By Carina Rosas, Senior Conservator
Within the church court records of the Chichester Diocese, a series labelled as miscellaneous court papers, dated 1550’s to 1850’s, was suspected to contain a wealth of information on day-to-day life in West Sussex. It had suffered some damage in the past and the vulnerability of many documents meant cataloguing the series with any level of detail was not possible. Even gentle, careful handling of the fragile documents would risk fragments detaching and information being lost, so the entire series was made unfit for production.
Stabilising the damaged documents would require far more hours of work than our busy conservator would be able to fit in, and thus the project Ordinary Voices Revealed: Conserving the Consistory Court papers of the Archdeaconry of Chichester was born.
Thanks to two rounds of generous funding from National Manuscripts Conservation Trust and Pilgrims Trust, we were able to offer two recent conservation graduates their first step into professional practice, in 2024 and 2025. Their work has enabled these documents to be safely accessed for cataloguing and parts of them to be seen for the first time in hundreds of years.
Conservation Treatment
The first step was defining a suitable treatment plan for the entire series.
A conservation survey had revealed extensive historic damage to some documents across the collection, while others were in good to fair condition. Exposure to water was evident in the more damaged documents, which led to staining, weakness of the paper, mould and pest damage. The more water-damaged parchment documents had suffered gelatinisation, an irreversible process where the parchment becomes translucent, darkened and stiff. Other damage to documents included tears, crumpling and creasing, and loss of parts of the paper/parchment, often with loss of handwritten information too.
Due to the size of the collection and limited resources, we needed to find a treatment approach that would successfully repair and strengthen the documents, enable all handwriting to be visible, and be quick to undertake without compromising the safety of the documents. Working fast while upholding high standards of care is necessary when working with large archival collections!
When defining the conservation treatment plan, it was essential to identify any sensitivities in the documents themselves. Throughout history a wide range of materials and methods have been used to produce inks and writing surfaces, such as paper and parchment. Correctly identifying the constituent materials in historical documents is important to prevent damage, as many of them have specific vulnerabilities and may have an adverse reaction in contact with, for example, water, heat, solvents or pressure.
In the case of the miscellaneous court papers, their production dates and observation of existing damage enabled us to identify that the documents were written in iron gall ink, which has a self-destructive degradation pathway if it comes into contact with water. If too much moisture were used during treatment, an autocatalytic process would be triggered that would increasingly acidify the inked area, eventually leading to the paper disintegrating in areas where ink is present. Knowing this vulnerability, the treatment plan had to rely on techniques that introduce little to no moisture when strengthening or repairing the damaged documents.
Documents on paper were repaired using re-moistenable tissue, a pre-prepared lightweight Japanese paper coated with gelatine, which is the driest of the water-based repair methods. Where paper was very weak and disintegrating, an alcohol-based adhesive was brushed through it, thereby strengthening the paper without introducing moisture. Between these two techniques, documents were successfully stabilised while minimising the risk of triggering iron gall ink degradation.
Paper document from Ep I/15/1/163, before and after conservation
Paper document from Ep I/15/1/164, dated 1687, before and after conservation
Parchment has very different vulnerabilities to paper, being very sensitive to moisture, heat and pressure. Where documents were creased or deformed to the point of the writing being inaccessible, gentle humidification was needed to enable them to be flattened. This entailed introducing light moisture in a very controlled way to enable the parchment to soften just enough to become pliable, so it could be gently opened out. It then needed to be pressed to dry flat, but the amount of pressure had to be carefully judged as too much would cause the parchment to become irreversibly translucent.
Parchment document from Ep I/15/1/121, dated 1639, before and after conservation
To date, over 4200 catalogue entries have been completed and made available thanks to the conservation project. To learn more about cataloguing this series, read our sister blog post Cataloguing the Miscellaneous Court Papers.
Acknowledgements
This project was possible thanks to the generous funding granted by National Manuscripts Conservation Trust and Pilgrim Trust.
We are also thankful to our Assistant Conservators, Sorcha Riby and Daniella Shuhman, for their hard work stabilising these documents so their stories could be unveiled.
Deep gratitude to our volunteers Linda Robertson and Catherine Tite, who have given many hours of their time, valuable skills and extensive knowledge to produce a detailed catalogue of this fascinating set of court papers.
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