THE M&S COMPANY ARCHIVE: FROM PENNYBAZAAR TO RESEARCH RESOURCE

KATHARINE CARTERThe M&S Company Archive

Introduction

The M&S Archive Collection is the official business archive of Marks &

Spencer plc, recording the history of one of Britain’s longest established

and most iconic high street retailers. The M&S Company Archive exists to

preserve, document and make available the history of M&S to support the

business needs of the company and its shareholders; to inspire learning and

inform research both internally and externally of the company; and to

support the needs of the wider community through the opening of its

collections to the public.

Reporting both to the business and to the M&S Company Archive

Community Interest Company, the Company Archive has a direct

responsibility to engage the wider community with the archive. Through a

vibrant education and outreach programme, enhanced by comprehensive

online and social media communications, the archive team seeks to engage

as many people as possible with the collection.

Alongside these learning and outreach activities, the collection has the

potential to be an invaluable resource for students, academics and people

with special interests in a wide range of subject areas. This article considers

the collection as a research resource, and how the M&S Company Archive

team is seeking to promote this newly accessible collection to a research

audience.

Background

The M&S Company Archive was established in 1983, when M&S

appointed a Company Archivist to bring together historic records which

were scattered across numerous head office departments. Originally

located in the former M&S head office in Baker Street, the archive soon

outgrew its surroundings and was transferred to storage in a distribution

centre. In the mid 1990s the collection was again relocated, to fallow

footage above a store in north London. Those premises were far from

ideal, having no environmental controls or fire protection. While a handful

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of historians (notably Goronwy Rees1, Asa Briggs2, Rachel Worth3 and

Keren Protheroe4) were given limited access to the archive collection

while it was stored in north London, there was no public access.

In 2007, then Chief Executive Sir Stuart Rose, recognising the

potential of the collection both as an educational and learning resource and

to actively support the M&S brand, formed a steering group to investigate

opportunities for developing the archive. This included an academic

appraisal by a leading business historian, in 2008, that made a compelling

case for the quality and significance of the collection as a research

resource.

The options appraisal work dovetailed with preparations for the

company’s 125th anniversary in 2009. The anniversary proved to be a great

opportunity to introduce M&S heritage to a wide audience, through ‘pop

up’ Penny Bazaars in stores, special television adverts and vintage-inspired

limited edition product ranges. The success of these initiatives

demonstrated to the company the huge public interest in M&S heritage,

helping to make the case for wider access to the archive. The culmination

of these various strands of activity was a decision by the M&S Board to

provide the fullest possible public access to the archive collection.

As a result of the options appraisal work, and recognising the benefits

that collaborative working would bring, a unique partnership between

M&S and the University of Leeds was announced. This included the

relocation of the archive to a new purpose-built facility on the University

campus, comprising excellent collection care with a permanent public-

facing offer. The public facilities include the free Marks in Time

exhibition, a Reading Room, a multi-use seminar room and the building

also houses the strongroom and staff office.

To support the new focus on sharing M&S heritage with the public, the

M&S Company Archive Community Interest Company5 was established in

2010. Its primary aim is to ensure that the collection is accessible to the

public and of benefit to the community.

The new archive opened in March 2012, welcoming over 15,000

visitors in its first year. In the same period, over 3,000 pupils participated

in the newly launched schools programme and over 150,000 users have

engaged with the collection online.

A Reading Room service was introduced at the same time. It has been

hugely rewarding for the archive team to see people starting to access the

collection in the Reading Room for research purposes. A total of 294

research sessions (this includes multiple visits from some researchers)

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were booked into the Reading Room in 2012/13. These research visits

include students, academics, the general public and M&S employees, with

researchers travelling from as far afield as Japan and Canada to use the

collection. However, as these research visits equate to only 25 per cent of

the total capacity of the Reading Room service, there is significant scope

to accommodate more researchers. Alongside responsibilities to provide an

effective archive service to M&S teams and support the M&S brand,

encouraging more people to use the collection for their research is now a

key focus for the archive team.

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Advert for biscuits, 1957

© Marks and Spencer plc (The M&S Company Archive)

Collection Overview

The collection contains more than 70,000 items (approx. 1,700 linear

metres) dating from founder Michael Marks’ first Penny Bazaar in 1884 to

the present. It comprises not only the written and photographic record of

the company’s development, but also artefacts which represent key aspects

of the company’s activities.

The collection includes annual reports and accounts, Board papers,

Chairmen’s papers, senior management records, financial and sales

performance reports, records of Head Office departments including the Press

Office, Marketing, Human Resources, Finance, Legal and Pension

Departments, letters, speeches, employee magazines, advertising material,

photographs, films, oral history recordings, clothing, food packaging and

merchandise. There are also records relating to stores across Britain and in

international markets, including architectural information and photographs. The

collection also contains family papers from the Marks, Sieff and Sacher

families who were of intrinsic importance to the development of the Company.

The majority of records have been transferred to the archive from

within the business, supplemented by donations (typically M&S

merchandise) from members of the public.

Subject coverage

The collection represents the entire corporate memory of a leading and

iconic British retailer, recognised around the world, and is the sole source

for key primary source material covering all aspects of Marks & Spencer.

The collection offers comprehensive coverage of M&S as a business, as a

retailer, as a leading innovator in textile and food technology, as a major

employer and as a world-famous brand.

Innovation in twentieth and twenty-first century food science, textile

technology and colour science is well represented, with the collection

showing how scientific developments translated to new products, reflecting

changing customer behaviour and preferences.

The collection is an important source of information on how

consumerism has changed from the late nineteenth century to the present.

Documenting changes in how people live, eat and are clothed, the

collection is a rich resource for British social history. The advertising and

marketing material is also a valuable source for class, gender and

communications studies.

The collection also offers insight into the history of employee relations

and staff welfare in the retail sector, charting the paternalistic beginnings of

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responsibility for employees, to later developments in employee relations

and issues relating to a growing global workforce.

More recent retail sector developments are also well served within the

collection, including internationalism, sustainability and business ethics,

including the role and responsibility of M&S as a large retailer with the

capacity to influence customer behaviour.

The collection relates not only to the history of retail, but also

manufacturing, containing a wealth of information relating to product

development and manufacturing processes. M&S was one of the first

retailers to develop long-term relationships with suppliers, and this is

reflected in the company’s records. Given the gaps in available archival

evidence relating to British food and textile manufacturers, the M&S

archive gives a rare opportunity to gain insight into how manufacturers

operated and the changing fortunes of British manufacturing.

There is material for the local historian too. The collection covers stores

across the whole of the UK and Northern Ireland, and therefore offers an

insight into local communities, high streets, local workforces and local

customers.

Business Management - The collection is an important resource for business history and

management studies, covering management and operational issues such as

property management, logistics, distribution, personnel, finance and

corporate governance. The administrative records are a particularly rich

resource for historians and business management researchers. These

records (meeting minutes, financial records, legal records, property records

and departmental reports) provide invaluable evidence of the way in which

retailing has developed since the late nineteenth century. These records can

be used in conjunction with other parts of the collection (store records, staff

bulletins, staff magazines) to trace the impact of key decisions made in the

boardroom on the shop floor and on the performance of the business. It is

possible to see, for example, how periods of capital investment or new

marketing campaigns to strengthen the M&S brand correspond to sales, and

how policy decisions taken to address declining performance or the

emergence of stronger competition were evidenced in changing business

practices. The depth of the collection enables the researcher to analyse

customer behaviour and brand recognition, trends in the pricing of goods

and challenges resulting from difficulties within the manufacturing industry

– in short, to engage in a detailed case study of the history of retail.

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Food technology - M&S sold basic foodstuffs (flour, biscuits and simple confectionery) from

the early Penny Bazaar days of the company. Following the First World

War, M&S began to increase its food sales, and since the Second World

War this became, and remains, one of the main areas of the business. M&S

went beyond most other retailers by becoming actively involved in food

technology from an early period, and this forms a key subject within the

collection, and is covered in some detail. The collection includes the papers

of Nathan Goldenberg, who established the M&S Food Technology

Department in 1948 and pioneered technology in food retail. These papers

include information on the development of food technology, the

improvement of hygiene standards, storage conditions, chemical

experiments on the growing conditions for fruits and nuts, freezing

conditions and food preservation.

Textile technology –The M&S textile laboratory, established in 1935, was at the forefront of

textile innovation for customers, putting a focus on quality and durability,

and leading in the development of new synthetic fabrics. Customers

clamoured for this new generation of fabrics. For example, Marspun, a

spun viscose exclusive to M&S, was used for about 3000 different dresses

by the mid 1950s. In later years, M&S was one of the first retailers to

introduce Lycra in hosiery and clothing. The archive collection includes

detailed textile development records alongside examples of the products

themselves, making it an important source for textile technology research.

Fashion – Art and design is an incredibly rich subject area within the collection,

which is very strong on fashion design, textile prints and patterns and

graphical design. The collection is a key resource for understanding how

fashion relates to cultural history, with the democratisation of fashion and

the development of readymade clothing for the masses, meeting changing

needs in society (for example, workwear for women as more women

continued in employment following marriage and motherhood) and the

development of ‘fast’, ‘green’ and ‘ethical’ fashion. What makes the M&S

clothing collection so valuable to researchers is that it comprises one of

very few mass market fashion resources available to fashion historians.

This is the fashion of the high street, rather than high fashion.

Within the clothing collection of over 1,500 items, there are particular

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strengths. There are over sixty items of St Michael Utility wear (produced

from 1941 to 1952) within the collection. The collection also boasts

wonderful examples of the ‘New Look’ style which became the height of

fashion in the 1950s, starting with Christian Dior’s famous new silhouette

in haute couture, but soon available for women across the UK through

M&S’s interpretation of the new fashion.

In her focus on the clothing collection, Keren Protheroe highlighted the

strong lingerie collection, which includes the first M&S bra from 1926.

‘Lingerie, particularly nightwear, is donated on a regular basis and the

collection holds examples from the 1930s to the present, including an

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M&S Technology Laboratory, sizing survey for stockings

© Marks and Spencer plc (The M&S Company Archive)

extensive range of nylon and bri-nylon nightdresses, dressing gowns and

negligees.’6

International -The collection offers a unique insight into international retail, given M&S’s

high international profile as an iconic British brand with franchises and

stores across the world, and its relationships with international franchise

partners and suppliers. The company has not always had a smooth ride in

international activities, with an unsuccessful attempt to become a leading

retailer in North America (trading in Canada from 1972 but withdrawing in

1999) and negative anti-M&S campaigning by some pro-Palestinian groups

as a result of the support by key company directors for the Zionist cause.

Both the Canadian activities and directors’ links to Zionism are well

represented in the collection.

In the family papers from the Marks, Sieff and Sacher families, who

were heavily involved in the Zionism movement, the collection offers a

fascinating insight into one of the most challenging issues in twentieth

century international politics. How M&S subsequently worked with

foundling Israeli manufacturers is also documented within the collection.

Similarly, M&S papers relating to Woolworth South Africa (a sister

company operating in South Africa during the apartheid period and to the

present day) offer a unique insight into South Africa’s social, political and

economic history.

Other strengths within the International material include Export Group

records, such as Export Nominal Ledgers with details of shipments,

purchases, freight and costs during the 1940s and 1950s. There is also

information on international franchises, annual reports and statutory records

for International subsidiaries and feasibility reports for Latin America,

Australasia and Europe as M&S explored potential new markets to expand

into.

Photographs -The collection comprises some 3,500 photographs dating from the 1890s,

and covering every aspect of M&S, including store frontages (a helpful

source for historians tracing changes on the British high street or local

historians researching their town), design and layout, marketing images,

product photographs, formal staff photographs and images from informal

staff events, and the display of goods. The latter are an excellent resource

for understanding visual merchandising (the way that clothing and

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merchandise is displayed in stores and windows) with some of the very

earliest photographs dating from 1894.

Film -The collection has a strong audio-visual element, including fascinating

promotional cinema adverts from the late 1950s and 1960s. These illustrate

not only the garments that M&S was offering to customers in that period,

but reflect wider society by demonstrating contemporary views on, for

example, gender roles and class perceptions.

Staff Magazines -Internal staff publications, and notably staff magazines, are a key resource

for understanding M&S and its place in social history. The earliest staff

magazines in the collection date from 1932 but the key series, St MichaelNews, was introduced in 1953. St Michael News is an invaluable source,

containing product news and company updates for colleagues across the

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‘Gloves - the perfect gift for Christmas’, window display, 1930s

© Marks and Spencer plc (The M&S Company Archive)

business alongside a fascinating insight into employee welfare and

employee relations, all heavily illustrated with photography and sketches.

Keren Protheroe comments that St Michael News ‘promoted a sense of

community’. She continues, ‘...the content is unashamedly partisan and,

despite the informal tone, the magazine was clearly the vehicle by which

the Company’s retailing philosophy and brand identity were commonly

understood and promoted’. Recognising the magazine as a key source for

technical information, she writes that, ‘Marks & Spencer’s involvement,

often at the cutting edge of textile innovation, is charted in some detail...in

articles which provide enough technical information to be easily passed

onto customers, without resorting to alienating jargon’.7

Checking Lists -A key record within the collection is the Checking List. This seemingly

unremarkable document was, in fact, the backbone which held the entire

M&S retail machine together and operating efficiently. Introduced in the

1920s as a system for recording sales and stock, at a time when few other

large retailers operated anything similar, and becoming known as the

Checking List System, these simple printed paper stock summaries were

used for over 50 years and are now an invaluable source for researchers,

giving a very detailed picture of clothing ranges.

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Lingerie feature, St Michael News, Autumn 1963

© Marks and Spencer plc (The M&S Company Archive)

Research potential

The collection captures all aspects of a major international retailer – the

development of new products with suppliers, design, research and

technology, advertising, marketing, managing stores, property management,

logistics, personnel, finance, legal issues, corporate governance, corporate

social responsibility – to give a complete picture of the inner workings of a

much-loved British institution which has been at the forefront of retail

since 1884.

‘The Marks & Spencer Company Archive represents one of

Britain’s most important corporate archival collections – owing to

the key position of Marks & Spencer in British high street retailing;

the scope and extensiveness of the holdings; and the exceptional

quality of analysis provided in many of the documents.’

(Professor Peter Scott, University of Reading8)

Given the extent, range and depth of the archive collection, and the

extensive level of access that is now available to it, the collection offers

huge research potential. In addition to specific subject areas such as

fashion, food technology, colour science, textile technology, employee

relations and business management, there is the significance that comes

because this is the archive collection of Marks & Spencer.

Writing of Marks & Spencer in his ‘Nation of Shopkeepers’ book,

Greville Havenhand says, ‘There is a hoary debating motion about the

relative merits of Marks and Engels and Marks & Spencer as instruments of

social change. On present evidence Marks and Spencer are winning’.9

By reflecting the development of M&S, the collection charts the

changing landscape of Britain and offers a deeper understanding of

economic, political and social changes from the late nineteenth century to

the present day. Through the collection, people can gain an understanding

of the significance of M&S in British retail history and as a major retailer

today. They can also gain understanding of changing shopping habits and

consumer behaviour, changes on the British High Street, and specific

aspects of cultural change.

In relation to scholarly knowledge, the study of mass market clothing,

rather than high fashion, is still in its infancy. The M&S collection can

make a significant contribution to the understanding of fashion as a

cultural, social and economic phenomenon.

The administrative records within the collection offer new material for

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another relatively new area of research. Professor Peter Scott states that,

‘Historical studies of household consumption, mass marketing, material

culture, and ‘the world of goods’ are becoming of increasing interest to

economic, social and business historians. Marks & Spencer has played a

central role in making a wide variety of clothing and household goods

easily available to the mass market’.10

Developing the Collection

There is, as with most significant business collections, some variation in the

depth of coverage between different areas of the collection. Within the

clothing collection, there are weaknesses in the menswear and childrenswear

collections, with significantly less surviving examples from each decade than

for womenswear, as is typical of many other fashion collections. There are

also gaps in the International material within the collection, for example

specific franchises for which very little information is available.

Some company records are not held as part of the archive collection

because they are still in active use and are therefore held by other company

departments. For example, the company’s collection of property deeds,

which includes documents dating from the late nineteenth century onwards,

are held in ongoing records series arranged by store. These are actively

used by the M&S Legal department and are therefore held in a separate

strongroom at M&S’s Head Office in London. A digitisation project, which

will enable historic information to be readily accessed by the Legal team

while the original records are transferred to the Company Archive for

preservation and access considerations, is currently under discussion.

The archive team is actively developing the collection, specifically

seeking to address weaker areas of the collection by collecting records

relating to M&S innovation and technology, examples of vintage menswear

and childrenswear and material relating to M&S international operations.

The team has made successful appeals to the public for donations of

specific types of products, and has made effective use of contacts at Head

Office to reach out to retired senior managers and directors, who have been

encouraged to donate relevant material that they took with them on leaving

the business. This has resulted in several new donations, including a sizable

donation from a former Head of Packaging. This material covers the

development of new packaging solutions in the late 1970s, 1980s and early

1990s, which offers a depth of information not previously available to

either internal or external researchers, and its arrival at the archive is very

timely for technologists and designers looking at the future of packaging as

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part of the sustainability agenda.

M&S does not currently have a company-wide records management

programme, and the archive team does not have the mandate or the capacity

to tackle records management across the business. However, it is clearly in

the archive’s best interest to ensure that material relating to recent company

activities is safely transferred to the archive. The archive team seeks to

develop the collection in this way by working closely with internal

departments within M&S and with overseas partners. While there is a

rolling programme of ‘target’ departments, this work, unsurprisingly,

proves most successful with departments that fully appreciate the value of

the archive collection, having recently used the collection for a particular

piece of research or asked the archive team to provide information relating

to a specific topic. The archive team is quick to follow up this type of work,

encouraging the department to work with the archive team to agree and

implement a ‘checklist’ of material for (typically, quarterly or biannual)

transfer to the archive. These checklists seek to fulfil part of the purpose of

a traditional retention scheme, but are purposely created as high level, one

page documents that are easy to interpret and implement for busy head

office teams working in the very fast paced retail environment. This

approach has proven to be very effective.

The archive welcomes donations from the public and seeks to acquire

material as a gift. Permanent or temporary loans are only considered in

exceptional circumstances. The archive team is able to make use of the

nationwide network of stores by directing would-be donors to take items to

their nearest M&S store, where the archive team will have made

arrangements for the safe transfer of the items to the archive in Leeds.

Donors then receive a ‘thank you’ pack, containing their copy of the official

donation form along with additional information about the Company

Archive and a small pack of archive-inspired postcards. The archive does

not offer payment in return for donations to the collection, thus avoiding

the daunting prospect of thousands of customers clamouring to offer the

archive the chance to ‘buy back’ M&S-purchased products. While the

company is famous for being the first retailer to introduce a ‘no quibble’

returns policy, that would be a step too far even for M&S.

The Catalogue

Every item in the archive collection has been accessioned, and is included

in an accessions database. The archive team accessions and catalogues

items using CALM software, and alongside cataloguing of new accessions,

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there is a programme of re-cataloguing work to bring historic catalogue

entries up to ISAD(G) compliance levels, by adding to descriptions,

administrative context or copyright information.

As with all archive repositories, there is a cataloguing backlog (it’s not just

a backlog, it’s an M&S backlog...) and the archive team is actively engaged in

a cataloguing programme which continues to ensure that more records can be

added to the online catalogue, prioritising records that relate to key subject

areas that are frequently asked about by internal and external researchers.

Almost 32,000 items are currently included in the Online Archive

Catalogue11. This is the resource that all researchers (internal M&S staff using

the collection to support their work, members of the public and students or

academics using the online catalogue to plan their research visits) use to

search the collection. The catalogue was launched in March 2012, to coincide

with the opening of the new Reading Room service. Prior to that, no

catalogue or finding aid of any kind was publicly available.

The archive team developed the catalogue with the user in mind, and

with the benefit of extensive user-testing and consultation. Archivists are

aware that many users find archival catalogues difficult to interpret, with lots

of information to sift through before locating the appropriate resources, and

archival terms can be unfamiliar and unhelpful. Given the subject coverage of

the M&S collection and the broad public interest in M&S history, the archive

team knew that the catalogue would need to be intuitive and user-friendly to

people who are not familiar with archive catalogues (such as young people

interested in fashion, and colleagues across the M&S business) as well as

providing detailed information to academic researchers.

An off-the-shelf OPAC (online public access catalogue) was piloted

with internal M&S users, who reported that the system was difficult to use.

They wanted something that felt more intuitive, and more in keeping with

the types of systems and resources they were more familiar with. The

archive team therefore began work with a third party, a software

engineering company with experience of museum and archive information

management systems, to design a front-end for the CALM database that is

attractive and user-friendly. Crucially, given that this is the M&S archive

collection, the team tried to design a resource that is very intuitive for

anyone who has any experience of online shopping.

The catalogue enables free text searching but also provides advanced

search options, subject pick-lists and image-led themed galleries which can

be easily browsed. This means that the researcher doesn’t need to have an

understanding of archive hierarchy, record keeping systems or M&S

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terminology, to be able to start engaging with the collection. Researchers

can then add archives that interest them to a ‘pinboard’ (the same principle

as a shopping trolley) and send this list to the archive team so that the

archivists know which archives they wish to consult. Researchers can also

send their ‘pinboard’ to their own e-mail address, for their research notes.

Some records within the collection are subject to restricted access.

Employee records, for example, may be closed under the Data Protection

Act 1998. Records of a commercially sensitive nature, including design

files and some internal reports, are typically subject to closure periods of 10

or 30 years, although some may be permanently closed to external parties.

The access status of records is indicated within the online catalogue.

The archive team has received overwhelmingly positive feedback about

the Online Archive Catalogue, but is aware of areas for improvement which

continue to be addressed. More item images need adding to the catalogue,

and the resource does not always provide the hierarchical and contextual

information which is so helpful to researchers. The resource does not

currently comply fully with ISAD(G), as it is drawn from CALM catalogue

data that does not comply in all areas. This will change, as the work to

address those gaps in the CALM catalogue data itself continues.

In the future, the archive team is keen to explore the potential to

develop functionality to enable users to enhance the collection by

annotating and tagging records. Giving users the flexibility to describe

records in new ways, while making clear the distinction between the

archivists’ catalogue descriptions and user-generated content, will add a

new depth of information and value to the catalogue. It will enable

everyone to benefit from the knowledge and expertise of other users,

whether they are academic subject-specialists, M&S staff with in-depth

product or procedural knowledge, or M&S customers.

The Reading Room service

The Reading Room service enables free public access to the archive

collection, and operates on a pre-bookable basis, with a minimum notice

period of one working day. This ensures that the archive team is able to

retrieve items in advance for researchers, as it is a small team with a heavy

and varied workload. The Reading Room can accommodate up to eight

researchers, or two small team study groups, at any one time.

The Reading Room service is available on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and

Thursdays from 10am to 12pm, and from 1pm to 4pm. The Reading Room

hours were established in consultation with key stakeholders and a number

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of researchers, and are designed to balance accessibility with the other

demands on the archive team’s time. When the archive first opened, the

Reading Room was open four days each week, but with shorter afternoon

sessions. The opening hours were changed following user consultation after

the first six months, as Monday sessions very rarely attracted researchers

and users reported that a longer research session would be helpful to them.

The break in the middle of the day is necessary to ensure that the

supervising archivist can take a lunch break – it had been anticipated that

this would attract complaints from some researchers, but this hasn’t been

the case. A refreshment area, including free drinks facilities and lockers, is

provided for the use of researchers. The Reading Room is Wi-fi enabled

and fully accessible.

It is the archive’s policy not to produce uncatalogued items to

researchers in the Reading Room as, prior to cataloguing, there is a risk that

Data Protection or legal confidentiality requirements may be breached by

doing so. However, where possible the archive team undertake searches

within uncatalogued material for researchers, and researchers have been

able to see that material if a search has confirmed that it is suitable for

consultation. This may mean a short delay between the researcher making

the request and accessing the material in the Reading Room, but

researchers have always been happy with this, as it enables them to consult

material that would otherwise be unavailable.

A small open-access Research Area, adjacent to the Marks in Time

Exhibition, enables visitors to explore a wide range of secondary or

duplicate sources (such as the St Michael News magazines) at any time,

without prior booking. This area is proving successful in introducing people

to sources and encouraging them to book an appointment to explore

original archive material in the Reading Room.

The archive team provides a free enquiry service, accessible in person,

by telephone or by e-mail. The team undertakes research for up to 15

minutes in response to an enquiry from a member of the public. All

enquiries are completed within 10 working days. If an enquiry relates to

information required to inform a future research visit, the team will provide

as much information as possible.

The archive team promotes the use of the Reading Room service

through a range of activities, including providing collection introduction

sessions to students from local institutions on a range of subjects. Recent

examples have included sessions at the Company Archive or in lecture

venues on the history of advertising, corporate social responsibility and

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twentieth century fashion, delivered to over 700 students. The archive team

also promotes the collection and the Reading Room service through subject

specialist networks such as CHORD (the Centre for the History of Retail

and Distribution) and the Histories of the Home Subject Specialist network,

as well as Business Archives Council ‘Meet the Archivist’ events. To

engage students on the archive’s doorstep at the University of Leeds, the

archive team works in partnership with the Leeds University Library

Special Collections service to promote the use of on-campus resources.

The Challenge

The archive team is keen to see increased use of the collection as a research

resource, as part of the M&S Company Archive Community Interest

Company’s aim of enabling and promoting the fullest possible access to the

company’s heritage. There are various challenges to overcome in achieving

this, in addition to those barriers for users that are commonly recognised

across other heritage services, including barriers of perception about what

archives are and who they are for.

The location of the M&S archive in Leeds, rather than in a central London

collection, may be a barrier to some researchers, although the complementary

links with other collections in the Leeds area (including ULITA - An Archive

of International Textiles, also on the University of Leeds campus) will be of

real benefit to others. The campus location may prove a barrier to some,

possibly suggesting that the collection is a University of Leeds resource for the

use of students and academics from that institution only, while other

researchers familiar with using university archives and special collections may

find some of the company’s access policies frustrating.

The M&S brand itself can lead to unrealistic expectations of the

services that we provide. While all services within an M&S store are

available during the store’s opening hours, and our customers feel they

know what to expect in our stores, the Reading Room service operates

within specific times and advance booking is required. This enables the

service to be provided by a small team alongside other duties, but may not

always be readily appreciated by researchers.

While development work on the catalogue continues, some researchers

may find it difficult to locate the information they are looking for, and the

archive team tries to help researchers identify relevant material and make

the most of their research time with the collection. The company’s

restrictions on access to commercially sensitive data can be more difficult

for the archive team to help researchers to work around, although there are

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often cases when relevant data already in the public domain can be

highlighted by the archivist.

The archive team feels that this is a hugely exciting time, and it is very

rewarding to see researchers experiencing and learning from the collection.

It is still very early days for the archive collection as a publicly accessible

resource, and for the online catalogue as a finding aid for researchers, and it

feels like a unique opportunity to shape something from the very beginning.

In this, the Leeds-based archive team is building on the hard work,

enthusiasm and success of the previous London-based archive team who

did all the hard work of planning spaces and services and preparing the

collection for this new phase in the M&S Company Archive’s history.

Conclusion

For many archives, a major capital project is about providing a more suitable

home for a collection that is already attracting a large research audience,

typically combining expansion space for collections with improved public

access facilities. For the M&S Company Archive, opening the new building

and the archive collection to the public was the start of developing a research

audience for the collection. As the archive team seeks to raise awareness of the

M&S archive collection as a rich resource that is available for external

researchers and relevant across a wide range of subject areas, time will tell

whether the collection reaches its full potential as a research resource. It is

hoped that this article will enable and encourage business historians,

academics and archive professionals to spread the word.

Notes

1 REES, Goronwy, St Michael: A History of Marks & Spencer, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1969;

revised paperback edition (Pan, 1973)2 BRIGGS, Asa, Marks & Spencer: A Centenary History ( Octopus Books, 1984)3 WORTH, Rachel, Fashion for the People: A History of Clothing at Marks & Spencer (Berg

Publishers Ltd, 2006)4 PROTHEROE, Keren, ‘Quality Stitch by Stitch’: Clothing and Associated Publications held

in the Marks and Spencer Company Archive, in Costume: The Journal of the Costume

Society, No.39, 20055 For information about Community Interest Companies see http://www.bis.gov.uk/cicregulator6 PROTHEROE, pp. 1107 PROTHEROE, pp. 1018 SCOTT, Peter, The Marks & Spencer Company Archive: An academic appraisal, March

2008, pp. 2 (unpublished)9 HAVENHEAD, Greville, A Nation of Shopkeepers, Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1970, pp. 8910 SCOTT, pp. 711 To search the archive catalogue, see https://archive-catalogue.marksandspencer.ssl.co.uk/home

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