Catalogue description Public Record Office: Maps, Plans and Photographs of the Kew Site

The Public Record Office, Ruskin Avenue, Kew, is built on a site which was previously occupied by temporary buildings erected during the war of 1914-1918 for the Ministry of Labour Claims and Records Office, and subsequently used by various other government departments.

The decision to locate the new building on the Kew site was announced by the Lord Chancellor on 5 November 1969. It was designed by the Property Services Agency with superintending architects J C Clavering, H J M McMaster and G O Miller. Work began on site in May 1973 and the building was eventually opened to the public in October 1977.

From 1993 the site at Kew was extended with the construction of a new building, to consolidate records and services on one site. Building started in March 1993 and was completed in December 1995, with an official topping out ceremony to mark completion of the building's main structure conducted on 17 June 1994. The building contractors were Kyle Stewart. This was followed by the refurbishment of the 1970s building and the transferrence of all of the original records held at the office's Chancery Lane site, which was completed on 20 December 1996. The new building at Kew contained 12 new repositories with an additional 74 kms of records storage.