Ties that Bind: The Conservation and Digitisation of Archbishop John Swayne’s Register

The partnership between the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland (VRTI) and the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) has resulted in the conservation, digitization, and online platforming of the Register of Archbishop John Swayne (1418–1439). Swayne’s Register is both a particularly rich source of fifteenth-century documents and it sits within the context of huge archival loss following the fire in the Public Record Office of Ireland (PROI) in 1922. Previously, access to the contents of the Register has required palaeography skills, familiarity with medieval languages and very delicate handling of a deteriorated paper manuscript. Through the VRTI and PRONI collaboration, the expertise of Irish medievalists and conservators has been combined to address each of these limitations to access, making this a uniquely opportune time to justify extensive interventive conservation treatment to the register. Along with the physical consolidation of the paper text block, this project has enhanced our understanding of Archbishop Swayne, fifteenth-century Armagh, and evidence left behind from the many users of the Register over the last six hundred years.