County Record Office

Historical Development

Responsibility for the records of County administration traditionally lay with the Custos Rotulorum, who would usually delegate it to the Clerk of the Peace, often a local solicitor in private practice, appointed by the Court of Quarter Sessions i.e. by the Justices of the Peace of the County. Justices of the Peace were local men of property and influence, appointed by the Crown to enforce Parliamentary Statutes, unpaid amateur administrators who identified their own interests with the enforcement of the law that upheld the rights of property and used their social and economic position as landowners and employers to uphold those laws.

This concern with property rights is reflected in the types of record that have been preserved from earliest times - charters, deeds and leases.

Justices of the Peace came into their own as the decentralised agents of the centralised Tudor State and it is from the 16th century that the records of Quarter Sessions become an important source for local historians. Apart from the records generated by Quarter Sessions itself - in particular the central series of Quarter Sessions Order Books - documents and plans relating to important local public undertakings, authorised by private Acts of Parliament, that would affect the inhabitants of the County - the enclosure of land; the construction of a canal, turnpike road or railway line and the works of local Improvement Commissioners - had to be deposited with the Clerk of the Peace, for public reference.

These records may be seen as forming the nucleus of the County Record Office - records preserved, not for their historical interest, but for their administrative value in enforcing property rights and legal duties. Documents that one would today regard as archives - the ancient records of the County Palatine of Chester and Flint, which was abolished in 1830, were almost wholly neglected and left to moulder in Chester Castle. In 1852, they were surveyed by W.H. Black, Assistant Keeper at the Public Record Office, who reported that "The most important and useful records, which Mr Faithful Thomas, Assistant in care of the Exchequer Records, who died in 1844, had arranged in some degree of order and accessibility - were mixed together - the tables and floors being strewed with documents - smothered with dirt and in almost hopeless confusion". This state of affairs was later attributed to "want of control over persons who had been permitted to search there" - which explains why we do not allow our readers into the strong-rooms to look out their own documents.

Three years later, some 13 tons of Palatinate records were removed from Chester Castle to the Public Record Office, where they now reside. A proposal to transfer certain Palatinate records to the new National Library of Wales at Aberystwyth in 1911 led to an outcry in Chester and a counter-proposal that a branch of the PRO be established at Chester. Neither proposal came to anything and perhaps the opening of a new County Record Office affords a suitable opportunity to call again for their re-partriation.

When Quarter Sessions lost most of its administrative powers to the newly established Cheshire County Council in 1888, responsibility for the County's records passed to the Standing Joint Committee, consisting of representatives of both bodies.

Replying to a circular from the Government's Local Records Committee in 1899, the Clerk of the Peace stated that the records were housed in a strong room at the Castle and consisted wholly of administrative records - Quarter Sessions minutes and Order Books from 1559; Sessions Files from 1570; Estreat Rolls from 1681; records relating to papists from 1717 etc. - and the provisions for public access - "The Public are allowed to inspect documents in the presence of a representative of the Clerk of the Peace during office hours and on payment of 1/8 for each document". On a rough calculation, at today's prices, this would amount to about £8 per document. By 1923, this charge had been altered to 6/6 per hour, provoking protests from impoverished students.

The number of historical records deposited grew as the responsibilities of the County Council developed and both duties and records were inherited from defunct bodies such as the School Boards and the Guardians of the Poor. One Records Clerk was responsible for the custody of these records and he had neither the time nor the ability to calender and index the older historical material. In 1933, the Cheshire Rural Community Council approached the County Clerk, volunteering assistance and a Voluntary Worker was appointed - J.C. Dewhurst, a retired architect, and in effect, if not in title, the first County Archivist, listing, indexing and giving talks on the County Muniments.

Expert advice was sought from the PRO on the storage and repair of documents - one such letter of counsel, dated 1934, states "The documents are, I am told, ironed. The result is not very satisfactory and the use of a heated iron is to be deprecated as it introduces an element of danger". To save the older records from even greater danger in the Second World War, evacuation to a Winsford salt mine was arranged.

After the Second World War, the County Record Office was established as a public service in 1949, with the appointment of a full-time County Archivist - Major F.G. Rowe, on a salary of £595 p.a. The Record Office quickly expanded its interests beyond the administrative records of the County to historical records of every type bearing on the locality. The policy of the County Record Office was defined in 1962 as primarily "to serve the administration, particularly in regard to the care of older records and in giving advice on the selection of more modern records which will in due course be kept permanently" and secondly "to offer facilities for and advice on the care and preservation of records of permanent interest and value within the County. An extension to these services is to make these records available to the public by means of lists, calendars, exhibitions and lectures and to exploit their use for educational purposes".

In 1950, it was recognised as an approved repository for manorial records and subsequently attracted major deposits of family estate papers, including Cholmondeley [oab]DCH[cab]; Crewe [oab]DCR[cab] and Egerton of Tatton [oab]DET[cab].

Although nominated by the Bishop of Chester as the official depository for ecclesiastical parish records as early as 1954, a circular appeal sent out by the County Clerk in that year to parish incumbents, to encourage them to deposit their older parish records met with little response. Not until 1961 did the Record Office officially become the Diocesan Record Office, when the bulk of the Diocesan records were transferred from the Abbey gateway to the old prison chapel of Chester Castle.

The Parochial Registers and Records Measure of 1978 obliged all parochial incumbents to deposit all records over 100 years old, that were not still in use, in the Diocesan Record Office, or else make proper arrangements for their preservation. To cope with the increasing number of deposited papers, an Assistant Archivist was first appointed in 1955. There are now (1986) 6 full-time Assistant Archivists and an ancillary staff of 14.

The increasing bulk of records, which by the summer of 1985 came to three and a half miles of shelving, leads to a periodic crisis of storage. In 1968, the County Archivist opened negotiations with I.C.I. to once again store records in Winsford salt mine, access to which would be down a shaft 4' by 6'. Fortunately, the Record Office was able to take over the former Civil Defence Training Control Centre at Beacons Hill, Frodsham instead.

The move to new premises at Duke St. has solved the problem for the moment, but the problem of limited storage space and an ever-expanding bulk of records is not one that will go away.

The use of the Record Office by members of the public has dramatically increased - in the period from August to September 1985, some 2,380 searchers were accomodated, 12,567 documents produced and 5,265 documents copied. This may be compared with the statistics for July to September 1965, when 154 users were recorded and 588 documents produced.

With the rise of local history and genealogy as popular leisure time pursuits in the dawning "Age of Leisure", these numbers can only continue ever growing.