In this blog series, called "Winnowings", I will be exploring and sharing some material and insights which have come from a "Craig Fees Collection", which I picked up from the MB3 Archive at the end of June 2026. This is an introductory entry.
As the founding archivist for the Planned Environment Therapy Trust Archive and Study Centre, it was my job to build up the collections and document the field in real time, for the benefit of future generations. The present is easy to overlook when preparing the ground for the future; and when it becomes past, it is often too late: The attrition of the things which make up the present is pretty severe; and by the time their taken-for-granted presence is remembered in retrospect, it is often too late to recall them back into the present as records - as archives, or museum objects, or just pre-antiques and story-telling curiosities.
That is the background for "Winnowings".
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In going through the Mulberry Bush Organisation's most recent "Where are collections going" spreadsheets, as discussed in an earlier blog post, I was surprised to find that I was in the "Collection Name" column, and the my Collection was categorised in the "Being transferred to" column as "Depositor". I asked about this, but it was late in the day, and answer came there none. What had I deposited that was personal, that I had forgotten about, and was part of a Craig Fees Collection, that was being transferred 'back' to me. What hadn't already been transferred?
That last question referred to the fact that earlier in the life of the new Mulberry Bush Archive - in 2019 or 2020 - they had transferred several things 'back' to me without my requesting them: a 50p commemorative "Library" coin which I had saved for story-telling purposes in the Archive; some photographs involving my children in the setting of the Archive and particularly around the new construction that went on in the late 1990s and early 2000s; and a folder of financially-related documents. The financially-related documents were principally bank and Visa card statements for a First Direct account in my name (to which I will return), but there were other documents in the folder as well: invoices relating to the renewal of website hosting packages and domain names, for which we were responsible at the time (charterhousegroup.org.uk, pettarchiv.org.uk, pettrust.org.uk, tc-of.net, thecasselhospital.org, wenningtonschool.org.uk), an invoice for a new Archive laptop, another invoice "For assessing and removal, in regards to the library of the late Dr. S.P. Brinkworth...Chichester" (about which there is at least one story to be told), and a note from PETT Trustee Bob Hinshelwood recording the enclosure of a cheque for the Archive Endowment Fund, with the comment "I doubt if it will save your job!" (it didn't).
These financially-related documents are all dated between 2002-2005, and were created and received in the course of the work of the Archive: In other words, they belonged with the PETT Archive and Study Centre's own archives, as did the photographs: The coin might be considered part of the museum collections, or part of the Archive exhibition and story-telling resources, but the photographs were intentionally deposited documentation of the Archive's work and development. Like the financial records, they too belonged in the Archive's archives.
However, in lieu of their all being destroyed, I was happy to have them.
More recently, in late October 2025, as the Mulberry Bush Archive began its dash towards closure, I asked for the return of the only genuinely personal or personally-inflected items I could think of to which I might have a claim: an American Boys' Ranch charity stamp that came from my late father's wallet, probably from the 1940s; a painting I had done as part of a complex and frankly magnificent "Santa's Workshop" at Christmas 1982 when I still had all my stage-painting skills, for the front hall of the therapeutic community for children I had stumbled into; and the crystal "Archive of the Year" award given to the Archive and Study Centre by Your Family History in 2013. The Your Family History award was not personal in the way the stamp and painting were, and in making my request I wrote to the archivist, "If the archives of the Archive find a home (and they should and I hope they do), then it can be sent on there when I too am no longer, or before, if the new home wants and values it."
(A quick note: apart from "Therpeutic Living With Other People's Children" documentation, the PETT Archive and Study Centre archives don't feature in the late Mulberry Bush Archive's public reckonings, either in the catalogue for the Planned Environment Therapy Trust, where the Archive and Study Centre and its records organisationally belong, nor in the "Where have collections gone" spreadsheets.)
These three things were all generously transferred to me.
But with the imminent emptying out and closure of the Archive barreling down on us, what had I deposited over the years which merited the title of a "Craig Fees Collection", and merited a return: What had I deposited which both rang no bells, and no longer belonged in the Archive (or in any other archive)? It was a mystery.
When I picked up the Collection from MB3 at the end of June (2026) I found that the "Craig Fees Collection" consisted of four grey/white clamshell archive boxes, and was primarily some of the material I'd accessioned at various times into the Archive, in my role as archivist. I'm still going through the boxes, so my understanding may change, but like the financial folder and photographs from 2019-2020, these are materials which document either the work and history of the Archive and Study Centre, or the field.
Given my role as founding archivist and archivist for almost 30 years, some of the material looks and is personal, such as two Oral History Society documents from 1998 about my induction as a Regional Networker, which are there because it was a significant moment in the history of engagement of the Archive and the wider community; or 2003 documents about my role in the Wellcome Trust Witness Seminar on "Beyond the Asylum: Anti-Psychiatry and Care in the Community", the connection with the life and work of the Archive perhaps being more immediately obvious. But they are documents for the history of the Archive and Study Centre, and is why they were there.
I'm happy to have the material in these boxes "back", both in lieu of their being put in the skip, and for their own sakes, and I am grateful to the Archive team for setting them aside for me; but they aren't "personal" documents in the way my father's charity stamp or the Christmas painting were. In other words, this was not a "Craig Fees Collection" in the sense of a collection of material which I had deposted from my private professional or personal life. It is a collection of material I accessioned into the Archive in my role as archivist. In this they are like the 1100+ CF recordings in the oral history collection (i.e., audio recordings I made, their provenance and integrity as a collection obscured, but not obliterated by the parcelling up and renaming of the recordings as 'TC Voices' and 'TC Events') - or (V)CF, or (P)CF, items in the video and photographic collections, which I created and/or deposited in my role as archivist.
(I mean, logically, you can extend this concept of a Craig Fees "Collection", as material I created as archivist, to catalogues I'd compiled and reports I'd written; and conceptually, as the agent of acquisition and accession, to virtually every other item in the Archive. In an uncanny and extended sense - in terms one follows with rigorous logic but balks to think in - the Archive and Study Centre as such was almost entirely part of a "Craig Fees Collection", in these terms, as items I created as archivist, or brought into the Archive for its collections).
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Back to the First Direct bank and Visa card statements.
For reasons best known to himself, and never explained, PETT's Chair and Director, John Cross, insisted in the early days of the Archive that its finances, apart from my salary, had to be run from my personal bank account. I would pay for things, like the laptop or the Internet hosting packages, and then claim back (a pattern which persisted to the end. At one point in the 2010s I carried in excess of £1,000 for over a year, waiting for a Mulberry Bush payment of an invoice through PETT). This played havoc with my existing personal account, needless to say, so I finally opened a separate bank account with the then-new First Direct. This was some time in the 1990s - I used the First Direct bank card for the first time in 1996 (don't ask me how I know this, but I do: It was the first time I had ever used a cashpoint machine, and the experience has stayed with me).
The First Direct statements which came back to me some time in 2019 or 2020 were therefore core financial records of the Archive and Study Centre at a formative time in its history, and intentionally deposited by me for the interest, amusement, and more seriously, for the information of future archivists. I genuinely had that conversation with myself, and dreamed of what they would learn about the history they were inheriting from their discovery.
Why only the 2002-2005 records came back to me, and/or perhaps have survived - because I would have deposited the whole run - I do not know: but they have an essential role to play in understanding the early history of the Archive and Study Centre.
I was initially surprised that the records went up as late as they do - 2005 seemed very late for a system of running the Archive's finances through a personal account. But I was made redundant in the summer of 2005, in preparation for which - not knowing whether I would be re-hired in some way - I stripped myself out of the Archive's infrastructure, which included managing email discussion groups and websites, and obviously - very obviously, in retrospect - the "Archive's" bank account. When I was re-hired, it was on a rolling monthly part-time contract; and the finances went thenceforth through the Trust's accounts.
I look forward to sharing what they say to me today in a later edition of Winnowings.
The view from Santa's workshop.
One of the two window rails which said "this is a window" has sunk to the bottom of the frame, and one has disappeared.
I sized a piece of canvas from who knows where - possibly the remains of a tent - and used only paints from the maintenance shed. Two summers before, in Los Angeles, I had been building and painting sets, and some of the skills (and confidence) were still there.
