The British Records Association is delighted to announce the winner of the 2024 Janette Harley Prize: Dr Eliza Wheaton (editor), Loving and Obedient? Family Correspondence of the Mores of Loseley Park, 1537-1686 (Surrey Record Society vol. XLVIII, 2023)
The archives of the More family of Loseley Park, near Guildford, are exceptional for the wealth of family correspondence of the 16th and 17th centuries. This selection of letters and documents presents the lives and preoccupations of the More women over nearly 150 years, in their own words. Many of the issues loom large in personal life in any age, but often escape surviving records.
The women appear in multiple roles:- as domestic and estate managers, transmitters and shapers of information and opinion at Loseley and at Court, as daughters and daughters-in-law, and as wives and widows, sometimes forceful, at other times vulnerable. The letters highlight the challenges of managing large households and protecting the interests of a widespread family.
Elizabeth More (1552-1600) is perhaps the star of the collection. First married at the age of 15, she remarried soon after 1576 to John Wolley, Queen Elizabeth’s Latin Secretary, and became a lady-in-waiting at Court. This brought her considerable influence, which she used to promote the interests of her family. As for the Queen herself, rather than the grumpy, harsh old woman of popular myth, she appears in a more sympathetic light, showing concern for the health of Elizabeth’s elderly father and encouraging her absence from Court to tend him.
Half a century later the letters of Anne Gresham (née More) to her husband James in the late 1640s cover a wide range of topics at a time of political turmoil. Anne manages the family estate in the absence of James in London; she mentions a fox killing ten rabbits, but ‘since I poysoned eggs which shee suckt I have not bin troubled with her’. She asks advice from James’s seedman about planting asparagus and cauliflowers; and she importunes her husband to purchase medicine, shoes and clothing. The affection between husband and wife is clear; similar strong feeling can be found in the many letters of congratulation on weddings and births, and of sympathy in ill health and death, and in letters of concern by mothers and fathers away from their children.
The edition retains the original spelling, but where necessary the modern equivalent is supplied, and obscure words are explained. Letters on the same subject are grouped together with their own helpful introductions, and the text is supported by a glossary, family trees, bibliography and indexes. The result is both readable and engaging, and a major contribution both to Surrey history and to Women’s history. The editor’s enthusiasm for her subject shines through.
The volume is published in hard copy, but after five years will be freely available online on the Archaeology Data Service website.
Highly Commended
Rosie al-Mulla, Stephen Bowman, Sarah Bromage, Katharina Pruente and Duncan Armstrong, ‘An Unusual Period of Unspecified Length’ – A creative oral history of the Covid-19 pandemic (2024), an article and film combination about the impact of Covid at the University of Stirling, published in UCL Press’ online BOOC Paper Trails.
Rebekah Day, Animal Encounters (2024), an online exhibition and related blog post for the Regional Ethnology of Scotland Project about the varied and complex relationships that can exist between people and animals.
Adam Fraser, England to Egypt in Five Days (2023), an online exhibition and narrative of what was then (1919) the fastest ever trip by air between these locations.
Suffolk Archives, The World of Walton Burrell, an online display about Walton Burrell (1863-1944), a prolific expert photographer from near Bury St Edmunds who was born profoundly deaf. Many of Burrell’s photographs record training camps and military hospitals in Suffolk during the First World War. The online display includes films and photographs created by local deaf young people inspired by Burrell’s life story and photographs. It concludes with reflections from deaf students on what they would like to see change for deaf people in the future.
Congratulations to all and our thanks to each and every person who submitted an entry for the prize.
The prize was established in memory of Janette Harley, a member of the British Records Association, who died in 2015. It is intended to raise awareness of research and achievements in the world of archives, and is awarded for the best, or most original piece of published work which reflects the aims of the Association: to promote the preservation, understanding, accessibility and study of our recorded heritage for the public benefit.
A call for entries to next year’s Janette Harley Prize will be made in April 2025.
The British Records Association is a charity which aims to promote the preservation, understanding, accessibility and study of our recorded heritage for the public benefit. It is open to anyone interested in records and archives.