published as a handlist by Professor David Smith – a former Keeper of Archives at the Borthwick Institute – in 1990. Other handlists had also been published, and can be found in the Further Reading section below.
Further Information and Reading
You can find out more about the history of the Company of Merchant Adventurers of the City of York and their work on their website.
The following is a list of just some of the published works relating to the Company:
Before the Merchant Adventurers: The Accounts of the Fraternity of Jesus and Mary’, (The Latin Project 2007)
A. B. Bisset, The Eastland Company York Residence: Register of Admissions to the Freedom 1646-1689 and Register of Apprentices 1642-1696’ (Borthwick List and Index 17 (1996))
Maud Sellers, The York Mercers and Merchant Adventurers 1356-1917’ (Surtees Society, volume CXXIX, 1918)
D. M. Smith, A Guide to the archives of the Company of Merchant Adventurers of York (York, 1990)
D. M. Smith, The Company of Merchant Adventurers in the City of York: A Register of Admissions 1581 – 1835’ (Borthwick List and Index 18 (1996))
Pamela Hartshorne (ed), The York Merchant Adventurers and their Hall, (London, 2011)