In December, the Record Office closed for a week to undertake some essential collections work. Here are a few highlights from the week…

District Council Minutes

Local Government Reorganisation of April 2023 led to the creation of North Yorkshire Council, which replaced North Yorkshire County Council and the former district councils of Craven, Hambleton, Harrogate, Richmondshire, Ryedale, Scarborough and Selby.

Since the new council was created, the Record Office has received over 300 volumes or bundles of minutes from the seven former district councils. Collections Week provided the opportunity to arrange and list these newly deposited minutes, integrating them with previous deposits of district council records.

These council minutes provide an official record of several thousand council meetings making tens of thousands of decisions affecting the day-to-day life of people in North Yorkshire between 1974 and 2023. These records now form part of the vast collection of records of local administration held by the Record Office which dates from the early 17^th century which are preserved and made available for researchers now and into the future.

Edmundson and Gowland, solicitors of Masham, collection ZDY

During Collections Week work was undertaken on Edmundson and Gowland, solicitors of Masham, collection [ZDY]. This is a large collection including records of the solicitor’s clients, with extensive records for property ownership, legal cases, and other issues for local families. The collection also includes records of Edmundson and Gowland acting in official roles, which have until now been inaccessible.

During Collections Week a large quantity of boxes were sorted into sections to make a structured collection catalogue. Once this was complete, listing of individual sections was continued. As a result, every section of the collection now has at least a summary description allowing us to better understand the collection as a whole. The ‘collection browser’ for the collection can be found at ZDY Collection browser. You can explore the list by expanding the + beside each section and you can click on each entry for further details.

The collection includes the following series, which are now fully listed on our online catalogue:

• ZDY 1: a series of title deeds
• ZDY 4: 266 letter books and files
• ZDY 6: a series of financial records of the company
• ZDY 8: a series of maps and plans

The collection includes a large series of case files of clients, and we currently have a volunteer project to improve access to these records. There are also case files for major clients (consisting of one or more boxes per client) and each now has a summary listing on our online catalogue.

There is also a section of records of Edmundson and Gowland acting in official roles [ZDY 5], including records of them acting as Registrar of Masham Peculiar. Another highlight is the papers of the Manor of the Late Prebend of Masham, including two Manor Court Books covering 1782-1940 which record transfers of copyhold property, with admittances and surrenders.

Further work will be undertaken on the client files as part of the on-going volunteer project and further descriptions will be added to the online catalogue as they are completed.

Coroner’s Inquest files

Here at the Record Office, we hold Inquest files for North Yorkshire. These files are not accessible to the public until they reach 75 years old. The Inquest files that are available to view are listed on our online catalogue and can be browsed using the collection browser available here: Coroners’ Records collection browser or you can search by name in the online catalogue.

During Collections Week, we sorted over 40 boxes of Inquest files from the former West Riding of Yorkshire covering the districts of Bishopthorpe (including Harrogate, Knaresborough, Tadcaster, Wetherby and surrounding places), and Ripon Liberty (including Ripon, Pateley Bridge and surrounding area) dated 1950-1965. Although not yet accessible to the public, sorting these records allows us to get a better understanding of what we hold and improve our collections information.

Board of Guardians records

We hold records created by the Board of Guardians responsible for poor relief and the workhouses in North Yorkshire. During Collections Week, we undertook a survey of the records in this collection to get a better understanding of the number of large, heavy volumes that we are planning to repackage to make them easier to manage.