Pores for thought
A new boy-led interactive display has been mounted in the Natural History Museum .It looks at the structure of leaves and encourages visitors to view stomata through a microscope.
![](https://www.etoncollege.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/pores-for-thought-2-1024x683.jpg)
Rehousing glass plate negatives
Over the past 18 months we have been working to clean, rehouse, digitise and catalogue a collection of 2,000 glass plate negatives, including some of the oldest surviving photographic images of the College. With the project coming to the end, new boxes, which weigh approximately 5kg, and hold 15 glass plates each, have been rehoused on strengthened shelving. It has been a big project for the photographic archive and has unveiled some fantastic photographs of Eton’s history, which can be viewed by searching “PA-N” in the collections catalogue.
![](https://www.etoncollege.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Glass-plate-negatives-rehoused-862x1024.jpg)
Architectural plans
The Archives team have spent the last three weeks going through 270 boxes containing 18,000 building plans in order to pick out 1,100 selected for permanent preservation. These plans are an important record of the changes made to the built environment of the College, and range in date from 1843 to 2015. The plan featured is from January 1843 and shows the division of Long Chamber above Lower School from one long dormitory into individual bedrooms for the King’s Scholars.
![](https://www.etoncollege.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/1843-building-plan-1-1024x787.jpg)
Berkshire Family History Society visit
23 members of the Berkshire Family History Society visited the Museum of Eton Life and College Library this month. The group enjoyed learning about the history of the College and were shown a variety of significant records from the Archives, including the 1421 will of Henry V.
![](https://www.etoncollege.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/ECA-ECR_59-crop-Henry-V-Will-1024x714.jpg)