•  Comprehensive financial records, which are valuable in shedding light on the functioning of the medieval Hospice, as well as on the life of the seminary from the Counter-Reformation to the present day.

• Architectural records, concerning both the Via di Monserrato site and the various other properties that have belonged to the College over the centuries.

• Guest lists and pilgrim lists, and also the famous Liber Ruber, now in its ninth volume: this College register records the name of every student who has passed through the College since 1579.

• Personal collections, such as the 360 letters written from the College by Fr Gerald Creasey to his parents during the seven years of his formation in the 1950s.

• Papers concerning important individuals who have been associated with the College throughout its history — the Stuarts, Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman, St John Henry Newman, Mgr Christopher Stonor, Mgr George Talbot and Cardinal Rafael Merry del Val, among many others.

• Thousands of photographs dating back well over a century, recording many significant moments and people in the College’s more recent history.

• Correspondence regarding the early history of the dioceses of Baltimore, Philadelphia and Quebec in North America (the so-called North American Agency Papers).

Work to date

The years 2015 to 2018 witnessed a full-time project to begin the process of conserving, cataloguing and digitising the VEC Archives.

That project prepared the way for a new phase in the life of the Archives, making available to historians a rich resource for scholarly research.

As the VEC Archives had never previously enjoyed the benefit of an associated reference library, the College Trustees declared in March 2017 that they wish to see the development of an archival reference library as a significant adjunct to the College Archives. This new library development celebrates the long history of the English and Welsh Catholic community at home and abroad throughout the ages.

The new facility is being developed both by using existing College Library resources and by supplementing these with donations from collections elsewhere. More than 3000 reference books have been donated since 2016, complementing existing VEC holdings: these donations are largely duplicates from diocesan archival library collections in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. The collection includes a complete set of English Recusant Literature, 1558–1640 (Scolar Press, 1967–1979), comprising some 630 titles published in facsimile in 394 volumes, and believed to be the only such set in Italy. Taken as a whole, the reference library is unique in Rome.

The VEC also possesses a substantial collection of rare books dating from the 16th century. These have been largely inaccessible to scholars in the past: the books now need professional care and attention in both conservation and cataloguing.

These new initiatives promise to raise significantly the status of the VEC as a place of serious international scholarship.