WI scrapbooks and community archives: women’s experiences of record-keeping in 1960s rural England

ABSTRACT

1965 marked the 50^th anniversary of the formation of the Women’s Institute (WI), which some members commemorated by making a scrapbook recording village life in England and Wales. As this competition shows, scrapbooks were just as appealing to community organizations such as the WI, as they were to individuals and families, yet it is the latter who have attracted the most scholarly interest. I reorientate this focus to argue that scrapbooks have historically functioned as community archives, inaugurating WI women into becoming their villages’ record-keepers, as they recorded what it meant to them to live in the English countryside in the 1960s. In their submissions, WI women reflected on the opportunities and challenges of creating an archive, allowing a rare insight into the experiences of grassroots record-keeping by an overlooked group of community archivists. By focusing on members of the WI, a largely conservative, countryside organization, this article diversifies both the sites of community archives, as well as the demographics of those who participated in community archival practices.

KEYWORDS:

• scrapbook
• community archives
• local history
• women’s archiving
• scrapbooking
• recordkeeping

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Sophie Bridges, Lucy Delap, Tiia Sahrakorpi, and the two peer reviewers for their comments on the earlier drafts of this article. I also extend my sincere thanks to the Wolfson Foundation, the Cambridge History Faculty, and the Royal Historical Society who funded this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. “Transcript of Interview with June Field on 23.2.09.”

2. Good, “From Scrapbook to Facebook”, 558.

3. Cox, Personal Archives and a New Archival Calling, 140.

4. Garvey, Writing with Scissors.

5. Ibid., 227.

6. Ibid., 209–210.

7. Gilliland, “Archival and Recordkeeping Traditions in the Multiverse”, 56.

8. For a flavour of some of these scrapbooks, see Scrapbook of Willie Cooperman, ACC13547/1; Violet Audrey Jarvis, Diary and Scrap book of the Cottingham, Yorkshire, East Riding, WVS Darby and Joan Club, WRVS20110054; Hornchurch (Park Lane) Co-operative Women’s Guild scrapbook, WCG/8/49/1.

9. Minutes of the Blisworth Drama Society, 9 March 1981; Caswell, “Toward a Survivor-Centered Approach to Records Documenting Human Rights Abuse”.

10. Beaumont, “What Do Women Want?”, 148; Andrews, The Acceptable Face of Feminism.

11. Andrews, The Acceptable Face of Feminism, 33.

12. For example, see “Villace [sic] History”, Yarmouth Independent, 9 April 1938, 10.

13. Garvey, Writing with Scissors, 209.

14. Flinn, Stevens, and Shepherd, “Whose Memories, Whose Archives?”; Cook, “Evidence, Memory, Identity, and Community”. For a flavour of this scholarship, see Corbman, “A Genealogy of the Lesbian Herstory Archives”; Caswell, “Seeing Yourself in History”; Caswell et al., “To be Able to Imagine Otherwise.”

15. For definitions of community archives, see Flinn, “Community Histories, Community Archives,” 153; Flinn, Stevens, and Shepherd, “Whose Memories, Whose Archives?” 74–75; Caswell et al.,”To be Able to Imagine Otherwise”, 10–11.

16. Langhamer, ”Who the Hell are Ordinary People?”

17. For a summary of this older view, and its more recent rebuttal, see Cook, “Evidence, Memory, Identity, and Community,” 115.

18. Shirley, Rural Modernity, Everyday Life and Visual Culture, 91. See also Shirley, “Pylons and Frozen Peas.”

19. Cox, Personal Archives and a New Archival Calling, 165.

20. Flinn, “Community Histories, Community Archives”; Bastian and Alexander, Community Archives; Caswell, “Seeing Yourself in History”; Caswell, ”Toward a Survivor-Centered Approach to Records Documenting Human Rights Abuse”; Bastian and Flinn, Community Archives, Community Spaces.

21. Cosson, “The Small Politics of Everyday Life”.

22. Ibid., 46.

23. Minutes of the General Education Sub-Committee, 19 June 1963, 5FWI/E/1/1/1, 1.

24. Minutes of the General Education Sub-Committee, 15 November 1963, 5FWI/E/1/1/1, 1.

25. Gabrielle Pike to WI Presidents, Our Village Today Jubilee Scrap Book, 1965, 24 April 1964, 5FWI/E/1/1/123, 1.

26. Ibid., 2.

27. National Federation of Women’s Institutes Jubilee Scrapbook Competition, Golden Jubilee 1965 [and] Scrapbook Competition, 5FWI/E/1/1/123, 1.

28. Caswell, “Toward a Survivor-Centred Approach to Records Documenting Human Rights Abuse,” 311.

29. Home and Country reported that they received over 2,500 entries to the competition. Assuming that every Institute followed the instructions that a minimum of 6 women had to work on an institute’s entry, at least 15,000 women would have been involved in some element of the competition. For more, see “Scrapbooks of the Countryside,” Home and Country, July 1966, 261.

30. Pembury WI, “WI Scrapbook of 1965”.

31. Ibid.

32. Ashton WI, Scrapbook of Ashton,1965.

33. “Womens [sic] Institute,” https://bishopstoneandhintonparva.org/womens-institutue/.

34. Collingtree WI, Scrapbook “Collingtree 1965”, ZB0445/2.

35. Caswell, “Toward a Survivor-Centered Approach to Records Documenting Human Rights Abuse,” 313.

36. Shorwell WI, “1965 Scrapbook,” 83.

37. Pembury WI, “WI Scrapbook of 1965”.

38. Eversholt WI, “Women’s Institute 1965 Eversholt”.

39. Shirley, Rural Modernity, Everyday Life and Visual Culture, chap. 4.

40. Caswell, “Toward a Survivor-Centered Approach to Records Documenting Human Rights Abuse”, 18.

41. Cvetkovich, An Archive of Feelings, 241, 250. For a case-study on the emotional dimensions of scrapbooking, see Watton, “Suffrage Scrapbooks and Emotional Histories of Women’s Activism.”

42. Letter from Gabrielle Pike to WI Presidents, Our Village Today Jubilee Scrap Book 1965, 24 April 1964, 5FWI/B/2/1/123, 2.

43. Whitchurch and Ganarew Local History Society WI, “The Women’s Institute Scrap Book 1965.” For more on these developments, see Newby, Green and Pleasant Land?; Burchardt, Paradise Lost: Rural Idyll; Burchardt, “Historicizing Counterurbanization.”

44. West Chiltington WI, W.I. scrapbook for West Chiltington, MP 968.

45. Wilstead WI, Scrapbook, X939/58/5/1.

46. Pembury WI, “WI Scrapbook of 1965”, 24.

47. Sturminster-Marshall WI, “Our Village Today”, 48.

48. Minutes of the General Education Sub-Committee, 12 March 1964, 5FWI/E/1/1/1, 3.

49. Ibid.

50. Hansen, Citizenship and Immigration in Post-war Britain, 4, 73, 117; Schofield, Enoch Powell and the Making of Postcolonial Britain, 21.

51. “Bodiam Jubilee Scrap Book 1915–1965 Pages 55 to 57”; Ashton WI, Scrapbook of Ashton, 1965.

52. Flinn, “Community Histories, Community Archives”, 165.

53. Garvey, Writing with Scissors, 20.

54. West Chiltington WI, W.I. scrapbook for West Chiltington, MP 968.

55. Radwinter WI, Radwinter Scrapbook 1965.

56. Pembury WI, “WI Scrapbook of 1965”.

57. Eight Ash Green [Copford] Women’s Institute scrapbook, T/Z 29/15; Eversholt WI, “Women’s Institute 1965 Eversholt”; Renhold WI, The Commonplace Book of Renhold, X351/32.

58. Boxted WI, Jubilee scrapbook, D/Z457.

59. Caswell, “Toward a Survivor-Centered Approach to Records Documenting Human Rights Abuse”, 16.

60. McKinney, Information Activism, 2, 13.

61. “Scrapbooks of the Countryside”, 261.

62. Hamlett, “Mothering in the Archives”.

63. “Norton-in-Hales Scrapbook 1965”.

64. Shorwell WI, “1965 Scrapbook,” 39.

65. “Dyke WI”.

66. Wilstead WI, Scrapbook, X939/58/5/1.

67. Ibid.

68. Boxted WI, Jubilee scrapbook, D/Z457.

69. Ibid.

70. For details on the number of Women’s Institutes in 1966, see Annual Reports of the National Federation of Women’s Institutes, 5FWI/A/2/2/09, 4.

71. Minutes of the General Education Sub-Committee, 13 October 1966, 5FWI/E/1/1/1, 3.

72. Eversholt WI, “Women’s Institute 1965 Eversholt”.

73. West Chiltington WI, W.I. scrapbook for West Chiltington, MP 968.

74. “A Village Record”, Herne Bay Press, 1 July 1966, 5; “Scrapbooks at the Holburne,” Somerset Standard, 9 June 1967, 21.

75. Patricia Bell to Mary Cowley, 27 April 1983, Correspondence re WI scrapbook competition for the Baker trophy, X939/2/9/3/22.

76. “Where to Store W.I. Scrapbooks”, Lynn Advertiser, 7 February 1967, 9; Andrew Lau cited in Caswell, “Toward a Survivor-Centered Approach to Records Documenting Human Rights Abuse,” 312.

77. “Women’s Institute Scrapbook 1965 A Year in Harvington”.

78. For example, see “Chedworth WI Scrapbook of 1965”.

79. “Kirkby Underwood Scrapbook is ‘in custody,’” Grantham Journal, 22 March 1968, 2.

80. Letter from Phoenix Assurance Company Limited to Mrs M. Buckman, 22 May 1969.

81. Author’s interview with Radwinter WI member, 26 November 2021.

82. “Scrapbook to be Micro-filmed”, Herts and Essex Observer, 22 March 1968, 6.

83. West Chiltington WI, W.I. scrapbook for West Chiltington, MP 968.

84. Wilstead WI, Scrapbook, X939/58/5/1.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the University of Cambridge Faculty of History [NA]; Royal Historical Society [NA]; The Wolfson Foundation [Wolfson Foundation Postgraduate Scholarship in the Humanities].

Notes on contributors

Cherish Watton

Cherish Watton is a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge, specializing in the history of material culture, archiving, life writing, and collecting in modern Britain. Her PhD research explores a history of scrapbooking in Britain during the twentieth century. She also works part-time as an Archives Assistant at Churchill Archives Centre in Cambridge. Cherish founded and runs a national online archive on the work of the Women’s Land Army and Women’s Timber Corps: www.womenslandarmy.co.uk.