(Above). Ghandi and Mountbatten taking tea at Broadlands. Courtesy of the Trustees of the Broadlands Archives
The University of Southampton has launched a major fundraising campaign to acquire a key collection of manuscripts that span major political and historical events of the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The Broadlands Archives, which have been on loan to its library since 1989, contain rare papers and photographs including letters from Queen Victoria and Mrs Oscar Wilde and portraits by the photographer Cecil Beaton.
To highlight the fund raising drive a new exhibition at the University has just opened featuring some of the remarkable treasures contained within the archives, which are considered to be one of the UK’s most important collections of family and estate papers.
"The archives are among the foremost collections of manuscripts at the University Library, and include crucial material for key international, national and local individuals and events," explained Professor Chris Woolgar, the University's Head of Special Collections.
"This exhibition brings together a diverse range of items, offering a fascinating perspective of British history. We hope it will give visitors a sense of the significance of the archives, and why it is so important that this extraordinary collection is kept together in the UK."
Lord Palmerston at Broadlands. Photo courtesy of the Trustees of the Broadlands Archives
The material is linked to members of the families who have lived at the Hampshire estate of Broadlands, acquired by the Temple family (Viscounts Palmerston) in 1737. It includes a letter to the 2nd Viscount Palmerston from the renowned landscape architect Lancelot 'Capability' Brown. This sets out the amounts he spent during his work at Broadlands between 1766 and 1779 – an extraordinary sum for the time of £21,150.
Visitors will also be able to see a handwritten note from Gandhi to Lord Mountbatten from 1947, the time of the transfer of power in India, plus the travel journal of the 2nd Viscount Palmerston written during the Revolution in France in 1792.
The Mountbattens lived at Broadlands after the estate passed to the family of the wife of Lord Louis Mountbatten, the Cowper-Temples, after the death of Lord Palmerston in 1865.
The Broadlands Archives exhibition is on display at the Special Collections Gallery in the Hartley Library on the University of Southampton's Highfield campus from 25 January to 16 April 2010. The gallery is open from Monday to Friday between 10am and 4pm. The exhibition is also open on Saturday 20 February and Saturday 20 March, 10am to 4pm.
For more details see the website www.southampton.ac.uk/broadlands
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