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Special Collections and Archives

Our Special Collections and Archives include our oldest printed books, manuscripts and archives.

The Special Collections include over 35,000 printed works, 8 medieval manuscripts, around 100 post medieval manuscripts, and 69 incunables.

Material from the Archives includes the institutional archive of St David’s College, later The University of Wales, Lampeter, and Trinity College Carmarthen, and Swansea Metropolitan and constituent colleges, all constituent members of the University of Wales Trinity Saint David.

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Our Collections

St Davids College

In 1807 it was announced that any contributions towards the new college of St David’s would be gratefully received.

The first books were donated in 1809 by various friends of the new college and were stored at the Bishops Palace at Abergwili until 1827 when the library room was ready. There appears to have been some four thousand volumes. The first catalogue of the holdings was printed in 1836.

Old books laid out on a table

Roderic Bowen Library and Archives

The Roderic Bowen Library & Archives, RBLA, houses the Special Collections of the University of Wales Trinity Saint David, the University’s oldest printed books, manuscripts and archives and is one of the principal resources for academic research in Wales.

Acquired over the last 200 years, largely by bequest and donation, the Special Collections include over 35,000 printed works, 8 medieval manuscripts, around 100 post medieval manuscripts, and 69 incunabula.  Material from the Archives includes the early student registers and photographs from the mid nineteenth century onwards.

Opening Times: Roderic Bowen Library and Archives, Lampeter Campus, SA48 7ED

Monday to Friday: 9:30am-1pm & 2pm-4.30pm

To avoid disappointment, we suggest you plan your visit in advance. 

Bishop Thomas Burgess (1756-1837) bequeathed to St David's College, Lampeter his personal library of some 9.000 volumes. Primarily a working collection gathered during a lifetime devoted to the study of classics, literature, history, antiquities, and theology, many of the works are annotated by Burgess and therefore offer an insight into his scholarly and theological preoccupations.

page from the Boddam Book of Hours

The nucleus of the Roderic Bowen Library and Archive Tract Collection is the Bowdler Tract Collection of over 9,000 pamphlets which came to Lampeter soon after the death of Dr Thomas Bowdler (1754-1825), better known as the expurgator or 'bowdleriser' of Shakespeare (1818). Dr Thomas Bowdler was not himself the collector of the "Bowdler" pamphlets. But he was the last owner of a family collection which stretched back through three earlier generations of Bowdler collectors to the eve of the Civil War (about 1638). About 150 years of further accumulations ended in 1785 with the death of Thomas Bowdler III (1706-85) of Ashley, near Bath.

Page from a ephemeral publication

Although born in London, Phillips was a Radnorshire man.  He became a surgeon employed by the East India Company, accumulating a substantial fortune after many years' service in India. Retiring to London in 1817, he devoted the rest of his life to furthering education in Wales.

Image of a trading ship

The Ystrad Meurig Collection comprises about six hundred items from the former parochial and school library of St John's College (1757-1974) founded by Edward Richard (1714-77) of whose library about 320 books survive. The Collection covers a wide range of subjects in the humanities and theology, predominantly in Latin and English, from the 17th to 19th centuries. Highlights of the Collection include Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language, Pierre Bayle's Dictionary, and Thomas Hobbes Leviathan.

Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes
Portrait of Alister Hardy

Alister Hardy Religous Experience Research Centre


The Alister Hardy Religious Experience Research Centre holds an archive with around 6,000 accounts of first-hand spiritual experiences sent to the centre since its foundation in 1969.  This database has been made available online and is accessible by members of the Alister Hardy Trust. Access the database here. 

Founded by Sir Alister Hardy in 1969 at Manchester College, Oxford, the RERC moved to Lampeter in July 2000. The Centre’s aim is to study contemporary accounts of religious or spiritual experiences. In addition to its archive of accounts, the RERC houses a specialist collection of books and journals.

Contact the Alister Hardy Religious Experience Research Centre
Please remember that all material contained in the database is strictly confidential and subject to copyright, and written permission from the Alister Hardy Religious Experience Research Centre must be obtained for this to be used personally, academically or through media outlets. Full acknowledgement will be required in any publication.

 

  • The Centre organises contacts, and supports a postgraduate degree Master by Research in Religious Experience.

    The MRes Religious Experience is supported by a needs-based bursary, funded by the Alister Hardy Trust.

Jazz Heritage Wales Collection

The Jazz Heritage Wales Collection is the oldest multi-media jazz archive in the UK.

Founded by Professor Jen Wilson in 1986 the Collections moved to the University in 2008 and comprise a library of journals and periodicals; recordings including 78s, EPs, LPs, CDs, DVDs, VHSs and music players; reel-to-reel recordings and player; photographs, Oral Histories and unique Stage Gowns, the earliest dating from 1900. Touring Exhibition Panels are also part of the Collection. 

Find-out a little more about our special collections.

Rows of books from the Special Collection archives

Find out a little more about what makes our special collections just so special. Find out the value of our special collections and how to use them, the type of items which make up the collection, the primary sources which are available. 

Hen lyfr o'r Casgliadau Arbennig

Special Collections are those collections of books, archives and manuscripts considered important (or special) enough to be preserved for people in years to come.

Books and archives kept in special collections may be rare or even unique, of high monetary value and possibly very fragile. They are often very old - the oldest manuscript in our collections is from 1200!

This means we keep them in a controlled environment, where lighting, temperature and humidity are closely monitored.

However, our collections are open to everyone to explore!

We welcome visitors, and we work with lecturers to incorporate Special Collections  in their teaching and to support students’ learning

Rows of books from the Special Collection archives

Our Special Collections give you access to a wealth of primary sources.

Primary sources are the raw materials of history. They provide direct or first-hand evidence of events, objects, people or works of art. 

They include diaries, autobiographies, pamphlets, photographs, minute books and newspapers.

Primary sources are important because they allow you to gain a deeper understanding of historical events.

Bookshelves for the Special Collections archives

Our Special Collections came from three main sources:

  • Student handling an old book

    Thomas Burgess, bishop of St David’s and later of Salisbury, was the founder of the college at Lampeter.

    He bequeathed the young college his library of around 9,000 books. It is a working library of the subjects he enjoyed, particularly classics, literature and theology. He was especially interested in Aristotle, in Milton, and in the Hebrew language.

  • Students standing over book

    In the early years of St David’s College, Thomas Phillips was its great benefactor. 

    He had been a surgeon in the East India Company, and become wealthy. He began to purchase books to donate to libraries. In India, he had given books to soldiers’ mess rooms.

    In the early 1830s, when he was already elderly, he visited Lampeter. He wasn’t impressed by the library, and set about improving it. Over the rest of his long life, he gave us 22,500 books in 59 consignments. They were not from his own collection; he purchased books specifically to give to libraries, covering a wide range of subjects.

    Among his gifts were six medieval manuscripts, including two Books of Hours, and around fifty incunables. There is also a first edition of Gulliver’s travels, together with wonderful selections of travel and natural history.

  • Interior of temple of Jupiter

    Later members of the Bowdler family were notorious because of their publication of the expurgated Family Shakespeare.

    However, three earlier members of the family, all called Thomas Bowdler, had amassed a huge collection of around 9,000 tracts, which came to Lampeter soon after the death of Thomas Bowdler IV in 1825.

    The earliest date from 1638, just before the Civil War, while the latest are from 1785.

Vault doors for the Special Collections archives

What can you find in Special Collections?

Our Special Collections hold the archives produced by St David’s College, Lampeter, and Trinity College, Carmarthen, as well as a small amount of material relating to St David’s College School and the Grammar School at Ystrad Meurig. 

These are the source material for anyone doing historical research on UWTSD.

Students working on a library project

Our students often work on projects that require them to research our archives.

For example:

  • A group of students used a range of archival materials – such as tutors’ registers, college minutes, college magazines, records of sports teams, old photographs – to write biographies of the various Lampeter students killed in WWI.
  • More recently, we supported another group of students who researched the history of the admission of women students to St David’s College. Their work was then displayed in Lampeter Library.
Virgin and child manuscript

The word manuscript literally means ‘handwritten.’ It includes everything made before the invention of printing and everything produced later that wasn’t mass reproduced. It also refers to the author’s original copy.

We hold 8 medieval manuscripts, some of them quite plain, some of them absolutely beautiful.

  • Spread from the Monk's Blood Manuscript

    The oldest, as well as the most famous, is what is known as the Monk’s Blood manuscript. It isn’t complete and in places it has been quite badly stained.

    When George Borrow, author of Wild Wales, visited St David’s College, he was shown this manuscript. He repeated a story, which is certainly false, that the manuscript came from the early monastery at Bangor-is-Coed in northeast Wales. It is said to have picked up blood stains when the Saxons massacred the monks there. However, the writer lived about 500 years too late and the stain is more likely to be wine!

    Yet, the manuscript is fascinating in other ways. It was written when people were just starting to work out that you could use alphabetical order to arrange information and then use it as a finding aid. This means that the manuscript is one of the ancestors of every paper dictionary and encyclopedia.

  • page from the Boddam Book of Hours

    The Boddam Book of Hours is a signature piece for UWTSD’s Special Collections. It was produced in Normandy in the second half of the 15th century.

    It is likely it contains a portrait of the first owner, possibly a gentlewoman, alongside a picture of the Virgin Mary teaching the baby Jesus to read.

    There is also a specific mistake, probably unique to this Book of Hours. In the illustration of the three kings, there is a crown too many! The oldest of the kings has put his crown on the floor in homage to the baby, but he is still wearing another crown!

  • Page from the HMS Elizabeth logbook

    The logbook of the HMS Elizabeth is a more recent example of handwritten material. It was written by an unnamed naval officer, who served in India in the middle of the 18th century.

    It gives an eyewitness account of the Battle of Pondicherry, between Britain and France. Our logbook also lists all the casualties of the HMS Elizabeth. The battle, fought near the modern city of Chennai, largely marked the end of French power in India.

    For anyone researching naval history or the history of the British in India, it is an invaluable document.

  • Page from a ephemeral publication

    We hold a huge collection of 17th and 18th century tracts, mostly collected by members of the Bowdler family.

    As such tracts were short and could be produced cheaply, enormous numbers were printed. Each one dealt with a single subject and they dealt with everything that happened. If someone felt really strongly about anything, that person could have his, or occasionally her, opinion printed, published and distributed.

    Tracts were designed to be ephemeral and would have been difficult to control. Those we hold cover an astonishing range of material. Many are religious – but not all by any means. We have political, social, literary and cultural material as well.

    If you want to know anything at all about 17th or 18th century life, they are where you should look!

  • Map of Japan

    Astrology was hugely popular in the 17th century, and one of the most popular astrologers was a man called John Partridge.

    Jonathan Swift, better known for Gulliver’s travels, produced a tract, predicting the death of John Partridge. Then he published another tract saying the prediction had come true. John Partridge had died. Partridge had a hard time convincing people he was still alive! Swift’s practical joke did a great deal to discredit astrology among the more educated.

    As we have all the tracts produced, it is relatively straightforward to work out all the different kinds of astrology, and how it came to lose its popularity.