BCRA Online Archive - More BSA Records Added

[BCRA Online Archive]

A further 35 volumes have been added to the BSA Online Archive. Much of it relates to the administration of the BSA in the early years, but there is a lot of additional speleological material. The easiest way to find a volume that is of interest is to select the link associated with the catalogue number from the hierarchical menu. There are now over 35,000 images in the collection.

https://archives.bcra.org.uk/bsa.html

BCRA/101Y/B​	Miscellaneous photographs and documents in date order​
BCRA/101Y/C​	Loose mono prints, mostly Yorkshire, many Gaping Gill​
BCRA/101Y/E​	Book of drawings - all Gaping Gill, (from 1895-1912 surveys, mostly by E Simpson)​
BCRA/101Y/F​	Book of drawings, Chapel le Dale, Alum Pot, Kingsdale, (from 1904-12 surveys by E Simpson)​
BCRA/102Y/I​	Postcards/ Christmas Cards to Eli Simpson / Christime Rawdin.​
BCRA/102Y/J​	Gaping Gill, East Passage​
BCRA/102Y/L​	Correspondence with potential publishers​
BCRA/106Y/A​	"True Tales Seldom Told" and other Yorkshire Jottings.​
BCRA/106Y/B​	"The Yorkshire Netherworld" (2 vols)​
BCRA/106Y/C​	Cave Formation Around Ingleborough.​
BCRA/106Y/D​	Draft paper on" Cave Formation in Yorkshire"​
BCRA/106Y/E​	3 papers on Cave Formation.​
BCRA/106Y/F​	Photos of finds in Attermire & Kelco Caves and other photos.​
BCRA/106Y/G​	Bibliography of the Yorkshire Caves, inc. hydrology, geology, etc.​
BCRA/106Y/H​	Westall's etchings of Weathercote Cave.​
BCRA/106Y/I​	Settle Public Water Supply.​
BCRA/201A/A​	BSA Secretarial papers, the formation of the BSA.​
BCRA/201A/B​	BSA Secretarial papers.​
BCRA/201A/C​	BSA Secretarial papers.​
BCRA/201A/D​	BSA Council, Executive Committee (1947) and administration papers.​
BCRA/201A/E​	BSA Council and administration papers, accounts and balance sheets​
BCRA/201A/F​	BSA Council papers, accounts and balance sheets​
BCRA/201A/G​	BSA: lists of members and their addresses in date order, some with payment records.​
BCRA/201A/H​	BSA Council papers.​
BCRA/201A/J​	BSA administration and membership papers.​
BCRA/201A/K​	Miscellaneous​
BCRA/201C/A​	1st National Caving Conference, Buxton badge design work.​
BCRA/201C/B​	1st National Caving Conference, application forms and letters.​
BCRA/201C/C​	Conference papers & abstracts, and attendance list (signatures)​
BCRA/201C/D​	Conference planning and programme preparation papers.​
BCRA/201C/E​	2nd National Caving Conference, application forms and letters and attendance lists.​
BCRA/201C/F​	Conf. planning and programme preparation papers.​
BCRA/201C/G​	3rd & 4th Annual Conferences papers, Giggleswick and Swansea.​
BCRA/201D/A​	Peak Cavern, Castleton (The Devil's Arse in the Peak)​
BCRA/201D/B​	Peak Cavern and Castleton area, including mines​

 

[Jenny P]

This is a totally amazing collection and you can spend hours going through pages of extraordinary material if you are at all interested in caving history. A quite fascinating read is "BSA Secretarial papers, the formation of the BSA.", which contains, among other delights, some politrely snotty letters from CPC to Eli Simpson after BSA had borrowed the CPC winch for GG in 1937 and Simpson had neglected to say thankyou for the loan. There were complaints he'd allowed down a team of Morris Dancers and kept genuine cavers waiting !

Many thanks to the team of Scottish cavers, led by Goon, who spent time scanning the material at the British Geological Survey (BGS) in Ediburgh; to Bob McIntosh of BGS who facilitated the work at Edinburgh; and not least to John Gardner who has worked his socks off to get this material online for cavers to enjoy as part of the BCRA Online Archives.

The originals, which belong to BCRA, have been on permanent loan to BGS at Keyworth since 2008 and it has taken years to organise the scanning and to work out how BCRA could host the scans via the British Caving Library. (Note that BGS itself cannot host the scans online because of copyright issues.) There is still more to come but eventually it is hoped to have the whole collection of the original BSA Record Books and other papers online - a massive project.

 

[BCRA Online Archive]

If anyone has been discouraged from accessing the BSA Records because it was taking too long to load the thumbnail pages, have no fear now.

The problem was that if the thumbnail images do not exist on the web server (as they will not the first time they are accessed) they are created on the fly. When the images are held on the web server, the time required to do this is not noticeable. However, because the BSA images are held on the Cloud and accessed through FTP, it meant that when a page of thumbnails was being displayed for the first time, it involved downloading 16 large images form the Cloud before manipulating them, which took longer than desirable.

I have now ensured that all the thumbnail images have been created, and are available on the web server, so response times should now always be reasonable.

 

[Standard Unit of Tom]

I've started looking through these records to find any information about Cardiff caving for my project and have stumbled upon some information about Cambridge Uni caving club that people might be interested in. Their website and wiki page say they were founded in 1949, but documents showed that Cambridge uni speleogical society joined the BSA in 1939 and were doing expeditions in France to survey new cave!