We had the pleasure of working with the Royal Jersey Agricultural & Horticultural Society to digitise over 15,000 historic images with complete metadata, before migrating and ingesting the files into their brand-new online archive website, powered by PastView.
Founded in 1833, the RJA&HS has played a central role in Jersey’s rural life for almost two centuries, promoting participation, knowledge and excellence in agriculture and horticulture. Its records also provide an important insight into the Island’s farming heritage, capturing agricultural and horticultural life across generations.
The new archive brings together around 15,000+ images across four key collections:
- The Jersey At Home (The official publication of the RJA&HS): 1951 - 2001
- Newsletters: 1975 - 2015
- Journals: 2016 - current
- Annual reports: 1834 - current
For much of the 19th and 20th centuries, the Society was one of the only organisations actively recording agricultural and horticultural life in Jersey. These documents therefore offer a valuable window into the Island’s past, preserving stories, developments and insights that might otherwise be difficult to access.
Now available through their new online archive, this rich collection can be explored by researchers, students, Society members and anyone with an interest in Jersey’s history, rural life and farming heritage.
- Louise Agnès (Project Manager)
As we celebrate the launch of their new online archive, we caught up with Louise Agnès, Project Manager, at the Royal Jersey Agricultural & Horticultural Society for a short interview, as below.
Louise: The decision to digitise the Society’s archives and make them available online through PastView, was driven by a desire to preserve nearly 200 years of historic records for future generations. The Society recognised that most of our annual reports, newsletters, magazines, and other documents existed only as paper copies, stored in our library, leaving them vulnerable to deterioration or loss over time.
By digitising these unique historical materials, the Society has not only safeguarded an important part of Jersey’s agricultural and horticultural heritage, but also made it far more accessible to the public. We regularly receive requests from individuals carrying out research that previously required visits to the Showground to view documents in person. Through PastView, people in Jersey and around the world can now explore this valuable collection online with ease.
Louise: The collections on the new PastView site represent the rich history, heritage, and activities of the Society and its members, over many generations.
There are more than 15,000 images that document important aspects of Jersey’s rural life, including shows, events, people, and community achievements. Together, these collections preserve the Society’s legacy while celebrating the contributions and memories of its members and the Island’s farming and horticultural traditions.
Louise: There is so much in there, it is hard to pull out specific items of interest! Some of our favourites include:
The material relating to the development of the Jersey cattle breed over the last two centuries. The search function allows people to research specific cattle families and we know this will be fascinating for Jersey cow fans all around the globe.
Understanding horticulture in the past: what people were growing; how every single inch of land was planted with productive crops; the development of the Jersey Royal potato; and the extensive variety of plants, fruit and flowers grown in private gardens as well as commercially.
The adverts give a real illustrative insight into the culture of the time. The first black and white adverts appear in the Annual Reports in the 1870s, through to colour ones in 1887 onwards.
Family history – in the historical Annual Reports, the subscribers of the Society are listed by Parish, along with Committee Members and other local figures. This will be a fascinating tool for people exploring their family history.
Louise: We hope the digital archive will become a valuable resource for a wide range of people, both in Jersey and internationally. For researchers, historians, and students, it provides easy access to nearly 200 years of material documenting the Island’s agricultural, horticultural, and rural history. Farmers and those involved in the industry will also find it useful for exploring past practices, developments, and the evolution of Jersey’s farming community over time.
We also hope the archive will help people with family connections to Jersey agriculture discover more about their relatives, farms, and local communities through photographs, reports, and historical records. Schools may use the collection to support learning about Jersey’s heritage, while members of the public can simply enjoy exploring the Island’s history in a new and accessible way. Ultimately, the aim is for the archive to preserve these stories and ensure they remain available and relevant for future generations.
Louise: The vast breadth of information contained within the archive collections!
Louise: Yes – we are very much hoping to add to the Digital Archive with further material, such as interviews, photos and oral history. It will continue to be a growing resource for everyone.
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Our PastView Data Engineer, Oliver Steel, shared his reflections on being involved in the project:
"Working with Louise and Christine on digitising and publishing the Society's archive has been incredibly exciting and rewarding. We stayed in close collaboration throughout the process, from reviewing the documents and metadata we needed to collect at the start of digitisation right through to making the final organisational tweaks to the site. By looking at the design of the archive in PastView early on, we were able to alter the digitisation process on the fly and facilitate a smooth scanning process.
Ensuring that the Society's records are easily navigable and items can be found quickly was a top priority, and by applying text-recognition to every annual report and document we have unlocked a new way of searching the collection. I haven't been able to resist using the search feature to find articles related to certain cows and seeing how many times they appear! This will be a fun and intuitive way for the Society's members and members of the public to search the archive, a feature made so easily possible through text-recognising all of the articles.
Louise and Christine's passion and dedication has been infectious and it has been brilliant to have the opportunity to have such an in-depth look at their records with them. I have learned loads about the island of Jersey and the fascinating story of its agricultural industry - I never thought I would spend so much time reading about cows! It's been a genuine pleasure being part of the whole process and I'm thrilled to see it now live and open for everyone to enjoy."
You can visit the new Royal Jersey Agricultural & Horticultural Society site, powered by PastView, here: https://archive.royaljersey.co.uk/