| Description | Financial records of the Guild of Students comprising accounts of the Guild of Undergraduates, the Union committee and the Catering Department it administered, and of the Entertainments committee and Events committee, both of which were standing committees of the Guild of Undergraduates. There are also accounts of St Francis Hall and the Day Training College Women's Club, both of which were connected with the Guild, and of Mermaid, the student magazine funded by the Guild. Records consist of ledgers, income and expenditure accounts, and cash and salaries books. Early accounts for the period before 1914 have been kept within correspondence files generated by Guild officers and are described at UB/GUILD/D. The records that survive make it difficult to gain a full idea of the financial situation of the Guild of Students over the entire period of its existence. There is a relative absence of statements of accounts and balance sheets. For some years this information is provided in the Annual Reports, described at UB/GUILD/E/2. Another difficulty is that there are gaps in the records that do survive, with no ledgers for the period before 1924 and the only records dating from the 1970s consisting of accounts of the Union committee relating to the purchase of supplies for the running of the Guild building, and to the financial activities of its catering department. Some general information about Guild finances can be found in the reports of the Finance committee to Guild Council, inserted in Guild of Students Council minutes, described at UB/GUILD/A/3, though detailed reports are only included from the 1960s onwards.
This existing series of records does, however, provide some indication of the development of the Guild's financial and administrative responsibilities over time, particularly in the expansion of services it offered to members of the student body. The Guild of Undergraduates ledgers also contain information about the organisation's charitable activities in the 1950s and 1960s, through the donations made to specific appeal funds. |