As I mentioned elsewhere, one of our tasks at the Athenaeum is to decide what to do with a pile of tatty, mouldy, broken spined bibles and prayer books we have inherited from various local deconsecrated churches.
The books themselves are in a sorry state, some have lost one or other of their covers, some have pages missing and some have evidence of white mould.
They're not unique, and they are are not even very valuable as objects, however, in a family history context they can be valuable as they have the names of an owner and possibly even a date inside, which gives an anchor point to say that the owner was in the Stanley area at such and such a date.
Others have more indirect clues - one, undated, has a drawing of the Athenaeum wall clock, and we know that the Athenaeum was used for Sunday schools in the 1860s, and another, a drawing of a famous prize fight, and others, quite good caricatures of what I assume were members of the congregation of the time, and yes, I did open one book to be greeted by a drawing of a penis, showing that not much has changed in the intervening 150 years.
But what to do with the books?
Many are in such a poor state it would be difficult to justify the cost of conservation, and nineteenth century prayer books are hardly unique.
So our strategy is to photograph and record the names, the scribbles, and the caricatures and where they were found, and only to conserve the books which are particularly rich in graffiti and caricatures, as well as retaining some of the prayer books and bibles in better condition for use as props to illustrate aspects of nineteenth century life.
The rest will simply be disposed of, although we have had a left field suggestion that we ask a local arts society if they are interested is using them as the basis for artworks on life in the nineteenth century.
Otherwise the mouldy covers will probably be incinerated and the paper shredded as bedding for chickens, before eventually being composted ...
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