Essex Record Office Explained

The Essex Record Office is the repository for records about the county of Essex in England. The office is run by Essex County Council.^[1] A searchable database of the records held at the office is available on a system called Seax.^[2]

The Record Office was previously held within County Hall, Chelmsford, before being transferred to a specially built premises on Wharf Road beside River Chelmer.^[3] 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. 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,^[4] 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.

External links

• Essex Record Office
• Essex Record Office blog

Notes and References

1. http://www.essex.gov.uk/libraries-archives/record-office/pages/record-office.aspx The Essex Record Office.
2. http://www.essex.gov.uk/Libraries-Archives/Record-Office/Pages/Using-Seax.aspx Using Seax.
3. Web site: Essex Record Office: Visit Us .
4. 1997 . The New Record Office . Essex Journal . 32 . 1 . 5-7.