Questions about The National Archives (United Kingdom)
Short answers, pulled from the story.
What records are kept at The National Archives UK?
The National Archives holds more than a thousand years of UK government records, including Domesday Book (1086), Magna Carta (1225), Shakespeare's last will (1616), and the signed abdication letter of Edward VIII (1936). The collection also covers court records from the twelfth century, military service papers, Foreign Office and Cabinet papers, and records for family historians. Among its most unusual items are the SOS telegram Jack Phillips sent as the Titanic sank in 1912 and the autographed confession of Guy Fawkes from 1605.
Where is The National Archives located in the UK?
The National Archives is based in Kew, in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, south-west London. Its main building was designed by John Cecil Clavering and opened by Queen Elizabeth II in 1977. A secondary storage facility called DeepStore is located in Winsford Rock Salt Mine in Winsford, Cheshire.
How can the public access records at The National Archives?
Admission to The National Archives is free, and a reader's ticket for handling original documents is also free. Anyone aged 16 or over can obtain a ticket by presenting two acceptable proofs of identity. Many records are available digitally through the archive's catalogue, Discovery, and through licensed partners Ancestry.com, Findmypast, and TheGenealogist, with a free monthly download quota introduced on the 22nd of April 2020.
What was The National Archives forgery scandal?
In June 2005, journalist Ben Fenton of The Daily Telegraph uncovered that twenty-nine documents at The National Archives had been forged. The fabrications were typed on four typewriters, spread across twelve files, and all cited in books by author Martin Allen. Forensic analysis by Audrey Giles, a former head of Scotland Yard's Questioned Documents Unit, confirmed they were fakes, and the Crown Prosecution Service declined to prosecute in 2007.
What are the burnt records at The National Archives?
The burnt records are the damaged survivors of more than six million British Army service papers from the First World War that were largely destroyed when incendiary bombs struck a War Office warehouse in London during the Second World War. The surviving, fire- and water-damaged documents were microfilmed with Heritage Lottery Fund support between 1996 and 2003, then digitised and released on the Ancestry website from 2008, catalogued as archive series WO 363.
How many files have gone missing from The National Archives?
Between 2005 and 2011, more than 1,500 files were reported missing from The National Archives, including correspondence from Winston Churchill. Around 800 were subsequently recovered, and the archive believed most were misplaced rather than permanently lost. By 2017, the annual loss rate had fallen to around 100 documents, representing approximately 0.01 percent of the institution's total holdings.