The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB), founded in 1877 by William Morris, holds 20,000 records of the society’s casework files and photographs
The SPAB archive illustrates the evolution of conservation policy and practice in this country from the late-19th century
New listings will continue to be added each month and will include historic SPAB membership files (such as correspondences from famous members such as Thomas Hardy and Beatrix Potter) as well as exhibitions, research, education, and technical advice.
Until now, anyone wanting to find out more about the SPAB’s holdings had to rely on hard copy lists but for the first time there is now one online catalogue which brings all elements of the collection together.
Maggie Goodall, SPAB education and training manager, said: “I'm particularly fond of the photo albums, which seem really special – images from early casework and evidence that SPAB was commissioning photography. What is quite poignant is that we have images of buildings that have since changed, been repaired or been lost. We'd love to find out more about the albums and their history, to have them conserved and digitised as part of the next stage of our cataloguing project.”
Explore the SPAB collection at catalogue.spab.org.uk
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