The Falkirk Archive – Lucy MacIver (Project Archivist)

What’s the formal status of your heritage group and which groups are involved?

Falkirk Archive is the official Public Local Authority Archive and is part of Falkirk Community Trust. Thus we are part of the Heritage and Museum department of the Trust which also manages sport and heritage facilities and venues within the wider Falkirk Area; and we also work with Falkirk Council.

The archive itself sits in the beautiful ‘stately home turned museum’ venue of Callendar House, in Falkirk. It houses the records of Falkirk Council, local churches, schools, organisations, families and businesses spanning centuries. Being the repository for council materials puts Falkirk Archive in the fortunate position of having an assured future.

How did you get started?

Our football story started in 2018, when the “Falkirk FC: A Fan’s View” exhibition was held in Callendar House. This was a collaborative project and exhibition between Falkirk Museums and a museum volunteer who was also involved with Falkirk FC, from whom he borrowed a number of museum objects for the exhibition. During conversations with club officials and Falkirk Museums, the archival items of the collection were also brought to the attention of Falkirk’s archivist.

The club was initially reticent to give away its heritage collection even to a local public archive. However, they were eventually convinced by the Falkirk’s archivist to donate the collection, in large part thanks to his intentions to apply for a Business Archives Council (BAC) cataloguing grant. That enabled the club to know that the material would be thoroughly cared for, catalogued, and made available and accessible to fans. Falkirk Archive was awarded the BAC grant and in summer 2019 everything started moving.

How much stuff have you got?

The Falkirk FC collection makes up just over 200 items, with the majority of these being photographs and drawings. However, as is to be expected with a football collection, a great number of these photographs have been previously framed and presumably hung in the stadium so they are very large items. As well as photographs, the collection contains minute books from the club’s board meetings, as well as some more sparse financial, legal, and premises records.

How do you store your stuff?

The collection, along with all the materials the archive houses, are stored in acid-proof archive boxes, in secure storerooms at Callendar House, with constant control and monitoring of factors such as light, humidity and pests, following industry best practice.

The full effect of not controlling these environmental influences was made very apparent by the state the collection was in before we rehoused it. Without environmental controls, stored in a dark and humid storage room the collection had become a perfect breeding ground for pests and mould. In fact, it had to undergo months of conservation work before it could be moved into the main collections of Falkirk Archives to prevent it from contaminating our other collections!

How do you make it available for public view?

Falkirk Archive is preparing to re-open to the public following a closure of several months due to Covid-19.

However, thanks to the BAC grant, this full collection has been comprehensively catalogued and made available to search on the new Falkirk Community Trust collection browser, here .While this does not yet include digitised images of the large photographs there are plans to make this a priority project so that fans can view images online.

When we allowed to re-open the public will be able to book an appointment to view the items at their leisure. This will be full, free, public access four days a week.

What’s the best / most unusual memorabilia find?

I think the best item in the collection, and certainly the documentation which will be of most interest to researchers, is the series of minute books in which the club’s directors recorded the main points of their weekly or monthly meetings and AGMs. This includes player signings, premises matters, organising foreign tours, and day-to-day club management. These handwritten, originally leather-bound, volumes are invaluable artefacts for any club researcher not just because they hold the most informational value but also because of how comprehensive they are. The timespan of minute books covers the club administration from 1924-1978 with only a few gaps. It is particularly significant in that it covers the entirety of WWII, with one minute book from the 1930s containing an entry for a meeting discussing the prospect of the outbreak of WWII and FFC / Scottish Professional League dismissing all players at the onset of the war.

What piece of advice would you offer people trying to manage a collection like yours?

I was a football novice prior to beginning my cataloguing work of this collection, so my best advice would be to find the super-fans who can answer questions about items.  For me this was easy as the museum had already met with volunteers, fans and past directors for the exhibition in 2018, but even then I had to search for / crowdfund answers from Twitter, fanzines and other fan publications.

I would also speak to archive and/or museum professionals about the best way to store items to avoid any pests!