(William) Allan (Lewis) Seaman was born in West Yorkshire on 4 September 1930, and lived for much of his childhood in Guiseley, near Leeds. He read History at Manchester University under Lewis Namier, and graduated in 1951. He then went to University College London to undertake research for his PhD on ‘British democratic societies in the period of the French Revolution’, which involved using sources at the Archives Nationales in Paris. On completing his doctorate in 1954, he undertook his two years national service with the Royal Army Pay Corps, rejecting the offer of a short-term commission, for which, as a graduate, he could have applied. He spent his entire service at Catterick, and in later life he would observe that only the Army could have failed to post a Yorkshireman outside Yorkshire.
His national service completed, he took the Diploma in Archive Administration course at University College London in 1956/1957, and his first professional post was as an assistant archivist in Glamorgan Record Office. In February 1961, he was appointed to the newly-created post of County Archivist of Durham, where he faced the challenge of creating a new archives service (the last English shire county archives service to be set up).
Allan began his career at Durham on 5 April 1961, at a time when the County Council was occupying Shire Hall and adjacent offices in Old Elvet. The Quarter Sessions and County Council records were stored in rooms of varying degrees of unsuitability in the Shire Hall basement, about which Allan waxed lyrically in later years (‘measurable thicknesses of dust’ was one phrase). However, he arrived when the move to the new County Hall at Aykley Heads was being planned, and he was able to influence the design of the archival accommodation planned for the new building. Consequently, when the new Record Office opened to the public in July 1963, it had spacious (for the time) search and conservation rooms and two strong-rooms, both of which were equipped with air conditioning and fire extinguishing equipment. The County Council was persuaded that the infant service needed appropriate staffing, and gradually the personnel were expanded. With the new accommodation came deposits of documents, and the records of the Eldon and Brancepeth Estates were the first of the large estate collections to arrive. These were closely followed by the Londonderry and Strathmore estate archives and pre-vesting colliery company records from the National Coal Board.
Allan was active in promoting the service among users and potential depositors and saw the benefits that publicity in local newspapers could bring. He was also interested in encouraging interest in the general local history of the County Palatine, and was the secretary of the Surtees Society (the record-publishing society covering the North-East) from 1966 to 1974. He was one of the founders of Durham County Local History Society in April 1964, its first secretary until January 1973 and a contributor to its Bulletin. In 1973, he and Jim Sewell edited the Russian Journal of Lady Londonderry 1836–1837, which was published by John Murray.
Most of us are lucky if we can influence the development of an archive service in a small way, but Allan not only set up Durham Record Office in 1961 but took on the challenge of creating a new service again thirteen years later. In 1974, the pattern of local government in the major conurbations in England was altered by the creation of metropolitan county councils, which took certain responsibilities from district councils within their areas, although the district councils continued to operate. In the North-East, Tyne & Wear County Council was created covering the metropolitan districts of Gateshead, Newcastle, North Tyneside, South Tyneside and Sunderland. The new county council had a responsibility for archives and Allan was appointed as its first County Archivist, again effectively with a clean sheet. He seized the opportunity to create what was to be a fit-for-purpose modern archive service, establishing a model which heavily influenced many other services.
The creation of the new Archives Service involved a three-pronged approach: the provision of a records management service for the new authority, negotiations with the metropolitan district councils to unify the archival provision in the county and locating and equipping suitable accommodation.
Allan was fully aware that the establishment of a new local authority afforded an ideal opportunity to incorporate records management as an integral part of its administrative procedures, and his position on the corporate management team gave the influence to ensure that use of the records management service came to be regarded as the normal way of life in the new county council.
In 1974, both the county and metropolitan districts had archival responsibilities: Newcastle and North Tyneside had small archive services but the other three districts had no professionally qualified staff, although their library services held some documents. Allan negotiated successfully with the districts to establish a single service, based in Newcastle (initially with an out-station at North Shields), and the first four years were spent in locating and bringing in documents from a variety of locations around the county, concentrating at first on the records of the superseded local authorities. Nevertheless, the records of the declining industries of the area were not overlooked and the collections rapidly developed into one of the richest in industrial holdings anywhere in the country. Initially, the new service had no permanent accommodation but had temporary locations around Newcastle, with storage in what was probably the largest collection of tea-chests to be found outside of a tea wholesaler!
The search for a permanent home for the new service eventually led to the empty Co-operative Wholesale Society warehouse and office building in Blandford Street, Newcastle, which at the time had water flowing down its main staircase when it rained. However, the potential of the building was obvious and following extensive remedial work it became the Archives Service headquarters, and eventually the Discovery Museum and County Central Purchasing Department. The Archive Service occupied the finely-panelled local directors’ suite, with the search room occupying the directors’ dining room (connected to the storage areas by the dumb waiter which previously had transported their meals), and the former directors' toilet providing the swankiest (male) facilities in any UK archive.
Allan was also prominent on the national archival stage. Probably few are now aware of quite how bitter the debate was within the Society of Archivists in the early 1970s over the future of the organization and broadening the membership, and the fact that he chose to refuse to take over as Chairman (despite already serving as Vice-Chairman) over rejection of proposals by the membership. He was a key player in the establishment of the Association of County Archivists in 1981 and, with Elizabeth Berry and Cynthia Short, spearheaded the campaign to ensure the survival of the Greater London County and the various metropolitan county archive services, although their parent bodies were eventually abolished. This was the first time that local authority archivists had made their existence known to political circles within the United Kingdom, and the fact that it was a successful campaign against the odds is remarkable. Without it, and Allan's involvement, there would have been no National Council on Archives and the sector today would look very different!
Allan retired in 1986, when the Tyne & Wear County Council was abolished, although the unified service has survived thanks to the firm basis on which he established it. However, his archival interests continued and he undertook consultancy work for the Tyne & Wear Development Corporation, which involved documentary research into the previous uses of sites which were proposed for redevelopment. In October 1989, he returned to the Durham Record Office as part-time Parish Survey Archivist, in which role he completed the second, third and fourth surveys of ecclesiastical parish records. His forays into the parishes of Durham Diocese provided entertaining accounts of eccentric clergymen and totally unsuitable storage conditions, which he encouraged parishes to remedy with well-chosen words in his reports.
Even after he gave up the parish survey role in May 2003, Allan continued to be interested in the new challenges, which the profession was facing and always had a sensible, balanced and well-considered view on how to deal with those challenges. He did, however, feel that working as a local authority archivist in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s was to have experienced a particularly favourable period.
Allan will be sadly missed by his colleagues in the North-East and by those in the wider profession who knew him. He was always open to new ideas and, for example, had thoughts about the regional provision of archive services in the early 1970s. On a personal note, although I only worked with Allan for five years when the Tyne & Wear service was being established, he remained a much-valued friend for the following 35 years.