Reading between the lines: Ripon College library
If you follow us on Facebook, Instagram or X, you’ll have seen our regular Throwback Thursday posts. We have objects, images and stories dating from our foundation in 1841 onwards, and we’re always excited to share a glimpse of life studying with us in the past. Sometimes posting a throwback photo is as simple as seeing which prospectus is is. But, sometimes it’s far more complicated.
College postcards
In the late 19th and early 20th century both Ripon College and St John’s College produced postcards for their staff, students and visitors to buy and use. Many postcards were also kept as mementos of their time studying with us, and we’re lucky enough to have some in our University Archive. But the postcards are a double edged sword. They usually include a location printed on the image, which is very helpful for identifying lost spaces and rooms. But if the postcard was never sent, we have no way of knowing when the postcard was produced.
In other words, we know what the picture is, but not when it was taken.
The second problem is that sometimes the postcard might have been sent, but when the image was digitised, the year was not recorded. Although we could attempt to find the individual postcard, it can be extremely difficult to locate a single photo postcard amongst the thousands of photos we hold. Plus, the date may not have been recorded on the postcard, leaving us back at square one.
‘The Library’
This month’s mystery throwback image is from a Ripon College postcard, labelled as ‘The Library’.
At first glance, this postcard is very straightforward:
- It’s labelled as ‘The Library’ and we know this is from Ripon College
- A black and white photograph, so likely to be before colour photography was perfected and commonplace
- Fixtures and fittings which seem more old fashioned, perhaps Victorian
We were quietly confident that this photo was probably from the 1920s or thereabouts. We already have a photo of the library we thought was from this time (c.1925), so before posting we decided to cross-reference the images.
Despite both images being labelled at ‘The Library’, the rooms look very different:
- One room appears to have large windows, the other doesn’t
- One room seems to be more compact, the other looks much wider with higher ceilings
- The light fittings are different and spaced further apart
- The chairs and tables are the same, but the library bookcases are different
- The quality of the postcards is different; one is far clearer than the other
- The postcard font is entirely different
An unexpected twist
After looking at the library photo we initially labelled as c.1925, we began to question our own assumptions. Was this really a photo from the 1920s? Postcards were not regularly updated, so a postcard could have been used years after the photo was taken.
But we discovered some new information. Historic England has an online archive of images, some high definition scans of the original negatives. By chance, we stumbled across our library image’s original negative on their website. The date listed was not c.1925 as we expected, but instead 1936!
We’d based our c.1925 assumption on what we could see about the clothing and hairstyles of the students. The shorter hemlines dated the image as after World War One, but we couldn’t determine much more than that! But with a definitive answer for the date of one image, we were still left wondering when and where our mystery photo was taken.
Same place, different location
After looking at our 1936 library image, we realised that despite being labelled as the same place,the library location must have changed. We know that the College library was considered rather small at the start of the 20th Century, and that this eventually led to a larger space being created in the original chapel. But we hadn’t realised that the original library location may have moved even before this drastic change.
We recently recovered some images of the library taken in 1958. We know these images were taken at the same time, as they were used in prospectuses. When comparing the 1958 images to the 1936 photo, it’s clear that they are both photos of the same room. The lighting, bookcases and even the lampshades all appear to be the same or very similar. Interestingly enough, the tables and chairs also seem to be the same, and look very similar to the tables and chairs in our mystery library photo.
Right: The library in 1958.
From common room to library
So if our mystery library photo was taken before the 1936 photo, what was in the room that became the library? We didn’t start by trying to answer this question, but came across the answer by chance. In our Archive we have a couple of postcards labelled ‘common room’. Including a chaise longue, plenty of pictures on the wall and non-electric lighting, we feel confident that this common room was in use in the late 1890s and early 1900s.
Right: The library in 1958.
This of course begs the question of where the library was, which brings us back to our original mystery library photo.
It’s all in the lighting
After establishing that the library was in a different room, we began to look at what other clues we could see which might indicate a time period. With no students or staff present, we couldn’t use them to research the time period. The furniture is also unhelpful – it looks as if it was still being used in 1958!
So, we decided to look at something a little less obvious: the lighting.
In an era when all buildings are now lit by electricity, we had assumed that the lights were electric. St John’s College, after all, installed their first electric lights in 1901! But we soon discovered that Ripon College didn’t do the same; electricity wasn’t installed until 1932 when West Wing was completed. Even then, for a time it was only West Wing who had electricity! This also explains why the 1936 library photo has very different lights, as presumably they are electric lights by this time.
Gas lighting
Ripon College, like many other buildings, used gas lighting. In fact, St John’s would have been the outlier with electric lighting in 1901, rather than the norm. For many years, gas lighting continued to be used due to the cost of swapping to electric. Plus, if it’s not broken, why fix it?
The shape of the gas lights in this photo gave us an exciting clue. Think back to your science lessons at school: when you lit a bunsen burner, where did the flame go? Initially, gas lighting systems directed light upwards and various shades were designed to protect the flame from draughts. In 1880 an exciting development, called a gas mantle, was invented. Essentially, this was a fine gauze which produced a much brighter light.
Looking at our photo, it’s clear that this wasn’t the case here. The lights appear to direct light down, an innovation which didn’t occur until 1903! This new, and improved inverted mantle soon became popular.
Reading between the lines
The word circa is incredibly useful when trying to determine an era for our photos and objects. If the inverted mantle wasn’t invented until 1903, we’d expect it would take a few years for Ripon College to innovate. But, it didn’t take so long to modernise that the College hadn’t created a larger library space. We can guess that by 1936, inverted mantles were commonplace around College or had been replaced with electric lighting. So, where to place the photo?
We’ve decided to place it in circa 1910. Based on the font matching the common room postcard, the lighting dates and the quality of the photo, c.1910 seems like a safer, and more accurate date than we first considered.
Thank goodness we decided to cross-reference the photos first!
You can find out more about the history of gas lighting in a fascinating, and useful PDF document produced for teachers by the national grid, the national gas museum and Historic England.
You can browse the Historic England catalogue on their website.
