Award

Inclosure Awards - use award book where available.

1740-1900

From: 1740 To: 1900

Inclosure Awards may still be attached to their maps however many were removed in the 1970s therefore maps and awards are generally ordered separately.

Award books are the enrolled copies of awards made by the Clerk of the Peace. The individual awards within these books were given references (probably between 1914 and 1924). The reference prefix A standing for Award and then numbered 1-79 in the order they appeared in the books. As original awards began to be received by the record office these were added to the A sequence. Therefore A9 - the enrolled ward for Dunton - became A9/1 and the deposited original parish copy became A9/2. However, in respect for their provenance some of these awards were also given references relating to their ownership, usually, but not always, parish P references. This numbering system was not consistantly followed and it is not known when it ceased but at some point it seems to have been decided that additional awards would only be given references that reflected their provenance e.g. P60/26/1 for Kempston's parish copy of the award. This can be very confusing. To add to this confusion the record office then gave another deposited collection the prefix A and therefore for the online catalogue it was necessary to change the reference of the awards to the Award prefix in order to avoid clashes between the two collections. With all this in mind, the office created a conspectus that shows the best reference to use for each parish with additional notes on related copies and collections. Please use the conspectus (available in the searchroom and on the website) to determine what references to use to order the documents to see but use the Award prefix rather than just an A.

Users will generally be asked to use the clerk of the peace's enrolled copy where one exists as these are easier to produce and read.

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