Fragments From The Past
How the documents that survived the fire are being restored and digitised
Following the devastating destruction of the Public Record Office of Ireland, archivists returned to the scene and began collecting the remnants of what survived. Material was gathered up, wrapped in brown paper and boxed, then left untouched for nearly 100 years. These items are known as the ‘1922 Salved Material’. In 2017 the National Archives of Ireland (NAI), which replaced the Public Record Office, began surveying this material. The 378 brown-paper parcels were opened and work got under way to identify each item, and determine its historical value and suitability for conservation and restoration.
It was found that the salved material contained items from the 14th to the early 20th century. The quality of what was collected ranges from ashes and fragments of paper, to vellum rolls that had shrunk and contracted into sculptural artefacts, which might be restored, to almost entirely intact manuscripts. With the support of the Irish Manuscripts Commission, conservators and archivists at the NAI have been cleaning, restoring and listing the salvaged material in order to make it available to the public. In consultation with historians and genealogists, the most significant and historically important items have been identified and prioritised. These salvaged items will be digitised and added to the Beyond 2022 digital repository, and the originals will remain with the NAI. Although the salved material represents only a very small part of what was destroyed, its relevance will only emerge when historians, genealogists and researchers have had the opportunity to interrogate it.