The Broadlands Archives: For more than 20 years, Southampton University Library has held in its Special Collections Division the Broadlands Archives, some 4,500 boxes, dating from the sixteenth century to the present, centred on the Temple (Palmerston), Ashley, Cassel and Mountbatten families. It is an exceptional collection, including many materials of the first rank for the history of the UK and its relations with its colonies and foreign powers. The Mountbatten papers are effectively the foundation archive for the modern states of India and Pakistan, and in addition illuminate Britain's first major act of post-war decolonisation; the papers of the third Viscount Palmerston include some 40,000 letters, many from his private correspondence as Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister; and the diaries of the seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, reformer and philanthropist, are one of the great monuments to social progress in Victorian England. The collection also has important resonances for the local area: there are more than 600 boxes of documents relating to Hampshire, including records for land and agricultural management, deeds, rentals and accounts, especially for a large block of property around Romsey and the south of the Test Valley, from the sixteenth century onwards. These documents are essential for understanding the development of the landscape and history of the region, with runs of accounts for timber and underwood, and estate maps. There are manorial records for Romsey infra from 1669 onwards.  In the nineteenth century, the third Viscount Palmerston invested heavily in the estate, consolidating property, and upgrading workers’ cottages, all recorded in the extensive estate correspondence.