Land and buildings
From Domesday in the 11th century to the National Farm Survey of the 1940s, for centuries government has recorded how our built environment and use of land has changed. Meanwhile, artwork and photography have captured changing architectural tastes.
Land and buildings highlights in pictures
Records revealed
List of animals held in the ‘Bear Garden’ in Elizabethan Southwark
This deed reveals some of the animals kept to perform on the Tudor stage or in arenas. It includes ‘an old she bear called Nan’, some bulls, a horse and an ape.
A letter from the most powerful woman in Tudor England: Margaret Beaufort
How did the founder of the Tudor dynasty reach and use her position of power?
Sir Henry Cole’s rat
Our collection includes many weird and wonderful records – one of the weirdest is undoubtedly a small box containing the remains of two long-dead rats.
Stories from the collection
The story of Ravenser Odd
Read about Ravenser Odd
Ravenser Odd was a short-lived island in the mouth of the River Humber. It rose from the sea in the early 13th century and had sunk beneath the waves by 1360.
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The Caravan Club
The police raid on a secret queer nightclub in 1933 gives an insight into the lives of gay men in interwar London and their defiance in the face of persecution.