Subject strengths: General

The Miscellaneous Manuscripts include some local history material, particularly relating to nineteenth-century bonds and deeds and to the coal trade as well as A collection of recipes, compiled in the years 1684-5; agriculturalist Robert Bakewell's Letters to George Culley, 1786-1792; eighteenth-century household account books; manuscript letters from Henry Liddell on the 1715 Jacobite Rebellion; early twentieth-century National Service League memoranda; An alphabetical list of members of the Northumberland Militia enrolled between 1809 and 1813, giving their full names, places of residence, trades, ages, dates of enrolment, and parishes for which installed; a fair copy of poems by Mary Coleridge, bound in vellum, which she made for a friend in 1891 and which was later published as Fancy's Following; worksheets, correspondence, typescripts and a postcard relating to Tony Harrison's Newcastle is Peru and letters from Sean O'Casey to the People's Theatre, Newcastle.

Collection Name and Collection Reference Code:

Collection Name: Miscellaneous Manuscripts

Archive Ref Code: GB186/MISC.MSS

Date Range of Material

1654 - 1981

Type of Material

Collection of local history archival material (letters, deeds, recipes etc)

Size of Collection

5 Linear Metres of shelving 

How To Order Items From This Collection

Please use the finding aid below to search through a list of the individual items we have within this collection.

If you find an item you would like to consult in the Special Collections reading room, simply make a note of the reference number and title of the item(s) you are interested in (for example Misc MSS. 11 Hepburn, G.B., Household account book 1783-1787).

You can then place your order by linking to our Request Form. 

Finding Aid

Available via online listing.

Unable to visit our Reading Room?

If you are unable to visit our reading room, we also have a virtual reading room service and a digitisation service archive and rare book collections.

Other Resources

Material from this collection was used in our Treasures of the Month feature for October 2011.

A digital edition of of a late seventeenth-century manuscript recipe book from Northumberland held in this collection (Misc. MS 5) has been created by postgraduate students taking the module SEL 8543 Manuscript, Print, Digital. These recipes were copied into the manuscript by a number of people including the manuscript's owner, Jane Loraine. The recipes are culinary, medicinal and cosmetic. The manuscript is an excellent example of the kinds of knowledge and expertise that women in an early modern household needed. The edition is an ongoing project. Successive cohorts of students on the module will add to and update the transcriptions and interface. The first thirty pages are transcribed here in both original and modernised spelling. A full set of notes to these pages and a general and textual introduction to the whole manuscript have been written by the MPD class of 2016/17.