Henry Reed, the Second World War poet, wrote a poem called “Naming Of Parts.” It begins
“Today we have naming of parts. Yesterday,
We had daily cleaning.”
It is a great poem, and it re-emerged from the back of my mind, stored there since the days of my ‘O’ Level English before even Matt Walker was born, as we were sitting down in the Committee Room preparing to sort, catalogue and store much of the archive. This is an archive which glowers at us from the shelves of the storage area, daring us to try to bring order to its randomness. Yesterday, or figuratively yesterday, we did the cleaning, turning the junk room at the top of the Woolley into a heated, humidity-controlled storage area. So today we have naming of parts.
Actually, the work upstairs is not quite finished. We discovered rolls of lino, bedding materials and carpet, not to mention much unwanted cardboard, underneath the eaves, and they will be going into a skip fairly soon. But the work on cataloguing the material, mainly papers, in boxes and files on once dusty shelves, has begun.
Before the cataloguing began
The thing about going through old documents is that it is a slow process. It is not meant to be a slow process, but because each piece of paper holds its own fascination, sorting and cataloguing seems to take second place to reading. To be an efficient cataloguer, you need to glance at the document in front of you, decide quickly what it is about, and then sort it and store it, safely wrapped in acid-free paper if necessary. To be an amateur cataloguer, however, which is what we all are, requires a nosy interest in every word you read, with frequent cries of, “Who’d have thought it!” or “I bet you didn’t know this” to your fellow cataloguers. I bet you didn’t know, for example, that the public toilets for the Tonbridge ground (not Tunbridge Wells) were built by the county club in the early years of the last century on ground specifically purchased from Tonbridge CC for the purpose, and the plans for them (not architecturally very exciting) are still in the club’s archive. Future researchers on the subject of public toilets at cricket grounds in Kent will have plenty to rummage through in our archive.
We also discovered who was earning what in the 1970s, and how Lord Harris dealt with the owners of a laundry that backed on to the St. Lawrence Ground in the 1920s. Even what would seem to be the dullest of items – a random death certificate or a mortgage document from 120 years ago – has a value as another piece of the jigsaw of cricket history in Kent, and it is very hard to steel yourself to move on as quickly as you can or ought.
There are of course, many other objects that need to be catalogued. The process involves answering a few questions about each item – What is it? Who gave it to us? When did it come into the collection? Where is it stored? The “What Is It?” bit is the most complicated, because, if for example it is Martin van Jaarsveld’s cricket top (which we found upstairs under the eaves and several layers of crumpled cardboard), then we need not only to identify it, but also to be able to cross-reference it to other items relating to MvJ, as well as to other items of clothing and other items relating to the date it was used. If somebody wants to know how many items of Kent clothing over the years we have in the collection, we want to be able to tell them, and if somebody else wants to know what we have relating to van Jaasrsveld – letters, contracts, bats, boots or X-rays of broken fingers – then we want to be able to tell them.
The “Who gave it to us?” bit is important, too, because if you do not have a clear idea of where it came from, preferably with a countersigned Accession Document, then if ever in future there should be a dispute over ownership, for example. We will have the necessary records to prove ownership one way of the other. Several counties have recently had problems of ownership to deal with, and most counties, including Kent, have items which are given to the club on a long term loan, but do not belong outright to the club. Without a document proving ownership, you can bet that somewhere down the line, in maybe 50 years, the great-great-grandson of somebody who donated a bat in 1934 will want it back.
The storeroom today, heated, humidity controlled and you can see the floor
“Where is it?” is obviously important. If you don’t know where you put it, you won’t find it very easily. But this is the one piece of information which can change, so when setting up a numbering system for the archive, the location is the worst thing to base it on. If we move an item to Beckenham, for example, (which we have done and will do again), we don’t want to have to change the catalogue number simply because of where it is – you need a system which gives a code to each location, which can be easily changed as an item is moved.
The other main rule is that you throw nothing away. So if we find in one box, for example, a receipt from 1988 for a couple of sandwiches and a banana, which some researcher probably had for his lunch that day, it is given a catalogue number and it stays in there, part of the Kent CCC archive for ever. I have to add that we have not yet found a receipt for two sandwiches and a banana in any of the piles of paper we have sorted through, but if we did, we would not throw it away.
The only thing we can get rid of is books. We have still hundreds of books which are surplus to requirements, either because they are duplicates, or else because they have nothing to do with Kent cricket. We are sorting them as fast as we can, and intend to hold a sale of these books, ranging from Wisdens, Playfairs and Kent annuals to several books by Brian Johnston and Dickie Bird, some signed, some from E.W. Swanton’s personal library and some of almost no value whatsoever. The sale will take place on Tuesday 26th and Wednesday 27th June, during the Middlesex day/night match. Please bring a large bag with you to carry away all the bargains you can afford.
In the meantime, we carry on naming the parts.