The Essex Record Office is the repository for records about the county of

Essex Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and Grea ...

in England. The office is run by

Essex County Council Essex County Council is the county council that governs the non-metropolitan county of Essex in England. It has 75 councillors, elected from 70 divisions, and is currently controlled by the Conservative Party. The council meets at County Hall ...

. A searchable database of the records held at the office is available on a system called Seax. The Record Office was previously held within

County Hall, Chelmsford Essex County Hall is a municipal building in Market Road, Chelmsford, Essex: it is the headquarters of Essex County Council. Blocks C and D are Grade II listed buildings. History Following the implementation of the Local Government Act 1888, w ...

, before being transferred to a specially built premises on Wharf Road beside

River Chelmer The River Chelmer is a river that flows entirely through the county of Essex, England, running from the northwest of the county through Chelmsford to the River Blackwater near Maldon. Course The source of the river is in the parish of Debden i ...

. Since 2015 the Record Office has produced duplicate birth, marriage, and death certificates for the registration district of Essex.

History

The Essex Record Office was founded in 1938 by Essex County Council, with F.G. Emmison appointed as the first County Archivist. The initial collection of muniments in 1939 included Court Rolls, Parish Records, Deeds, and

Charters A charter is the grant of authority or rights, stating that the granter formally recognizes the prerogative of the recipient to exercise the rights specified. It is implicit that the granter retains superiority (or sovereignty), and that the rec ...

. On account of sparse storage space by 1997, plans were made by Essex County Council for a new Record Office facility, to accommodate increasing numbers of document accessions, whilst also being equipped with a purpose built sound archive, conservation studio, lecture theatre, and seminar spaces.

Selected publications

*Brown, Arthur Frederick James. (1982) ''Chartism in Essex and Suffolk''. *Brown, Arthur Frederick James. (1990) ''Meagre Harvest: The Essex Farm Workers' Struggle Against Poverty, 1750-1914''. *Brown, Arthur Frederick James. (1996) ''Prosperity and Poverty: Rural Essex, 1700-1815''. *Fisher, John. (2003) ''A Medieval Farming Glossary of Latin and English Words''. *Briggs, Nancy R. (1991) ''John Johnson, 1732-1814: Georgian Architect and County Surveyor of Essex'', * Ward, Jennifer C. (1991) ''The Essex Gentry and the County Community in the Fourteenth Century''. (Studies in Essex History) *Grieve, Hilda. (1954) ''Examples of English Handwriting 1150-1750''. *Benham, Hervey. (1993) ''Essex Gold: Fortunes of the Essex Oysterman''. *Phillips, Andrew. (1998) ''Ten Men and Colchester''. *Hunter, John. (1999) ''The Essex Landscape: A Study of Its Form and History''. *Lidell, Sue and Bill. (1996) ''Imagined Land: Essex in poetry and prose''. *Spalding, Fred & Jarvis, Stan. (1996) ''The World of Fred Spalding: Photographs of Essex 1860-1940''. *Smith, J.R. (1987) ''The Speckled Monster: Smallpox in England, 1670-1970, with particular reference to Essex.'' *Smith, J.R. (1992) ''Pilgrims & Adventurers: Essex (England) and the making of the United States of America''. *Benham, Hervey. (1986) ''The Smugglers' Century: The Story of smuggling on the Essex Coast, 1730-1830''. *Rusiecki, Paul. (2008) ''The Impact of Catastrophe: The people of Essex and the First World War (1914-1920)'' *Hussey, Stephen (2000) ''Headline History: One hundred years of Essex history from the pages of the Essex Chronicle newspaper''.

References

External links

Essex Record Office

Essex Record Office blog
History of Essex Essex County Council County record offices in England {{England-hist-stub