By Wendy Newell – NFHC Archive
STOP PRESS: we are moving our archive away from the Bishopsgate Institute. Please hold onto your material until we confirm our new address and email us [email protected] to let us know what you have to donate – one line will do!
Some magnificient donations have been received. We’ll be back in touch soon with a new address, details of what has been found and the gaps that remain.
The National Federation of Housing Co-operatives (NFHC) was started by volunteers in an era when mass communication was on paper via Gestetner duplicating machines. Three individuals from the voluntary days: Tim Goodwin (Inaugural Secretary), Clive Hall (Around The Houses Editor), and Wendy Newell (Tenant Management Co-op specialist and later NFHC staffer) invite you to donate historical documents to an archive of co-operation amongst housing co-operatives during the era of the NFHC.
The NFHC was starting to form from the late 70’s, was finally incorporated in 1984, and was wound up in the early 90’s. Over 30 years after it folded, we are hoping that your memories and your filing systems can help us build a rounded archive of our times and how we worked together.
Our archive will house both paper and electronic documents. Some key documents including all copies of Around the Houses which we have successfully saved, will be made available online when we open the NFHC archive.
We would be grateful for photos, memories and any memorabilia about the NFHC and its times that you would like to donate, together with a completed Donation form which will be saved with your donation for posterity.
For more information about the historical documentation we are looking for:
- KEY Missing Documents
- Around the Houses
- ATH Contributors
- Harold Campbell’s Working Party Recommendations
- Tenants in the Lead contributors
To primary and secondary co-ops who already have your own archives, we would love to provide a link to you with the permission of your co-op. To living and deceased co-ops without archives, we would be happy to host your own section within our archive as either a permanent location or as a collection point while you try and build an archive retrospectively as we are doing. Please complete a Donation form clearly saying that this is what you want to do.
We would particularly welcome donations of all the NFHC’s own output: consultation requests – and your responses; submissions to proposals from Government, the Department of the Environment (as was), and the Housing Corporation (as was). See Key Missing Documents for a more detailed list.
We remember that housing co-ops, secondary co-ops and the NFHC itself were all recipients of political support from the top and substantial capital and revenue funding following the Recommendations of the Working Party on Housing Co-operatives chaired by Harold Cambell. We are keen to receive donations that demonstrate how far co-op development matched up to the Working Party’s vision.
For more inforation: Clive Hall [email protected]; Tim [email protected]; Wendy [email protected]
CCH have kindly arranged [email protected]. Please send your donation direct to The Bishopsgate and an email to this address to let us know what you’ve sent.