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Documents

Before you throw out …

… those ancient papers and pictures – STOP!  Most old papers tell a story. On their own they may appear to be quite insignificant, a single piece of a greater jigsaw. But when they are brought together with other documents the full picture can emerge, often telling a greater story of life in the old days.

If you have old documents such as letters, deeds, bills, the humblest bits of administrative paperwork that has survived against all odds, pictures of family, the town, people at work – all of these are valuable pieces of the historic jigsaw.

We would like to preserve these items in one or more ways …

  1. We would like to copy them. We can scan all pictures and documents which will then become part of the Bollington Civic Society historic collection, ultimately on display at the  Discovery Centre . We will always return the documents to you after scanning, but …
  2. We always welcome gifts of documents and pictures for safe-keeping. We are building up a collection of items of Bollington history so that we might display these either in the display cabinets at the  Discovery Centre  or, one day, in a small museum of the town’s history.

If you have items …

… that you would be willing to have preserved in either of these ways then please email the Curator, who is collecting the material on behalf of Bollington Civic Society and the  Discovery Centre .

Examples of the value of insignificant items

The pages of a private Act of Parliament were interesting for their intent but hidden away in an appendix was a list of properties and those who lived in some of them. One of these was the Rookery and the occupant in 1832 was none other than William Crosley the engineer who had recently completed construction of the Macclesfield Canal (Canal history). It was very useful to know where and in what circumstances he was living at that time.

An architect’s drawing of proposed changes to Clarence Mill showed us details of the two bridges that once crossed the canal in front of the mill, the tramway tracks laid out on the canal side, and important details regarding the type of boat being used by the mill on the canal. We don’t have pictures showing any of these details.