Search FNL grants since 1931

Displaying 11 - 20 of 1973
Item date: 1600-1639
Date acquired: 2021
Grant Value: £1,135
Item cost: £2,000
Institution: North Yorkshire Record Office
Town/City: Northallerton
County: North Yorkshire

Hensall is a village lying at the very extremity of North Yorkshire, approximately eight miles from Selby, and south of the River Aire.  Although not a separate ecclesiastical parish until 1855 and created a civil parish only in1866, it can trace its roots back to the Domesday Book in which it is named as Edeshale.

The manuscripts consist of two rolls written in Latin: one of 16 stitched vellum membranes and the other of 5 stitched vellum membranes, each measuring 60 to 80 centimetres in length and 28 centimetres wide. The larger roll comprises the record of 47 courts held between the years 1600 and 1623, with four further courts for 1626, 1633, 1635 and 1639 on the smaller roll. They give a fascinating insight into the structure of land holdings in the manor.

Item date: Compiled in the second half of the 16th century
Date acquired: 2021
Grant Value: £5,200 [B H Breslauer Foundation Fund]
Item cost: £26,000
Institution: National Library of Scotland
Town/City: Edinburgh

Chronicle of Fortingall, long out of public sight and yet of the greatest significance for the study of Highland history, was our most exciting manuscript acquisition of the year. The purchase of the Chronicle received wide attention in the media and met with a positive, often heartfelt response from many members of the public. Originating in an area and period from which few informal documents survive, the Chronicle is a rare and important witness to the cultural and political outlook of educated bilingual Gaelic speakers in the mainland Highlands of Scotland.  The manuscript was written between ca. 1550 and 1579 by a circle of scribes based in Fortingall, Highland Perthshire; the scribes belonged to a family of MacGregors whose members regularly served as priests in the Fortingall area. 

Author: Richard Ford (1796-1858)
Item date: 1830s-1840s
Date acquired: 2021
Grant Value: £12,500
Item cost: £37,500
Institution: National Gallery Research Centre

Richard Ford (1796-1858) was an English writer, collector and amateur artist. In 1830 he visited Spain and over the next three years in the country he made over 500 drawings, one of the most complete pictorial records of Spanish cities and their monuments before the advent of photography. From 1836 Ford contributed a number of lengthy reviews to the Quarterly Review, several of them on Spanish subjects. This led the publisher John Murray to invite Ford to write the Hand-book for Travellers in Spain (including an account of the pictures in the Prado that runs to over 17,000 words). When the book finally appeared in 1845, it was an immediate success and was followed a year later by Ford’s Gatherings from Spain. The collection of papers and books was assembled by a recognised Ford scholar who has published on this subject.

Item date: 18th to 20th centuries
Date acquired: 2021
Grant Value: £250
Item cost: £250
Institution: Medway Archives Centre
Town/City: Rochester
County: Kent

The auction listing stated the account books were of the firm Arnold Tuff & Grimwade. However, after delivery of the books, inspection and research, the collection of accounts books are in fact from the solicitor’s firm when they were in a variety of different partnerships models. The earliest date we have tracked the firm to is 1849, when they were Essell, Hayward & Essell. After many changes of name, the firm had become Arnold, Tuff & Grimwade by 1928. The account books provide an interesting overview of professional activities of a local, and long-standing firm, as well as an insight into the economic, social, and ecclesiastical networks of the 19th and 20th century in the Medway area.

Item date: 1708-1868
Date acquired: 2021
Grant Value: £1,270
Item cost: £1,270
Institution: Leicestershire, Leicester & Rutland Record Office
Town/City: Wigston Magna
County: Leicestershire

Robin P Jenkins, Senior Archivist, writes:  Despite the restrictions enforced during the coronavirus pandemic, Leicestershire, Leicester and Rutland Record Office (LLRO) was able – through the generous support of the Friends of the National Libraries - to purchase a small bu

Item date: 1677-1717
Date acquired: 2021
Grant Value: £402
Item cost: £402
Institution: Kent History and Library Centre
Town/City: Maidstone
County: Kent

The volume’s title page describes it as ‘A booke of Receipts of all the Quitt rents, Heriotts, Aliena[c]ions, Reliefs, Amercements and other P[er]quisites belonging to the Mannour of Sundridge in the County of Kent’. The manor of Sundridge or Sundrish comprised the whole of the parish of Sundridge, most of the parish of Chiddingstone and part of the parish of Hever, and covered nearly 8,000 acres in all. The volume has sections for Sundridge Upland and Sundridge Weald which were separate manors by 15th century.

The earliest accounts, for 10 October 1677, record the collection of rents and estreats from tenants in the Weald. The last page in the volume, also relating to Weald, has the date 20 November 1714, but the book’s arrangement is not strictly chronological and the latest entry dates from 16 March 1717/18.

Item date: Strasbourg: [Johann (Reinhard) Grüninger,] 26 April 1497
Date acquired: 2021
Grant Value: £2,250 [B H Breslauer Foundation Fund]
Item cost: £5,625
Institution: John Rylands Library, University of Manchester
Town/City: Manchester
County: Lancashire

This late 15th century Latin Bible published in Strasbourg by the prolific printer Johann Reinhard Grüninger. This copy contains signs of English ownership from the 16th century onwards, and perhaps was present in England from its publication, providing vital evidence for the import trade of books into England during this period. The volume was subsequently owned by George Kenyon of Peel Hall Lancashire and then by descent through the Kenyon family until its sale, as part of a selection of early English books from the Gredington Library, at Christie’s in July 2021.

Date acquired: 2021
Grant Value: £20,000 [£10,000 of which came from the Larkin Fund]
Item cost: £103,245
Institution: Huddersfield University
Town/City: Huddersfield
County: West Yorkshire

The Mark Hinchliffe Ted Hughes Collection has been described as “one of the finest [Hughes collections] in private hands, and a rival to those deposited in a number of University libraries on both sides of the Atlantic”, (Simon Cooke, The Private Library, 5:4, Winter 2012). The collection comprises 172 items including: signed first editions of dozens of Hughes’s trade, limited-edition and fine-press publications, and original letters written by Hughes and his first wife, the poet Sylvia Plath.

Item date: 1750
Date acquired: 2021
Grant Value: £675
Item cost: £675
Institution: Horsham Museum
Town/City: Horsham
County: West Sussex

This rare chapbook publication (four are held in libraries worldwide), a “deathbed” confession of a highwayman and robber appealed to the Museum as it gave voice to a criminal whose activities occurred in Horsham.  However, Thomas Munn’s reflective and self-aware account provided a much richer tale which had a number of links to the town and Museum’s collections, including brick making, Morris dancing, town solicitors, poaching, and rabbit breeding, all important aspects of the town and districts cultural life in the 18th century. 

Author: Frederick DuCane Godman
Item date: c.1870 and c1900-1918
Date acquired: 2021
Grant Value: £2,000
Item cost: £5,400
Institution: Horsham Museum
Town/City: Horsham
County: West Sussex

The current owner of the residual library (sales had occurred in 1990s and early 2,000) sold off parts of the library in 2019 at Christie’s and dealer Nigel Burwood. This included three items not listed on his ABE entry, but through correspondence, the dealer told the Curator about. That is a Frederick Du Cane Godman & Osbert Salvin Library catalogue, a Catalogue of the Library at South Lodge and an album of 43 botanical illustrations.