The NMCT's 2023 Annual Report includes features on every grant that was awarded in that year. Once again the range of collections conserved in archives and museums around the country is enormous.
The collections conserved with our help included papers relating to Isambard Kingdom Brunel, building a critical link of broad-gauge railway between London and Wales, and a varied collection of papers by the architect and antiquary James Thomas Irvine respecting his work on the restoration of Bath Abbey and investigations into Anglo-Saxon buildings. We also gave a further grant to support the conservation of the large-scale drawings by William Burges for the decoration of Cardiff Castle, masterpieces of their kind. On a very different scale, we contributed to the conservation of a scrapbook by Edward Bawden, from his time as a student.
In the report we also highlight our support for a decades-long project by Lambeth Palace Library to conserve the Court of Arches papers, many of which were rescued from the bottom of a well. The NMCT awarded a number of grants over three decades, making it the largest contribution we have ever made to a single project. This is an archive of national significance, the material is a primary source for social, biographical, economic, legal, topographical and ecclesiastical history. Unlike in a common law court, the proceedings for ecclesiastical law were conducted by written testimony not through oral evidence. The resulting body of records provides a hugely revealing window into the lives of the parties involved: scandalous relationships are unpicked, errors of belief scrutinised and riotous behaviour condemned.
