Search FNL grants since 1931

The collection provides an important insight into the establishment and operation of the Baybridge Canal Company from its inception in 1825; accounts from that year record expenses incurred in preparing the Baybridge Navigation Act and producing handbills and advertisements inviting tenders for digging the canal and building locks. The collection also contains one of the handbills referred to in the accounts. A page of accounts from 1826 records expenditure on the construction of an iron bridge and later accounts refer to the ongoing expenses involved in maintaining the canal, such as labour for ‘throwing mud out of the river’ in May 1831 and the purchase of oil for the locks on 24th June 1831.

This lot comprised nine deeds only one of which was relevant to West Sussex, the other eight were donated to seven other archive services around the country. FNL is happy to respond to applications for grants which employ this sort of collaborative approach.

Born in London, Pugin was one of the most significant architects, designers and theorists in the history of British design and architecture. His ideas underpinned the 19th-century Gothic Revival and paved the way for the Arts and Crafts movement in Europe and America. Pugin’s influence remains strong today in both urban and rural landscapes, through his buildings and interiors and his lasting impact on design. These drawings date from the late 1830s until 1851 and are almost all working design drawings in Pugin’s hand, many dated and signed by him, ranging from initial sketches in pen and ink to finished designs coloured in watercolour.

Rudyard Kipling and his family made several visits to South Africa between 1898 and 1908 for winter holidays and, whilst there, he was introduced to Edmund Garrett. It is likely that shared opinions and inquisitive minds brought Kipling and Garrett together. Both were deeply interested in the political situation in the region and, as documented in one of the letters, maintained a vision of a ‘Federated States of South Africa’ which would sit within the British Empire but have autonomy over governing its affairs. Thus, Kipling’s writing offers an insight into his opinions at a pivotal time for South Africa’s relationship with the United Kingdom as the former moved towards independence, something which was nominally granted by the South Africa Act of 1909.

The most complete of its kind, this survey depicts the tracks of HMS Investigator, under the command of Robert McClure, between 1850 and 1851 during its search for John Franklin’s ill-fated expedition to the Arctic. HMS Investigator had originally set out with HMS Enterprise under Captain Collinson, but they became separated off the coast of Chile. McClure, who had already visited the Arctic with George Back in 1836-7 and Sir James Clark Ross in 1848-9, continued north and the ships did not meet again on their expedition.

A rare autograph letter from the Victorian engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel to his son Isambard who was then studying at the University of Oxford. It was written soon after the launch of the SS Great Eastern steamship. The 10-page letter was sent on 2nd February 1858 after a fraught and stressful period in the engineer’s life: difficulties encountered during the construction of the huge ship had been made worse when the vessel resolutely refused to budge from the shipyard on the side of the Thames at Millwall during its first attempted launch on 3rd November 1857.

The records of York Street Chapel and the Robert Browning Settlement, a religious and later charitable institution that was based in Walworth, South London for nearly 200 years. The chapel, founded in 1790, was home as a congregational church to many including, famously, the poet Robert Browning and his family. The records purchased include deeds relating to its founding, minutes (1790-1927), lists of its members (1790-1977), Sunday school (1840-1969), burials (1781-1837) and baptisms (1804-1997), including the baptism in 1812 of Robert Browning. Following the chapel’s reinvention as a mission, the new Robert Browning Settlement was launched in 1894, led by F. Herbert Stead. The Settlement developed a programme of outreach and support for the local community in Walworth.

Sir Joseph Banks, 1st Baronet, GCB, PRS was an English naturalist, botanist, and patron of the natural sciences. He accompanied Captain James Cook on his first voyage of discovery around the world, he also visited Newfoundland, Iceland, and Holland. He was responsible for the establishment of Kew Gardens and the development of its early collections. The Whaplode and Surfleet Allotment books are a valuable addition to our knowledge of Sir Joseph Banks’s land holdings in the South of Lincolnshire.

A group of watercolours from the collection of the English botanist, William Curtis (1746-1799).  Thirteen were bought with a full grant from FNL, 13 having previously been bought at the Catherine Southon Auctioneers’ auction. The provenance of the illustrations made possible by the FNL’s grant, can be traced back to Curtis’s own collection, which makes them an unusual and exciting acquisition. Containing material attributed to Sydenham Edwards and other, currently unidentified, artists, they are very much in the stylistic paradigm adopted by The Magazine. 

As the catalogue puts it, the exhibition featured ‘500 Oil Sketches of India and the Archipelago, painted on the spot by Marianne North’. The sense that these pictures were painted ‘on the spot’, their freshness and immediacy, was seen as their greatest strength. The Pall Mall Gazette review of the exhibition, lukewarm in its assessment of their artistic merit, still found that her paintings depicted ‘more vividly than any such collection yet exhibited all that a traveller can see’ of India, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Borneo, and Java.