| Description | Records of and generated by the bodies responsible for the management and administration of Mason Hall. These records largely consist of minutes of governing committees, particularly Hall Council, and Mason Hall Junior Common Room committee, but also comprise administrative files kept by an individual member of the Senior Common Room which cover the period 1966 to 1973 and include minutes, reports, policy documents and correspondence, and correspondence files and election material kept by the Junior Common Room committee during the years 1985 to 1991, together with papers relating to the Junior Common Room constitution, and a small amount of material relating to the work of the Senior Common Room in the 1980s and 1990s
The sequence of minutes of Hall Council are incomplete, as there is a gap in the records for the period between May 1967 and November 1972. However, copies of minutes of Hall Council for this period can be found in the administrative files of Peter Hodson, the Senior Common Room member who kept papers relating to the governance and the management of the hall (UB/HMA/A/2). After November 1972, the records contain an almost complete set of minutes of Hall Council until May 2004. Minutes of the Junior Common Room committee are also incomplete, with a substantial gap in the sequence between 1969 and 1992, though the administrative files of Peter Hodson also contain some Junior Common Room minutes for the period 1969 to 1973, as do the sets of correspondence kept by Junior Common Room committee members for the period 1978-1979 and 1985 to 1989. There is no surviving set of authorised Senior Common Room meetings, though Peter Hodson's files include some minutes of meetings of the Senior Common Room for the 1969-1970 academic session (UB/HMA/A/2/2). For a short period during the period 1998 to 2002, the Mason Hall Incident books were used to record minutes of Senior Common Room meetings (UB/HMA/D/1/13-16), though these volumes are currently not open for research because the incident reports recorded there contain sensitive personal information about living individuals. In addition, the Incident book for 2001 is missing
The Senior Common Room files provide details about formal events organised by Mason Hall to mark anniversaries and the retirement of the first Senior Common Room President, but also contain a copy of a report into a series of small fires at Mason Hall in 1990, and handbooks and guidelines for hall tutors, though these do not specifically relate to Mason Hall
The patchy survival of governance records of Mason Hall means that although there are comprehensive records providing evidence for the establishment and early years of the hall of residence from 1966 to 1969, including minutes of Hall Council and Junior Common Room committees, together with the administrative files of Peter Hodson, the only records for the years between 1969 and 1972 are the personal files kept by Peter Hodson, though these do provide a detailed snapshot of the governance of the hall of residence during this period, as well as information about life for students and staff residents. The broader range of records for the 1966 to 1969 period allows for deeper study of the management and operation of the hall, and for the study of the development of governance structures and hall policies.
For the period from 1972 onwards, it is possible to follow the development of the hall of residence through the minutes of Hall Council as an unbroken thread, and to supplement these with other governance records from the 1980s, particularly those of the Junior Common Room from 1985 to 1989, and 1992 to 1998. For the 2000s, the only surviving and accessible governance records are minutes of Hall Council.
Annual reports of Mason Hall can be found in minutes of the University Halls of Residence committees, described at UB/COM/25 and UB/COM/26 |