Electoral Registers

A guide to the collections at Derbyshire Record Office. First produced in 1832, electoral registers are a record of all those persons entitled to vote at parliamentary, local and parochial elections. They are a useful tool for family historians looking for the addresses of their ancestors, for house historians looking to see previous occupiers of …

Building History – Getting Started

An introductory guide to the sources available for researching property in Derbyshire There are a large number of different sources available for researching the history of Derbyshire buildings, but the survival and availability of sources varies significantly between different places. Most records do not relate to specific properties and it is very rare to be …

Discovering Ilkeston

Yesterday morning I visited Ilkeston Library to deliver a new workshop  introducing people to the various sources available for researching the history a Derbyshire building. It was a quiet session, with only two in attendance - though one had travelled all the way from Aston on Trent which took me quite by surprise! With the …

Conservation UPDATE – Absent Voters Lists

We are pleased to announce the 1918 Absent Voters Lists have now been cleaned and digitised! Here's how we did it... The Chesterfield Division Absent Voters List was in particularly bad condition. First we had to take the whole thing apart, so that we could clean and digitise it safely, and prepare it for repairs. The pages …

Conservation of WWI electoral rolls

With the anniversary of the start of World War I upon us, like many heritage institutions around the country, the Conservation Team at Derbyshire Record Office have been working to preserve and conserve documents from the first world war era. Particular priority has been given to those documents which will be used the most by …