Catalogue description Records of the Directorate General of Works, its predecessors and successors, relating to royal, government and public buildings and works in the United Kingdom and overseas

The principal areas of responsibility of the medieval and early modern King's Works were royal palaces and residences and royal castles and fortifications. Following the disruptions of the Civil War and Commonwealth periods, from the Restoration onwards the Office of Works resumed responsibilities for royal palaces and residences and their associated gardens, and began to deal with a range of major public buildings in London. Rebuilding and extensive repair work on royal palaces was carried out by the office under a parliamentary vote. The Office of Works also undertook the construction work required for state ceremonial occasions, such as royal funerals and coronations. In 1828 it was made responsible for the supply of furniture and fittings for official buildings, a function formerly performed by the Lord Chamberlain's Department.

Consolidation with the Office of Woods, Forests and Land Revenues in 1832 brought a significant new area within the remit of the Works Department. From that date, the Commissioners of Works took over responsibility for all royal parks and gardens; this they retained when the departments were again separated in 1852.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, the Office of Works gradually acquired responsibility for providing accommodation for all civil departments of government in Great Britain, and for embassy buildings abroad. Among the many buildings or types of buildings within the office's care were: the Houses of Parliament, the Royal Courts of Justice, Art and Science Buildings (including many of the major national museums), county courts, customs houses and coastguard buildings, post offices and telephone exchanges. The First World War brought a range of new tasks, including the construction of munitions factories and the post-war management of housing estates developed during the war for the Ministry of Munitions. The years before and during the Second World War likewise brought new responsibilities, including the construction of ordnance factories. The majority of such types of buildings and works, including those required for ceremonial occasions, remained with the Office of Works and its successors until the creation of the Department of the Environment in 1970, when they passed to the new department and, from 1972, to Property Services Agency, created within it.

By the nineteenth century, the period at which surviving records of the Office of Works become substantial in quantity, responsibility for works undertaken directly and oversight of major projects which were contracted out lay with the professional staff employed in the Office and its successors. There was a relatively low level of departmentalisation in the Office of Works in the late nineteenth century. The professional staff (architects, surveyors and engineers) worked to the Principal Surveyor (a title retained in line with the traditional designation of the First Commissioner of Works and his predecessors in the King's Works); the Surveyor's Department had emerged clearly by 1901. In 1902, in a move towards more modern professional terminology, the surveyor's title was changed to architect and surveyor, and the department renamed the Architect's and Surveyor's Department. From 1914, a larger structure was required, emerging first as the Architect's Division and then, in the major re-organisation after the end of the First World War, as the Directorate of Works. The Directorate endured through the remaining life of the Office of Works and its two immediate predecessors and was retained in the Ministry of Works until another large-scale post-war reorganisation in 1946, when it became the Directorate General of Works. This in turn outlasted the transition to the Ministry of Public Building and Works. In 1967 the Controller General's Division was formed, absorbing the various departments of the Directorate of Works. It survived until the creation of the Department of the Environment in 1970.