Eight boxes of material relating to Roland Edgar Cooper who was Curator (Head Gardener) at the Royal Botanic Garden between 1934 and 1950. Material consists of correspondence, field notes, photographs and maps from his plant collecting expeditions in Sikkim, Bhutan and Punjab between 1913 and 1916, and family / genealogical information.

Census information for Nepal, 1900. Annotations made in red pen to correct the spelling of certain indigenous groups.

The collection comprises diaries, notebooks, correspondence, photographs, slides, negatives, and articles relating to Sykes’ 1952 and 1954 expeditions to Nepal, organised by the British Museum and the Royal Horticultural Society. Also includes slides, correspondence, articles, maps, and other material from the 1980s to 2018.

Note on slides and photographs: slides are labelled on the mount (except for metal mounts) with details of date, locale, a descriptive caption, and, sometimes, elevation. Sykes’s handwritten notes (in pocket preceding each group of slides) supply more details. Photographs are labelled on the verso with details of date, locale, a descriptive caption, and, sometimes, elevation.

Aside from the expected botanical images and mountain views and scenery, the subjects of Sykes’s slides and photographs are wide-ranging, including villages and villagers, village houses, street scenes, bazaars, markets, festivals, porters, camp sites, camp activities, nomadic people, Hindu and Buddhist temples, shrines, monks, nuns, and monasteries, Buddhist statues, plant processing, seed drying, animals, cultivation and crops, activities such as wool processing, making ropes and mats, spinning and weaving, and brick making.