2013 Annual Report - Jesus College - University of Cambridge

84 COLLEGE NEWS I Jesus College Annual Report 2013
One of the main Archive tasks this year has been cataloguing and sorting various
documents that were returned from deep storage. The hundred or so boxes that were
sent away last year for the period of the Chapel Court refurbishment were returned in
February 2013 and placed in a new archive store in East House. This space was formerly
used by the Records Manager as a semi-current and modern records store, but a
dedicated store has now been provided for this in the refurbished Chapel Court, leaving
the East House space available for archive use.
We have welcomed visitors to the College Archives over the last year with a range of
research interests, including 19th century women’s wages, spending on chapel furniture
during the Reformation, 18th century property deeds in connection with family history
research, and developments of College property since the 1960s. The role played by the
Archives in connection with our property is not always recognised – we are constantly
called on to answer queries, both internal and external, concerning terms of purchase,
boundary disputes, footpaths, and so on; queries that can often concern properties and
land that we no longer own but to which our archive records can provide an answer.
There have been a significant number of gifts to the Archives this year. Photographs
were received from the boat house, including a good one of Steve Fairbairn in a double
scull; these have been conserved and are now stored with our other photographic
collections. Our Honorary Fellow and former organ scholar Peter Hurford (1949) gave us
the notebook in which he recorded details of all the organ music he and his successor
Richard Lloyd (1952) performed at Chapel services. Peter and Adrian Rossiter and
Charlotte Grant (Fw 1995) donated a significant collection of the papers of A P Rossiter.
Rossiter was admitted as a Fellow in 1945 and subsequently served as Tutor, and Director
of Studies in English until his
death in a motorcycle accident
in 1957. Accounts given by
students of his supervisions and
lectures make clear that he was
an exceptionally brilliant and
inspiring teacher. The papers
we have received include drafts
of lectures, photographs, and
notebooks containing
reflections on various topics
(Elizabethan and Jacobean
theatre, the picturesque, etc.),
quotations, prose pieces,
poems, limericks, and detailed
records of rock-climbing trips
and routes (Rossiter was a
passionate and expert climber,
with an unsurpassed knowledge
of the Lake District).
Such gifts to the Archives
help us to fulfil our
commitment to maintaining as
full a record as possible of the
College and its life.
A P Rossiter