Records of the Town Clerk of Birmingham City Council (1838 - 1996)

BCC/4/1

Records of the Town Clerk of Birmingham City Council (1838 - 1996)

1838 - 1996

The majority of the surviving records of Birmingham City Council would have been kept in the care of the Town Clerk of Birmingham City Council, and many bear the mark of that department. In most cases the records have now been catalogued in accordance with their respective Council committees or departments.

In a few cases certain deposits have records were originally titled as Town Clerk's records, the most notable deposit being the Town Clerk's Deeds series which comprises hundreds of bundles of deeds relating to various properties in Birmingham which were either bought under Compulsory Purchase Orders or otherwise dealt with under various Town Planning and Redevelopment Schemes. These deeds have been catalogued with other title deeds that have come in from other departments, to keep similar types of material listed together for convenience in order to make the catalogue more user-friendly.

Since Council property would originally have been administered by the City Estates Department, the Town Clerk's Deeds have been catalogued under the field denoting the successor to that department, Birmingham Property Services.

The departmental records of Birmingham City Council have been given a blanket closure period of 50 years, unless otherwise stated on the catalogue entry.

The first Town Clerk of Birmingham Corporation was William Redfern, who was appointed in 1838. Redfern was a local solicitor and influential in the campaign to have the Charter of Incorporation granted to the town that year. He consulted with the Council over the purchasing of a site on Temple Row for the proposed municipal offices, arguing that the sale of the land would be illegal. He also consulted with the Council on the status of the borough authority, all of whom eventually stated that the Council should not be bound strictly to local government but to national government as well.

The Council?s ambition was always to be separate from the guardians and magistrates, but it took just over a decade (1838 - 1851) for the Council to incorporate the functions that previously belonged to the Street Commissioners. From 1911 the Town Clerk, together with the City Treasurer, was elected to serve as with the Overseers of the Poor in the same capacity as they served the city in accordance with the provisions of the City Extension Order passed that year.