Catalogue description Office of Works and successors: Miscellanea

This series contains volumes and papers relating to a wide range of services of the Office of Works and its successors. The bulk of the material is earlier than 1900. Papers include entry books of warrants, 1668 to 1831, of patents, 1715 to 1811, and of memorials, 1702 to 1815, and correspondence, accounts, entry books, warrants, etc, relating to rules for the maintenance of government offices and houses; furniture and accommodation in public buildings; work on royal palaces, royal gardens, monuments and memorials, churches and chapels, military establishments, prisons, the Menai and Conway bridges and Holyhead roads, Westminster and Chelsea bridges, the Thames Embankment and Metropolitan, Pimlico and Westminster improvements.

A few files date from from later than 1900. They relate to the maintenance of government offices and official residences, Thames flooding, former housing schemes of the Ministry of Munitions and of local authorities, the provision of flax factories for the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries and the national shipyard at Chepstow for the Ministry of Shipping during the War of 1914 to 1918, and the maintenance of a central register of accommodation suitable for government offices during the Second World War.

The series also contains minutes, accounts and other papers of the following commissions, committees and boards: Brompton Cemetery Company, 1837 to 1854; Commissioners of Roads, 1815 to 1884; Gordon Riots Board of Inquiry, 1780 to 1781; Horse Guards Committee, 1750 to 1760; Metropolitan Improvement Commissioners, 1831 to 1844; and Westminster Bridge Commissioners and Committees, 1736 to 1853.

Among other records in the series are copies of The Rumourist, an Office of Works Magazine and Diary, 1896 to 1897.

Plans and drawings relating to some of the buildings and structures covered by this series are in WORK 38

Ministry of Works, 1943-1962

Ministry of Works and Buildings, 1940-1942

Ministry of Works and Planning, 1942-1943

Office of Woods, Forests, Land Revenues, Works and Buildings, Works Department, 1832-1851

Office of Works, 1378-1832

Office of Works, 1851-1940