In order to discover more about the history of the GCW Library we paid a visit to the Lincolnshire Archives. Prior to the visit we were asked to consider three questions:
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What is and archive to us?
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What are we using this visit for?
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How can artefacts be useful to our work?
When discussing this with my performance group, which has now been established, we came to the following conclusions:
- Like a bank is a place to store money and valuables and a library is a bank of knowledge, for us an archive is a bank of history and artefacts. A place to find answers about the past.
- Aside from the obvious answer of inspiration, we decided that we wanted to find something that we couldn’t discover online, something tangible instead of something digital.
- The idea of artefacts as a stimulus is something we believe could be useful in grounding our work in history as well as creating something appropriate and meaningful. However we also considered the use of artefacts as props and installations.
For me the visit was of great use and certainly gave us the opportunity view stimuli we had not seen digitally. Architecturally, we immediately noticed from a photograph that the modular buildings home to stairs and group rooms in the buildings current function were once wooden as in Figure 1 (below). Consequently it would appear that the buildings more modern architecture took influence from how the building once looked. It would be interesting to see the architect’s plans to see to what extent this influence was taken on board. Another observation made was that the painted words of “Great Central Library Warehouse”, at the Brayford Warf East end of the building, seem to have changed multiple times. Whilst the words Great Central Warehouse have remained constant, what now reads Library has been changed at least four times and that is only at a quick glance! This word has often been used to list the use or owner of the building, having previously had “Grain” “Harcros” and “Pattinson” written on this section of wall.
That said the greatest discovery for me was the Great Northern Railway map from 1904 which displayed a huge amount of railway lines used by different companies. The map displayed features still recognisable today such as the Brayford Mere, train station, Engine Shed, and roads to name a few. The 3 images below show a panoramic view of the map from the train station to the Brayford and onto what is now the university campus and student village. Now only two lines running through the High Street, Brayford Warf East and campus with the rest demolished over time, I began to think about recreating train lines of the past. Through my last few blogs I have discussed how the old and new has been merged together architecturally, preserving the past whilst not restricting the present or future advancement. I have also considered grounding my group’s performance in history. Could a representational reconstruction of Lincoln’s former industrial railway lines be a way of doing this? Potentially.
