Reference
BS
Title
British Records Society, then British Records Association deposits
Date free text
1150 - 1900
Production date
From: 1150 To: 1900
Admin/biog history
The British Record Society was founded in 1889 largely to take over responsibility for the Index Library, which had begun life the previous year as a private scheme for the publication of indexes to British public records. The Society was also always interested in record conservation, and to act as what would now be called a pressure group for archives and their users.
In the 1920s the Society became more actively involved in records preservation; in 1929 it hired premises for sorting documents and sending them to local record offices. However, in 1933, this side of the Society's work was handed over to the newly-formed British Records Association (BRA).
Bedfordshire Record Office used the BS fonds for those records deposited by the British Records Society (BS1-146) and continued to use it for records deposited by the BRA.
Archival history
The BRS and the BRA gathered documents from various sources, often solicitors, and then distributed them to the relevant county record office or other appropriate body. Therefore each accession has a different source and comes to Bedfordshire & Luton Archives Service via the BRS or BRA. The collection as a whole is therefore incoherent and has little structure to make it more so. The early deposits are predominately deeds.
Level of description
fonds
Persons/institution keyword
Keywords