County record office

In the United Kingdom (and particularly in England and Wales) the term county record office usually refers to a local authority repository, also called a County Archives. Such repositories employ specialist staff to administer and conserve the historic and the semi-current records of the parent body. They usually also preserve written materials from a great variety of independent local organisations, churches and schools, prominent families and their estates, businesses, solicitors' offices and ordinary private individuals. Archives may have been acquired either through donation or (more generally) by deposit on long-term loan. Local authorities in certain larger cities sometimes administer their own separate city record office, operating along similar lines. Archive repositories are frequently – but by no means exclusively – used by local and family historians for the purposes of original research, since many records can very often have a continuing administrative or legal significance.

A record office will typically include public searchrooms (including reference books, archive catalogues and other finding aids), environmentally controlled strongrooms, administrative offices, and quite often small exhibition areas together with a conservation room for the specialist repair of documents. Searchrooms are generally open at their advertised times without charge, although many offices operate a reader's ticket system. Some of them, but not all, operate a fee-paying postal service for those who are unable to make personal research visits. All county record offices attempt to work in accordance with the appropriate official British Standard.

The earliest county record office in the modern sense was the Bedfordshire Record Office, established by George Herbert Fowler in 1913. To some extent it was operating within established traditions set by the London-based Public Record Office or National Archives, which first opened in 1838, or by other repositories overseas. Although the statutory operation of such county record offices under the Local Government (Records) Act 1962 was permissive rather than mandatory, the network has gradually expanded. Bristol Record Office (now Bristol Archives), opened in 1924, has been identified as the second local office to become established. The whole network now includes repositories – which operate largely independently of each other – throughout the whole of England and Wales (the most recent being Powys Archives, opened in the 1980s). Often the foundations of many of the earlier collections were the extensive surviving archives originating from a county's Quarter Sessions – in the county of Somerset a special muniment room had actually been provided for these as early as 1617.

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