"an aspect of the value of the archive that I'd never considered before"
When archivists process and catalogue new collections, they often do so from the perspective of people who may never have interacted with the business in question, and may even have been born long after the organisation had dissolved. Instead, this project has directly involved people who are both the donors of the collection and formerly involved with the company it documents: ISTEL.
The Remembering ISTEL project started as a community-led effort to capture and preserve the memory of the company which played a role in the legacy of British industry, automotive history, and the economics of places like Redditch.
From the point of collection and donating these materials to the British Motor Industry Heritage Trust, the organisers of ‘Remembering ISTEL’ were keen to be involved with the processing of the collection and its archival description. Through past experience and existing connections, our volunteers in this project are connected with much of the former company and are uniquely placed to describe corporate records and material artefacts. This experience is enormously useful and provides a unique interpretation of these records and will aid their accessibility when the full catalogue is published for public access.
The following blog has been put together by the two volunteers undertaking the project with the BMIHT Archive, Dave and Derek, and documents their progress over several sessions.
- Tom Poole, Archivist, BMIHT
Dave & Derek pose with aerial photograph of CDC site, Redditch, 2026
1. Why are we here?
In 1983, the British Motor Industry Heritage Trust (BMIHT) was formed to secure the collection for the nation. It owns a wide range of historical items which help describe the long and varied history of motor car manufacture in Britain, since its early beginnings more than one hundred years ago. Much of the collection has been made by or is connected to British motor manufacturers.
When talking about the British motor manufacturing industry it is easy just to think about the major car manufacturing companies, but the industry is far wider and diverse than that, and includes what is collectively known as the ‘supply chain’. The supply chain consists of hundreds of organisations large and small whose components, facilities and know-how ensures the major car factories can function productively. One such organisation was ISTEL.
BMIHT/SC/IST/1/11/09 - Staff at Preston Failsafe Centre, 1985
BMIHT/SC/IST/1/11/20 - Photograph of the Southern Failsafe Centre, 1985
Formed initially in 1977 when the computer services departments of many midland based car manufacturers were brought together under the British Leyland (BL) umbrella. In 1979, BL Systems Ltd. was created as a separate operating company and given a mandate to seek projects outside the BL group. In June 1987, Rover Group (to which British Leyland had been renamed in 1986) sold ISTEL, in a management led, employee buyout led by John Leighfield, for £35 million.
By October 1989, ISTEL had grown into a multi-million turnover organisation providing systems in support of vehicle manufacture. ISTEL was sold to AT&T, renamed AT&T ISTEL and diversified into supporting finance, commerce, travel, and healthcare markets, as well as its traditional manufacturing market.
In the 1990s market changes saw AT&T ISTEL organisations structure change, and its market orientated companies were sold, or closed. This led to the name ISTEL disappearing from the commercial landscape and its achievement became just a memory in the minds of its former staff.
In 2021, two former staff members met, lamented the disappearance of the ISTEL name and decided to ensure the name would not be lost and the company achievements forgotten. The result was the reuniting of over 400 of the original 1800 ISTEL workforce and the accumulation of a collection of over 600 ISTEL related artefacts.
This collection of artefacts, documents, and published material was amassed to ensure that the name and history of the company, and its achievements, can be recorded for posterity. In 2025 the archive was donated to the British Motor Industry Heritage Trust Archive, located at the British Motor Museum, and in late 2025 the two leaders of the project joined the BMIHT Archive as volunteers to support the integration of the ISTEL archive with the BMIHT’s extensive motor manufacturing industry archive.
So, one more link in the supply chain is recognised and made available to BMM visitors to view, research and enjoy. With the scope of the archive contents and the on-hand knowledge of the volunteers supporting the integration activities the ISTEL archive, is seen by the museum as representative sample of how the value of the Archive can be maximised.
This blog follows the work being carried out behind the scenes to realise that potential.
2. Volunteering with the Archive
After many months of requests, discussions, meetings and a few unavoidable delays, Dave & myself signed in at the British Motor Museum reception for our first volunteering session on Monday.
We must say that the organisation at the Museum for volunteers is second to none. What did surprise us is that the Trust has a staff of eighty but a volunteer pool of 116 volunteers. We had already had a day’s induction session briefing us on what the Museum will provide in return for us volunteering and what BMIHT expected from us as volunteers. We were pre-signed up for the various systems by which volunteers are informed and managed, including the volunteers management system on which we booked the slots we planned to attend.
We also had four on-line training sessions to complete to ensure we were familiar with, and understood, security, emergency, safety and compliance procedures in place.
So, splendidly dressed in our BMM shirts and fleeces, we signed in and picked up a security fob and headed for the archive. We were very pleased that we were expected and that Thomas, BMIHT Archivist, had put together all the materials we needed, and some boxes of ISTEL archives ready to process.
The Senior Archivist told us the ISTEL data would be one of the first ready to trial a potential new public interface of the new Collections Management System. Accordingly, Thomas had set out a template of the data required for material and we were able to map this onto the spreadsheet listing all the data we already had. With a few adjustments of titles we found there was about a 75% match so avoided having to enter all the data for every item.
Obviously, we had to match our artefact reference numbers to the BMIHT Archive format, as well as enter some fields of data we had been lax in entering previously. Our main discussion point, and really a more strict enforcement of archiving definitions, centred around the types of artefacts we had donated. The core of this discussion centred on the definition of an artefacts as an “evidential” element of ISTEL as opposed to an artefact or article that had ISTEL’s name on it. There are interesting questions about what differentiates archival material from museological artefacts.
One of the other aspects of our records which we have yet to agree on how they fit in with archival standards, is the electronic data, including the website. To us, having this quite extensive information is very important as we know it often triggers memories but possibly, it is not something BMIHT have had to deal with previously. So, an interesting discussion for the future.
Overall a very productive session, with very friendly and helpful BMIHT staff in a nice relaxed environment. Interestingly, we were working on a large conference table from Longbridge and surrounded by signs collected from the Longbridge factory.
Dave and Derek working in the Archive (with aforementioned Longbridge signs in the background), 2026
3. Securing ISTEL's Future
Another productive day this week in the BMIHT Archive, processing the ISTEL collection. Having collected 651 unique items with the help of our community, our task is to update our register with BMIHT required data and then re-package them in conservation-friendly materials for long-term storage.
Archive items represent pieces of the company’s history over the years and, so far, we have identified and processed 286 such items. Objects reflect the culture and operation of the company such as promotional items, and office equipment like pens, coasters and folders. The third category includes items from the first two categories but for which we only have a digital image. We then have nine items recorded which, for some unexplained reason, we have not yet located.
Another area where we hope we can involve more people is with oral histories; looking for first-hand memories of all aspects of British Motor Manufacturing history.
We have had a couple of interesting online sessions with John Leighfield and Chris Chiles talking with Keith Adams for his AROnline website and we hope we can persuade some of you to join similar sessions with the BMM team when they are organised.
As far as ISTEL archive content is concerned, we are very pleased with the progress we are making. The BMIHT archivists are already talking about how we add this data to their Collections Management system. This will then give us the opportunity to associate images of each artefact with the data records.
So the objective to secure ISTEL’s history for the future is progressing very well.
BMIHT/SC/IST/2/03/51 - Frontpage of the ISTEL Real Times Edition 51, October 1986
4. Don't You Just Love It When a Plan Comes Together?
Today was our fourth session of volunteering at Gaydon to assimilate the ISTEL collection into their impressive archive of British motoring history. Today’s session in modern parlance was focused on “data cleansing”, revisiting the archive data records we have created so far to correct typos, ensure every artefact is recorded correctly and add details where appropriate to give our future audience a more rounded view of ISTEL as it was.
Quite a bit of the session today was spent identifying, and distinguishing between the “Creator” of the material and the “Donor”. This is an area where we had been a bit lapsed when we documented the artefacts last year, but an area of importance to an archive such as BMIHT’s where adherence to professional standards is key.
We also learnt about the Creator Profile facility in Axiell, and spent some time reviewing the creators we had identified, rationalising the names to remove near duplicates and then extracting from the Remembering ISTEL website data that can be used to populate the Biography/Description field which will also be added to Axiell. So another very productive session.
As well as the detailed work on the archive data we were pleased to have several conversations with the BMIHT archive staff which highlighted their view of the significance that a small organisation such as ISTEL has in terms of the whole motor manufacturing industry story.
For example, they recently welcomed around seventy visitors to an evening of guided tours of the archives and put on display some of the ISTEL artefacts to show what is typically the archives.
Perhaps of more significance to the objectives of our Remembering ISTEL project was the discussion we had about loading the ISTEL collection details to their Collections Management System, Axiell. The Axiell archive management software is built on a foundation of international standards for archive and museum collections management and represents a significant step in the future of BMIHT’s overall archive strategy. We are therefore pleased that the archive team see the ISTEL data, and the interest we are showing in securing its future, as a good, representative data-set to load to the system to validate their use of the system facilities.
Further, BMIHT archivists are talking about loading this data within weeks which means we will be seeing tangible benefits from the work we are doing today.
So, a really satisfying day all around with enthusiastic talk of “Next we can……” giving us the incentive to come back next week and see real progress in ensuring the ISTEL name will survive and the achievements the company are recognised with the history of the British motoring manufacturing industry.
Finally, reflecting on the day back home in the evening, it suddenly struck me that this year it will be forty years since I started work at ISTEL and relocated my family to Redditch. Moreover, that this year, 2026, (for those examining the ISTEL archives in the future), that long forgotten day now also represents the midpoint of my life.
Postscript
The ISTEL project is wrapping up. Now with a complete catalogue, a set of standards-compliant data to upload to our Collections Management System, and a series of archival materials which have been carefully referenced and rehoused for longevity, we're very pleased to see the project completed.
From the archive's perspective, it has been inspiring to see the interest that the project has had from ex-employees; a stark reminder of the impact that companies can have on communities and individuals in the area within which they occupy. In recent months, this interest has included a posthumous donation of materials addressed to the archive, on behalf of a former employee of ISTEL who passed away more than ten years ago. Having shared this information with their own online network of former ISTEL personnel, Dave & Derek received a number of positive and commemorative comments about the former member of staff.
Commenting on this series of events after the fact, Dave described this human impact as "an aspect of the value of the archive that I'd never considered before": A poignant, yet pleasing comment to hear.