CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
Menu
Research dossier · History & Society

Portland College

school in Nottinghamshire, UK

Layered newspapers, civic records and oral-history reels arranged as chronological evidence
History and societyInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 5, 2026
Entity authorityQ7231903
Source-derived summary

Portland College is an education establishment near Ravenshead, Nottinghamshire, England. It is situated in 20 acres (81,000 m2) of Sherwood Forest, approximately 3 miles (4.8 km) south of the town of Mansfield. Portland College has around 270 students, aged between 16 and 60.

History

The college was originally established as an institution for the training of injured men in war and for hurt miners. The college was founded in 1949. Winifred, Duchess of Portland, acts after regular visits to Harlow Wood Hospital near Mansfield in the 1940s, along with Doctor Alan Malkin, an orthopaedic surgeon, to retrain and re-employed patients, after they had recovered and left the hospital.

In 1947, the Duke of Portland transferred 15 acres (61,000 m2) of his land in Sherwood Forest to the Duchess's Charity through a gift. A further 5 acres (20,000 m2) have been purchased for the sighting of the new college. Along with these moves, a Workers Contributory Fund was established that encouraged local Nottinghamshire employees to contribute one penny a week towards the estimated £100,000 required to open the college. In 1948, some 17,000 workers agreed to take part in the scheme and in 1949, a total of 20,000 workers were in the scheme.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Portland College” is school in Nottinghamshire, UK. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Portland, College and school, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA strong contextual entry point for chronology, institutions and public events when official records are distinguished from later interpretation. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1949, 1947, 1948—that can be checked directly. The authority record carries competing date values—1949, 2006-06-19—which should remain separate until their references and qualifiers are resolved. For this dossier, Portland, College and school is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “school in Nottinghamshire, UK” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7231903. VIAF identifies the subject as 146744142. The Library of Congress control number is n95112150. Authority coordinates are 53.105, -1.180. 6 of 6 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1949, 1947 and 1948.

Critical limits

Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Portland College”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Portland College primary sources, Portland College archive and Portland research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Portland College”?
  2. Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
  3. Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Portland College” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.