News from Bath Record Office
Report on Collections Weeks, October - December 2012
We have catalogued one major collection:
BGB Records of the Board of Guardians of Bath Poor
Law Union.
This is a large and important collection – the Board of
Guardians were responsible not only for the care of the poor (often
in the workhouse) but also for matters such as vaccination and
rating assessment of the whole population. The collection –
19 boxes and over 525 volumes – has now for the first time been
properly catalogued, opening up its full potential to users such as
family and local historians, as well as academic researchers.
The catalogue is available in printed format in the search room,
and on our online catalogue.
We have also worked on a draft catalogue:
0102 Papers of Titley, Long and Co., Solicitors, of
Bath.
This is another large collection (35 boxes), containing the
papers of the clients of a long-established firm of Bath
solicitors. With some of the material dating back to the
sixteenth century, and vast quantities relating to the nineteenth
century, it contains much of significance to the history of
Bath. A draft list of the papers was prepared many years ago,
but was very difficult to link to the papers themselves.
Extensive work has now been carried out to improve the draft list
and make the collection more available to researchers. We can
now easily locate all the items in the
catalogue. Unfortunately, because of the size and complexity
of the collection, a lot more work is needed before it can be
catalogued fully and made available on our online catalogue, but in
the meantime the draft printed and electronic catalogues are
available on request in the search room.
And we have added new files to the ‘Mayors’ Business’
series
This series contains records relating to the work of the Mayor
of Bath. It dates from the 1930s to the present day and new
additions are received regularly. A full list is available on
request.
We would like to thank all our users for their continued
support.