Catalogue description Office of Works and successors: Royal Palaces: Registered Files

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Details of WORK 19
Reference: WORK 19
Title: Office of Works and successors: Royal Palaces: Registered Files
Description:

This series contains papers relating to buildings, fittings, supply of services, repairs, purchases of property and land, regulations, rights, and estate management in connection with particular royal palaces, residences and associated buildings and estates, including some of the royal parks. The series also includes some general files concerning the ministry's responsibilities for and management of royal palaces.

Most of the files were registered in the AE series, but some earlier papers are in unregistered folders. Some files date from after the creation of the Department of the Environment and the Property Services Agency.

The following terms appear frequently in pieces within the series:

  • Freebord - In some places the right of claiming a certain quantity of land outside a park or forest. The land thus claimed is also referred to as Freebord.
  • Wayleave - Permission to carry telephone wires over or along buildings, or to lay water pipes or drains across private land, and the charge or rent payable for the same.
Date: 1689-1981
Related material:

For related plans and drawings, see WORK 34
Held by: The National Archives, Kew
Former reference in its original department: AE file series
Legal status: Public Record(s)
Language: English
Creator:

Department of the Environment, 1970-1997

Ministry of Public Building and Works, Controller Generals Division, 1967-1970

Ministry of Public Building and Works, Directorate General of Works, 1962-1967

Ministry of Works and Buildings, Directorate of Works, 1940-1942

Ministry of Works and Planning, Directorate of Works, 1942-1943

Ministry of Works, Directorate General of Works, 1946-1962

Ministry of Works, Directorate of Works, 1943-1945

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

Office of Works, 1378-1832

Office of Works, 1851-1940

Office of Works, Architects and Surveyors Division, 1902-1914

Office of Works, Architects Division, 1914-1920

Office of Works, Directorate of Works, 1920-1940

Office of Works, Surveyors Division, 1901-1901

Property Services Agency, Directorate of Civil Accommodation, 1976-1990
Physical description: 1385 file(s)
Access conditions: Open unless otherwise stated
Immediate source of acquisition:

From 1937 Office of Works
Accruals: Series is accruing
Administrative / biographical background:

The Office of the King's Works and its successors were responsible for building and maintenance of royal palaces from the Middle Ages onwards, although surviving records of the Office of Works date only from the late seventeenth century, the majority being of nineteenth and twentieth century date. In 1989 maintenance of the five unoccupied royal palaces in London (the Tower of London, Hampton Court Palace, the state apartments at Kensington Palace, the Banqueting House, Whitehall, and Kew Palace with Queen Charlotte's Cottage) was taken over by the Historic Royal Palaces Agency.

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