Heritage et AL

Recently a customer was searching through old letterbooks in the Chelsea Archives at Birkenhead Library. Tissue thin pages, eye-watering  italic script, crumbling pages, circa 1889 – that sort of thing. He was hoping to find reference to his grandfather. Instead he found curious little notes. Which would be fine, except they seem to be nonsense: Ref: 'Platypus', Chelsea Archives, Birkenhead Library

 Ref: NZ 1965, Chelsea Archives, Birkenhead Library Once upon a time, sugar was good for you .... and Chelsea Archives at Birkenhead Library has the marketing-advertising-promo material to prove it!  Ref: NZ Sugar 1968, Chelsea Archives, Birkenhead Library It’s embedded in the many small publications contained in the archives - such as company newsletters, industry-related periodicals, series, centenary celebrations and that sort of thing. Today they might be considered corporate zines.  Ref: NZ Sugar 1969, Chelsea Archives, Birkenhead Library Examples include: 'Chelsea News', 'Sugar for New Zealand', 'New Zealand Sugar', 'CSR Newsletter', 'Australian Sugar', 'Sugar: Nature’s Bounty', 'Notes on Sugar in New Zealand' and the 'World'.  Ref: NZ Sugar 1970, Chelsea Archives, Birkenhead Library These publications contain splendours galore. Such as the many attempts to explain the triumph...

When James K. Baxter was dismissed from his job at the Chelsea Sugar Refinery, it's well known that he wrote a rather 'unrefined' poem to express his disgruntlement: "I had the job of hosing down The hoick and sludge and grit For the sweet grains of sugar dust That had been lost in it. For all the sugar in the land Goes through that dismal dump And all the drains run through the works Into a filthy sump". Despite this unsugared description, a copy of 'The Ballad of the Stonegut Sugarworks' is lodged in the Chelsea Sugar Archives (at Birkenhead Library), sandwiched between a 1962 plan of the 'Disposition of Buildings' and a 1976 letter from the Refinery Manger to the Managing Director about managing absenteeism. A positioning which is at once random, and oddly relevant - though I couldn’t locate that impressive sounding ‘sump’ on the plan (see below).  Ref: 1962 Plan CSR-B94127, Chelsea Sugar Archives As to the letter, it reads as...

Photo credit: Melvin Vaniman c1902, Chelsea Archives It's big, it's orange , it's preposterous. You see it out of the corner of your eye as you drive up the Harbour Bridge, unless you're concentrating on the road of course.. It's the Chelsea Sugar Refinery in Birkenhead.