Did you know that although Dumfries was thought to have been created as a Royal Burgh by William the Lion in 1186, there is material in the Ewart Archives that makes it even earlier.
Graham Roberts the Archivist gave our Group a whisk through the history of Dumfries and Galloway, what the archives do, what they hold and how archiving is changing in the electronic age. With only one archivist and a part-time assistant they have been working with the Friends of the Archives to create a historical index of some of the huge collection.
We were lucky enough to be shown the strong room and some of the amazing collection. One of the jewels is the papers from the Crichton Royal Hospital which have been catalogued and digitised with funding from the Wellcome Foundation.
Even the containers were interesting, with the archives of the Stewarts of Shambellie being housed in custom-made trunks covered in deer hide and lined with old sermons. Large, carefully bound ledgers house the original police records from the early 20th Century with mugshots, details of charges and carefully cross-referenced crimes.
The good news is that they have received funding to improve their storage facility in the old T.C. Farries building in Lochside which will improve accessibility and conservation. Graham manages a team of volunteers who work on projects cataloguing collections from within the archives and still discovering fascinating new documents, maps and drawings buried amongst the hundred of thousands of boxes. They are always looking for new volunteers.