This item fulfills a commitment made in the Society's Anniversary Programme 2016, a list of the archives of the Society, its affiliated regional groups and many of its members, past and present, is now available on this page.

The task of producing the list has been an enjoyable voyage of discovery : revising existing lists to provide fuller descriptions; listing hitherto unlisted archives (and so encountering some unexpected gems); and, as signposts on the journey, drawing attention to the holdings of various archive centres, libraries and museums which someone might not reach by making an online search. (The recipients of a constant stream of new accessions, it should be recognized that archive centres have backlogs of archives awaiting listing such that the more recent reductions in the professional staffing of some archive services are much to be regretted.)

With the ready co-operation of Carlisle Library and Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery Trust, Carlisle, a number of archives of the Society and its members which they have hitherto held on behalf of the Society have been transferred to Carlisle Archive Centre which, since the mid-1960s, has held the core archives of the Society, commencing with the first minute book (of 1866 - 73). Imperfect and incomplete as the list of the archives must be - and there will be further accessions to the Society's holdings at Carlisle Archive Centre in the years to come, besides the research and other papers of Society members which are deposited in archive centres - it is hoped that it will point researchers in the right directions and provide descriptions of records which supplement those to be found online or have yet to be listed and such lists made available online. I am much indebted to those archivists, museum curators and librarians in Cumbria and elsewhere in the country who have readily assisted me on my journey.

Taking the case of one prominent former member of the Society, Mary Fair (1874 - 1955), besides her photographs and papers to be found in several of Cumbria's archive centres, also Carlisle Library, the list also draws attention to the extensive collection of almost 3,000 of her negatives, together with further research notes and correspondence, held by Tullie House Museum, prints of these negatives being produced by the Museum under a Manpower Services Commission-funded project in the mid-1980s. By reference to these negatives, one can date Mary Fair's view of the Japanese garden in Eskdale, which was reproduced in the Spring 2016 issue of this Newsletter , as one of a series of photographs of this garden - identifiable as in Giggle Alley, Eskdale Green - which she took on 20 July 1923, about ten years after the garden's creation.

Adrian Allan