Derbyshire Record Office is part of Derbyshire County Council, and is based in Matlock. We look after the archives of Derbyshire County Council, Derby City Council and the Anglican Diocese of Derby – but we have lot more besides. You can find out more about what we have got and how you can get to use it on our website. On this blog, you can:
- Read about forthcoming workshops, talks, children’s activities and exhibitions on the Events page.
- See the 50 Treasures which we began selecting to celebrate our fiftieth year, in 2012.
- Find out about what’s currently on display in our rather magnificent Vitrine Wall, which divides the reception area and the archives search room, by checking the What’s in the Wall? page.
- Read some of our posts relating to the First World War. If you are involved in commemorations in your area, you should also have a look at the Derbyshire Lives through the First World War blog.
Derbyshire Record Office 
Hi, I saw a blog page ’30 Years ago this week in the Derbyshire Times’ by Emma Webster, it was about a week in 1986. Do you have posts about every week (thirty years ago) in the Derbyshire Times? I was trying to find a link or list but couldn’t track down any other dates or editions.
Hi Carl, no I’m afraid we don’t have a regular series of posts like this one of Emma’s from 2016. Occasionally, there are similar posts, and we also occasionally use the #OnThisDay hashtag via our Twitter account @FranklinArchive (https://twitter.com/FranklinArchive).
If you are interested in the content from the Derbyshire Times for a particular week, you can search the title (and thousands of others) via the British Library’s Newspaper Archive, http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk. Alternatively, if you have a subscription to Find My Past, http://www.findmypast.co.uk, you can use this site too. Both sites do require a subscription, but if you live in Derbyshire, you can book a computer your local library to access the sites free of charge. If it is specifically 1986 you are looking for, I don’t believe that year is available yet online – unfortunately, the site seems to be down at the moment so I can’t double check. For most Derbyshire titles that are not online you can book an appointment at the record office to browse the copies on microfilm.
Hi Becky, many thanks for your prompt reply. I’ll definitely look into boths links you mentioned. Best, C
Is there any opportunity to research records of the Chatsworth estate? My family lived in Edensor, Pilsley, Rowsley, Beeley and Baslow and presumably were educated and worked on the estate. Are there school records or employment records for the estate online? Apart from church records, graves and census returns are there any other routes I can follow? Have come to a grinding halt, which is frustrating. Thanks.
Hilary Radford (nee Bowring)
Hello Hilary – Records of the Devonshire estates are owned and managed by the estate itself. For details, see https://www.chatsworth.org/art-archives/access-the-collection/archives-and-works-of-art/. A large proportion of the school records we hold can now be found on http://www.findmypast.co.uk – schools covered include Beeley Church of England School, which is not far from Chatsworth. For more about the school registers, see my blog post about Steve Bloomer.
I’m on the hunt for old photographs of people and places from Matlock and surrounding area. Would you have any that we could feature in the Matlock Mercury or be able to put me in touch with anyone who could help? I have been in contact with Picture The Past.
Hi Gay, we put our old photographs onto http://www.picturethepast.org.uk but of course not everything is yet digitised and online. If you can’t find what you want on the Picture the Past website, then it’s possible that we may have what you’re looking for in our collections. I’m afraid it can sometimes be hard to find photographs in our archive collections as they haven’t all been listed individually as the photos of Picture the Past have been. You can have a look at our archive catalogue at http://calmview.derbyshire.gov.uk/calmview/ to see if there’s anything you’re interested in. There are also more local studies photos here that haven’t gone onto Picture the Past. There is a card index for those, so it’s best to come to the Record Office to have a look through that. I hope this helps!