F.G.Emmison and the Essex Record Office

I made my first visit to the Essex Record Office in 1954 in the company of my father. It was then located in the main building of County Hall in Chelmsford and was the domain of F.G.Emmison, the archivist who was building its reputation as the leading local repository in England at that time. I do not remember meeting him but do recall seeing Hilda Grieve and Nancy Briggs, who were two of his assistants. They were the first female intellectuals I had ever met and made a big impression on me as schoolboy. It was not until 1965 that I went back as a postgraduate working on the career of Robert Rich, 2nd Earl of Warwick. Hilda Grieve and Nancy Briggs were still there but had been joined by Gus Edwards (later Nancy Briggs's husband), Ken Newton, and Arthur Searle in the new archive office on London Road. I spent most of 1966-67 in the Record Office where I became aware of the feelings of the staff towards Emmison as their boss: this was a surprise to me and a relief to them when he retired in 1969.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Finding out about what is going on in early modern history beyond this country

One of the puzzles I face most days concerns what is going on in early modern history in English-speaking countries beyond these shores. I have a reasonable understanding of the seminar papers being offered here and of the conferences being or about to be held. Most of the websites of relevance are known to me and I am, broadly speaking, aware of the names of historians working in the areas I am interested in. Google alerts and social media help to fill in the gaps. Where I am much less well informed arises from the activities of early modern historians in north America, in Australia and New Zealand. Despite having some regular contacts on the other side of the Atlantic, I have to work hard to search the myriad history departments and learned societies of the U.S.A. and Canada. Oddly enough, this does not appear to be so large an issue with countries in Europe where I conduct regular searches for publications and theses, conferences and seminars of potential interest. It would be good ...
Read more

Simon Healy has died

Image
  I am extremely sorry to report that Simon Healy, who worked for the History of Parliament Trust's 1604-1629 section for many years,  has died. I remember him as a very cheerful and engaging conversationalist. My condolences go to his widow and their two children.
Read more

Centre and Locality: review reflections

  Quite by chance, I was browsing on Twitter last Friday (9 th April) when I spotted on Edward Vallance’s site a reference to a video conference organised by William Clayton of the University of East Anglia at the end of last month. Further searches led me to William Clayton’s review of the book edited by Chris Kyle and Jason Peacey, Connecting Centre and Locality: Communication in early modern England, which appeared under the auspices of the Manchester University Press in 2020 and which Clayton had reviewed for The Seventeenth Century in its most recent issue. [1] This is a subject which interests me and I did give some thought to responding to William Clayton’s largely laudatory comments. However, I was also conscious that I had not read this collection of essays and was thus less well equipped than I should be for assessing either the book or William Clayton’s review. There was, however, one historiographical issue upon which I did feel qualified to comment. Right at the st...
Read more