| Description | The class of Additional Manuscripts was established in 1948 by William Urry as a continuation of the Literary Manuscripts class which was then closed. The Literary Manuscripts did, and do, contain some administrative items, but the Additionals were intended to comprise purely non-administrative items. This has not always been adhered too, and the class has come to be the location for gifts, with deposits going into the deposits class and being assigned a U number. By May 1990, a considerable backlog of uncatalogued and unnumbered potential Additional Manuscripts had accrued; listing, numbering and boxing took place at that time.
A detailed list does exist up to Add Ms 170. However, many of the items in 127-129 had already been listed by Neil Ker in his 'Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries' vol ii; he did not describe them all though and this important series of fragments from the medieval priory library had also been added to subsequently. Besides these fragments, gleaned from bindings of C16 and C17 ecclesiastical court books and including a number of Saxon works, the series contains a great variety of material: further, complete, medieval service books, collections of deeds, albums of sketches, several collections of photographs, theses, historical notebooks, nightwatchmen's logbooks and a wartime ration card, for example.
NOTE: some MSs have been transferred to other collections, principally DCc/Photo and CCL-Thesis (especially after item 300). |