Hampshire Record Office is working hard and imaginatively to address cataloguing backlogs. You’ll remember HAT awarded funding to catalogue all the Women’s Institute material HRO held, which was completed last year. Now a new project ‘ Away through the Forest – opening up New Forest archives’ in partnership with New Forest Heritage Centre, has been developed to catalogue uncatalogued New Forest collections in order to give access to as wide a range of sources for the area as possible.
The records are contained in some 80 standard boxes, 18 volume boxes, 68 volumes, 6 rolls and 4 portfolios. They were deposited in a number of separate accessions between 2004 and 2020, but because of their bulk and increasingly limited HRO resources could not be catalogued at the time of receipt.
The records that have been selected for cataloguing represent a mixture of collections and dates and include solicitors’ papers, a major family/estate collection, parish and non-conformist records, and business and district council records. They encompass over 400 years dating from the early 17th century to 2018.
HAT has awarded £9700 to make this project happen, and it will be fascinating to see the information that emerges. Due to lockdown, it is unlikely this project can get underway until at least May 2021
Don’t press too quickly to see it as cataloguing is not expected to be completed until March 2022
Images from material catalogues will be shared when available.