Estate Maps at Derbyshire Record Office

A guide to privately produced maps and how to find them Estate maps is the generic term for manuscript maps produced for individual landowners to  document their property.  Examples in the record office date from the 16th to the 20th centuries, may be on paper or parchment, and may vary in size from small sketch …

The Sudbury Hall estate records

Now that the catalogue of the Miller Mundy family archive is online, my next lockdown project is the archive of the Vernon family of Sudbury Hall (reference number D410). The collection consists of around 70 boxes, of which 41 have been box listed, and it's these 41 boxes which are gradually making their way onto …

Archives at the Abbey: 1 (un)stately home, 4 boxes, 8 hours, 600 visitors (well almost)

It was the busiest weekend I think we have ever had for staff from the record office, you have already heard about how we popped up at the Wirksworth Festival, which sounded amazing. I couldn't make it along myself as I went along to Calke Abbey, home of the Harpur-Crewe family, with a small selection …

To keep or not to keep – that is the question

One of the key professional responsibilities of the archivist is to decide which records to select for permanent preservation and which to dispose of. In fact, you could argue that the role of the archivist is not one of preservation but of “destruction” (though I’m not sure we would quite argue that). Here at Derbyshire Record …