The A.G. Francis Collection

Dear colleagues,

Today’s blogpost comes courtesy of the Society of Antiquaries of London, and was written by their archive volunteer Frances Crook.

Kemal Baran, Monica Barnes, Alicia Colson, Jonty Trigg

One of the great joys of volunteering in the Society’s Archive is opening an inauspicious-looking, acid-free box file to find yet another treasure. This proved to be the case when I lifted the lid on the first of the boxes containing A.G. Francis’s notebooks, sketches, photographs and collection of postcards. A.G. Francis OBE, MB, FRCS, FSA was elected a Fellow of the Society in February 1929.

During the 1920s he appears to have conducted a study of English parish churches with a view to recording and analysing surviving Anglo-Saxon fabric and artefacts. It seems likely, particularly from the evidence of the photographs and postcards in the collection, that he visited many of the churches himself. Although most counties of England are covered in the collection, there is a significant focus on churches in Lincolnshire, as well as Essex, Hampshire, Kent and Sussex. In addition to the photos and postcards, the careful sketches of ground plans and architectural features, often helpfully including measurements, will provide anyone interested in this area with a great wealth of information. Another important aspect of the material is the attention given to fonts, and is thus especially useful as a historical record, given that fonts have been so often damaged and moved over the years.

In short, A.G. Francis’s material forms a valuable resource for the study of parish churches and is complemented by other such collections preserved in the Society’s Archive, including E.S. Prior’s volumes of photographs of English medieval sculpture and Captain E. Jones’s work on baptismal fonts.

The collection has been catalogued in detail and can be accessed on the online catalogue.

Image: FRN/099, Notes on St Peter, Diddlebury, Shropshire