Broadlands Archives

An exhibition of focusing on the day-to-day life of the great country house Broadlands, located near Romsey in Hampshire, is now open at the University of Southampton. Broadlands was home successively to the St Barbe, Temple (Palmerston), Ashley and Mountbatten families, and was remodelled by Capability Brown and Henry Holland.

The exhibition features vignettes of daily life drawn from family correspondence and the records of domestic service, horticulture and farming, along with engravings and other illustrations of Broadlands taken from the Broadlands Archives, which are now held by the university.

The Broadlands Archives comprise more than 4,500 boxes of documents and other materials including some 250,000 papers and 50,000 photos of Earl Mountbatten of Burma, the last viceroy of India.

'Everybody is in admiration of it’ – Broadlands a country house in Hampshire is on show in the Special Collections Gallery at the University of Southampton until 30 March 2012 and admission is free. Visitors may be asked for proof of identity by reception staff. You can read more about the archive online at www.broadlandsarchives.com/

You can hear BBC History Magazine editor David Musgrove talking to Professor Christopher Woolgar, head of special collections and professor of history and archival studies at the University of Southampton, about the archives on our podcast page: www.historyextra.com/podcast-page