A beautifully produced book exploring 59 of the most used brick bond patterns. With exposed binding it lays flat, has a foiled cover & lovely uncoated cream pages. www.presentandcorrect.com/products/bri... Shipping worldwide.

Interesting insight into what one particular format of document can be mined to tell us: blogs.ucl.ac.uk/special-coll...

An improved Irish Townland and Historical Map Viewer with new features is available online. Please note: the old URL is no longer functional. Explore the new viewer: experience.arcgis.com/experience/b...

@booseyandhawkes.bsky.social have mined the archive here to make a series of short films marking the 50th anniversary this year of Benjamin Britten's death: www.boosey.com/cr/news/Benj...

Really like these blogs, by @giorgiatolfo.bsky.social & for @nationalarchives.gov.uk.web.brid.gy! They link archival research, embodied experience & ways of seeing, knowing & feeling. Strikes a chord, as we do similar on our #AccidentalJourney threads! www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/professional...

I think this would improve almost every conference I've been to; even when people finish their presentations on time, a bear hanging round on stage would add to the general gaiety. I'd also let him deal with anyone who turns up with a Mac they want to plug in without having brought the right cable.

#OTD 55 years ago the UK switched to decimal currency: here's an article on how this shows up in the Britten-Pears archive, with Britten buying himself ready-reckoners, shop bills swapping currencies mid-month, and charities seeing publicity opportunities. www.brittenpearsarts.org/news/archive...

🕊️ Quaker Day in London 13 Mar 2026 Discover your Quaker ancestors at the Society of Genealogists. Morning talks on Quaker history & records Afternoon choice: Library of Friends visit or guided Quaker London walk Bonus recorded talk on SoG Quaker resources portal.sog.org.uk/Event/view/1...

"Our little museum has been growing – more events, more activities, more volunteers and more visitors. "So, we have come up with an idea for a new building to honour the things that were important to Jefferies, and are important to us."

Researching Suffolk ancestors? Join this FREE online event with SuffolkArchives, @sfhs1975.bsky.social and partners to discover key records, resources and research tips, with a live Q&A. 23 Feb 2026 | 14:00–16:00 | Online | Free Book: portal.sog.org.uk/Event/view/1...

The spreadsheet on this clay tablet, which is almost 4,000 years old, is organised into columns for furrowed area, grain produced, land not sown, and the field’s name. The first field is called “Of the soldiers who stood in for their fathers”. It’s ancient Excel, but I find that incredibly moving

Fascinating podcast exploring the role of the Angadi family in bringing Indian culture to the UK: yoga and Ravi Shankar in a Finchley living room. www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

#EarlyModern 🗃️ Rosamund Oates is researching the history of early modern deafnes - see her P&P article, book out soon I think. academic.oup.com/past/article...

NEW EXHIBITION: John Piper in the South Country Saturday March 7th - Saturday 6th June 2026 Join us for the first ever exhibition devoted to how Piper responded to the landscape and architecture of Wiltshire and Dorset, including Devizes- his favourite market town.

Not only have we actually seen the sun this afternoon, but there are primroses appearing in Aldeburgh (as well as a lot of winter aconite). We may not have seen our shadows more than a couple of times in the last few weeks, but things are moving towards spring all the time.

Proustian flashback sorting old administrative files this afternoon: double-sided 5" floppy disks, with their own case. (Mercifully, seemed pretty clear the content wasn't anything we needed to keep, so no digital preservation saga to follow from that one.)

A rather lovely story emerging from the archives in Leicester:

Bluesky served up these two posts next to each other on my timeline and for a few minutes I genuinely thought they were a thread: I rather like the idea of political parties rushing out philosophical aperçus, to be honest.

Born #OTD 1824, Samuel Plimsoll MP, campaigner for sailors' safety and originator of the Plimsoll Line that shows if a ship is overloaded: here's his grave, in St Martin's churchyard in Cheriton. If you've been through the Channel Tunnel terminal in Kent, you've been a few hundred yards from here.

Interesting: I'm on the edge of a community of British Academic Historians, which I suppose is archive life in a nutshell. (Also, more importantly, in the sort of far galactic fringe location from which traditionally a plucky band will fight back to reclaim the Empire.)

Ghosts in the Fields These magnificent gatepiers stand isolated in the Berkshire countryside at Hamstead Marshall, survivors of one of England's great lost houses. Eight of the original nine pairs remain, "pathetic to Pevsner, mysterious and romantic to others."

Reading Bart van Loo's "The Burgundians" and I've reached a major marriage feast with associated tournament: of course we know that tournaments were a way of winning knightly renown but I'd not thought of how that renown would disseminate through people reading "match-reports".

Interesting on the decline of small-town hotels and how they were sustained by commercial travellers, themselves gone. Reminded of Neil Munro's stories of the middle-aged traveller Jommy Swan, doing his circuits with cases of samples, knowing every hotel, its staff and its Commercial Room.

#OnThisDay, 6 Feb 1918, the Representation of the People Act receives royal assent, allowing some women in the UK the right to vote in general elections. #VotesForWomen #WomenInHistory #BritishHistory 🗃️ 1/2

Fascinating - a document genre I had no idea existed.

OTD, 6 February in 1875 architect Leslie Green was born. Best recalled for the #London Tube stations of 1906/7 for the Underground Group's 3 new tube lines. They are of a generic design, clad in ox-blood Burmantofts faience. Original drawings for Strand/Aldwych station ↘️ flic.kr/p/2km3etL

Exploring the itineraries of King Edward I 🤓

Another of those spring milestones: Winter Aconite emerging, as it always does, next to the gate to the archive car park. The yellow crocuses round the building have been out for a few days; today the first purple one joined them.

Some useful stuff here: I like the distinction between the task-based AI (that has real potential to do things for which we don't have the humans) and the generative activities, and the proposed safety-check considerations for the latter.

Obviously there are real difficulties preserving or reusing bits of airport, but it's interesting how there are certain genres of building that are seen *purely* in functional terms, and have bits knocked down, added on, etc., completely willy-nilly. (Hospitals are similar.)

Happy Birthday to James Joyce!🎉 🎂 Joyce was born on 2nd February 1882 in Rathgar, Dublin. Joyce loved having a big celebration for his birthday. Come and catch the exhibition of James Joyce’s personal archive at University of Reading Special Collections @themerl.bsky.social !

Fun astronomy/archives story - Kate Bond @royalastrosoc.bsky.social has tracked down the only photograph of 19th century astronomer Richard Carrington, who spotted the first recorded solar flare. academic.oup.com/astrogeo/art...

Worth listening to the music of this film: it's by Doreen Carwithen who later repurposed it in her Suffolk Suite (1964).

Visible on the map as part of the C ring motorway, what was called ELRiC (East London River Crossing): part of the Greater London Development Plan in the 70s, revived when London-wide government returned.... every generation or so ELRiC gets mooted again, though I doubt I'll see it in my lifetime.

A miserable wet afternoon here but out at Bruisyard church the snowdrops are out in force.

#OTD in 1829, Jonathan Martin set fire to York Minster as a religious protest. Back in my Wellcome Library days I catalogued a drawing he had made of the vision that commanded this, God's face and sword in the clouds. wayback.archive-it.org/16107/202103...

If I had to summarize interwar British modernity in one image…

A bit of a gathering of Red House adjacent personnel here: Arthur Benjamin taught Britten piano at the RCM (and is the dedicatee of the early "Holiday Diary" pieces), Heather Harper famously premiered the War Requiem and her papers are in the archive, even Julian Bream's there as "guitar player".

Sifting last year's photos I came across this little curiosity, redolent of the years after WW1: a collecting box for Lady Haig's Poppy Factory, at Dryburgh Abbey in the Borders. Earl and Lady Haig are buried in the abbey ruins.

Job klaxon!

Our next talk! Francesca Galligan on 'Sir Christopher Hatton and his books: reconstructing an Elizabethan library.' How and why do we reconstruct historic libraries? Thurs 12th February, 5:15 pm T.S. Eliot Theatre, Merton College, Oxford (+ online via Zoom - register [email protected])

UK readers looking for a baseball team to follow: just pick your favourite name from this list.

Are you studying, researching or teaching in the histories of Britain or Ireland? Try using the Bibliography of British and Irish History (BBIH), it contains 670,000+ resources from 55 BCE to today! Find out how to use BBIH buff.ly/yD11954 @brepols.net

Want to help preserve the county's history? We're recruiting an Archives and Local Studies Senior Officer to our team! Head to the link below for more information. jobs.buckinghamshire.gov.uk/job_detail/3...

A useful thread of online design archives from around the world. (Taken from our 2020 Tweet of the same name) 1. Bulgaria socmus.com

Save the date! Join us for an online archival workshop with @gpadmoreinstitute.bsky.social and @irrnews.bsky.social to explore the materials and histories of Black activist publishing in the UK from the 1970s: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/archival-w...

Cold clear day after yesterday's rain and as if the sun has fired a starting pistol, suddenly the crocuses are coming out around the archive building at the Red House.

Collections Officer (Archaeology) National Museum of Wales Salary: £28,895.78 - £35,598.34 Closing Date: February 9, 2026 Location: Cardiff www.bajr.org/job-ad/colle...

Blimey, this is going to be a cracking resource.

'Joyride', Franta Belsky, 1959. Belsky was commissioned by Stevenage Development Corporation to produce something symbolic for a recently created New Town (the Corporation took inspiration from the use of symbolic sculpture in the rebuilding of bombed Rotterdam).