Office of Works and successors: Royal Palaces: Registered Files

This series contains papers relating to buildings, fittings, supply of services, repairs, purchases of property and land, regulations, rights, and estate management in connection with particular royal palaces, residences and associated buildings and estates, including some of the royal parks. The series also includes some general files concerning the ministry's responsibilities for and management of royal palaces.

Most of the files were registered in the AE series, but some earlier papers are in unregistered folders. Some files date from after the creation of the Department of the Environment and the Property Services Agency.

The following terms appear frequently in pieces within the series:

• Freebord - In some places the right of claiming a certain quantity of land outside a park or forest. The land thus claimed is also referred to as Freebord.
• Wayleave - Permission to carry telephone wires over or along buildings, or to lay water pipes or drains across private land, and the charge or rent payable for the same.

For related plans and drawings, see WORK 34

• Department of the Environment, 1970-1997
• Ministry of Public Building and Works, Controller Generals Division, 1967-1970
• Ministry of Public Building and Works, Directorate General of Works, 1962-1967
• Ministry of Works and Buildings, Directorate of Works, 1940-1942
• Ministry of Works and Planning, Directorate of Works, 1942-1943
• Ministry of Works, Directorate General of Works, 1946-1962
• Ministry of Works, Directorate of Works, 1943-1945
• Office of Woods, Forests, Land Revenues, Works and Buildings, Works Department, 1832-1851
• Office of Works, 1378-1832
• Office of Works, 1851-1940
• Office of Works, Architects and Surveyors Division, 1902-1914
• Office of Works, Architects Division, 1914-1920
• Office of Works, Directorate of Works, 1920-1940
• Office of Works, Surveyors Division, 1901-1901
• Property Services Agency, Directorate of Civil Accommodation, 1976-1990

From 1937 Office of Works

Topics

Ancient Monuments and Historical Buildings

Communications

The Office of the King's Works and its successors were responsible for building and maintenance of royal palaces from the Middle Ages onwards, although surviving records of the Office of Works date only from the late seventeenth century, the majority being of nineteenth and twentieth century date. In 1989 maintenance of the five unoccupied royal palaces in London (the Tower of London, Hampton Court Palace, the state apartments at Kensington Palace, the Banqueting House, Whitehall, and Kew Palace with Queen Charlotte's Cottage) was taken over by the Historic Royal Palaces Agency.