About the Collection
In the 1980s Fr Peter Cobb asked Elizabeth Ralph,
City Archivist of Bristol from 1936 to 1971, to
examine the Shrine's archives. She was confronted
with what constituted the miscellaneous collection at
that time, piled together over many years, hugely
duplicated, and from many sources. Out of this she
created a simple outline catalogue. Since then more
material has been added, and much lost. During his
time as Master of the Guardians Fr Peter Cobb arranged
for a retired archivist, who was also a long-time pilgrim,
to take over the care and development of the collection.
We try to expand the collection (especially to fill in gaps
in series) to make its contents safer from the ravages of
time and temperature and to make available here much
of the information contained in the records.
Our top priority is to secure and preserve what remain
of the records to the end of the Second War, and next
those of the period 1945-1958, until Fr Patten's death.
Next come the succeeding decades for which there are
serious gaps, until the 2000s, when Fr Peter Cobb
collected contemporary material. Most of the post2000
material will probably have to wait for attention until
another day.
Conservation
We were fortunate to receive an
anonymous donation of high-quality
conservation materials for the
archives.
The archives have been reasonably
well kept over the years, but of
necessity they have been stored in
whatever envelopes and covers were
available at little cost (which in the
long term would have a detrimental
effect on the collection), and with no
ongoing maintenance.
The records will finally be kept in a
archival storge boxes and containers in
the archive room, which is securely
locked.
The gift of conservation materials
included high-quality acid-free storage
boxes, polyweld storage sleeves in
different sizes for photographs and
fragile documents, thirteen sizes of
acid-free paper envelopes, files made
of acid-free cardboard, archival tape,
brassed paper clips and many other
stationery items as used in record
offices. These enabled us to set up
high conservation standards for years
to come.
Alfred Hope Patten
History of the medieval Priory at Walsingham
The Restored Shrine
Society of Our Lady of Walsingham
Sanctuary School 1944-56
Order of Our Lady of Walsingham
Home for retired priests
Communities:
Sisterhoods
Priory of Our Lady Star of the Sea
Priory of Our Lady
Community of Our Lady of Walsingham
Society of St Margaret
Sister Benedicta
Sister Mary Phillida of the Son of God
College of St Augustine
Pilgrimages
Manuscript papers and lectures
Shrine publications
Miscellaneous printed material from 1926
Miscellaneous pamphlets and articles
Roman Catholic publications
Miss Ralph's first comments in her report on the Shrine
archives in the 1980s were: "The archives seem to
consist mainly of records assembled by A. Hope
Patten [until his death in 1958] together with
information collected on two occasions in an
attempt to write a biography of him.”
This statement still represents the core elements of the
collection, but in the intervening years more material has
been added from a variety of sources, and some has
been lost. Some was never collected - the years between
about 1970 to 2000 are particularly badly served. We can
be sure that some good material is missing. (see the
Wants page)
Her very simple list of classes (below) still remains a
sound base for our own much-expanded cataloguing.
Please note that some titles represent only a few documents, others as much as several boxes: the inclusion of
a subject in this list means that we hold something relating, but not its entire archive.
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