Mind Your Manors – the records of the Manor of Duffield Fee

Manorial courts are one of the earliest forms of local government, as the Lord or Lady of the Manor had jurisdiction over their lands and tenants. Manorial records hold information about transfer of land between tenants, about manorial customs (rules), local peacekeeping and society in general.  The Duffield Fee manor archive originally came into Derbyshire …

An A to Z of Derbyshire manors – now on our website

There is now a Guide to Derbyshire Manors which you can find on our catalogue. Not my work, I hasten to add, but the fruit of the labours of Neil, erstwhile Manorial Documents Register (MDR) Project Officer, and volunteers.  The various authority files that Neil developed have been entered into our cataloguing system, so that …

Manorial Documents Register Launch

Last Thursday (16 April) we held an event to launch the Derbyshire section of the Manorial Documents Register (MDR). This was the culmination of the process which the Derbyshire Record Office, with the help of its partner organisation, The National Archives, started over two years ago to revise and update the Derbyshire entries on the …

Manorial Records talk update

A number of people have indicated that they were be able to attend the talk on Wednesday 9th July but have expressed an interest in obtaining notes about it. I am hoping that I will be able to put an edited version of the talk on our website, possibly with images of some of the …

Talk on Manorial Records 9 July

I am currently working on preparations for a talk I shall be giving at the Derbyshire Record Office on Manorial Records on the morning of Wednesday 9th July at 11 o'clock. The talk (which should last about an hour) will start with an outline of the history and development of manors, explaining what they actually …

Manorial Documents Exhibition

As Neil mentioned in his post from earlier today, our exhibition on Manorial Documents is now up and running in our reception area.  As with all our exhibitions it's free, so do pop in and have a look - it will be on until Saturday 12 July 2014.    

A Week in the Life of a Manorial Documents Register Project Officer

Recently, I was asked by a member of the public about the work I actually do. Hopefully, I was able to explain it enough satisfactorily enough to him! It did occur to me that it might actually be worthwhile to let more people know, so I thought I would just give a flavour of what happened last …

Lost and found

One of the most satisfying things about being an archivist is the opportunity it gives you to bring to light new documents which people will have the opportunity to look at in the future. It is doubly satisfying, therefore, to find documents which were once thought to be lost and can now be seen again. …

Bond villein?

My previous blogs have talked very much about the lords and ladies of the manor, so it now seems like a good time to talk about some of the other people in the manor.  I have been trying to think of an appropriate metaphor, and the famous sketch from the Frost Report in the 1960s …

Let’s have some Downton time

Well, it's that time of the year when the nights grow longer and darker, the leaves start to fall from the trees in their mellow fruitful way, and Downton Abbey returns to lighten up our television screens. Its parade of improbable lords, ladies and members of the lower orders has set out on its merry …