My spouse, Hannah Lowery, who has died of most cancers aged 54, was an archivist at many educational establishments and, for greater than 26 years, was employed by the College of Bristol.
Hannah was valued by researchers and colleagues for her encyclopedic information of, and dedication to, the college’s various archival collections, which embody papers of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the Feminist South archive, a big assortment of electoral addresses and the Penguin and Puffin Guide archives.
She was concerned with organising exhibitions and represented the college on radio and TV. She appeared on Nice British Railway Journeys and met Michael Portillo at Exeter St David’s station with a number of of the primary Penguin books, having fastidiously chosen to put on white and gray in order to not conflict with Portillo’s vibrant apparel.
Eager on increasing the archives, in 2019 Hannah helped to safe the copy of DH Lawrence’s Woman Chatterley’s Lover utilized by the decide on the well-known Obscene Publications Act trial in 1960.
Hannah was born in Hertford to Audrey (nee Learn), a trainer, and Roger Lowery, a college lecturer. Rising up in close by Ware, she attended Chauncy faculty after which went on to achieve a level in historical past and librarianship at Aberystwyth College, the place she additionally took a postgraduate diploma in archive research.
A collection of archiving jobs adopted on the British Library; the London Faculty of Economics; the Fawcett Library; Soas, engaged on the London Missionary Society data; and on the Bodleian Library in Oxford, cataloguing the papers of the politician Sir Christopher Addison. It was in Oxford that we met.
In 1997 Hannah was appointed as the primary professionally certified archivist of the particular collections at Bristol College, and through the years she constructed up a small workforce of devoted cataloguers.
She cherished historical past, literature, walks, the theatre and folks music, was an lively member of her native WI group, and was in all probability happiest at her stitching machine creating garments and quilts.
Hannah was identified with most cancers early this 12 months and we had been married in hospital every week earlier than she died. She is survived by me, our sons, Owen and Frank, her dad and mom and her brother Gavin.
