Christmas break and December closures

Posted on 21 November 2016

Our main searchroom will be closed across several days in December and during the Christmas break.

If you’re planning on visiting us over the festive season, our microfilm resources will be available every day over Christmas barring Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year's’ Day. The microfilm room will close at 4:00pm on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve.

Our searchroom will be open for you to consult our original documents until 4:45pm on Friday 23rd December and then re-open at 9:15am on Tuesday 3rd January. Additionally, many of our Parish registers, Bishops’ Transcripts and Marriage Bonds and Allegations are available via Find My Past; and our Cause Papers and Archbishops' Registers are available, for free, 24/7 online too.

We will also be holding our annual collections development week on from the 12th to the 16th December. This is an opportunity for staff in the archives to carry out some essential tasks which enable the smooth running of the searchroom when we are open and to allow us to undertake in-depth work on archives in our care.

In order to reduce potential disruption to our service, we schedule this in the run up to Christmas when we typically have less visitors to the archives. Although our searchroom and reception will be closed, our microfilm resources will be available as usual.

Our response to enquiries might be slightly slower than usual during our Collections Development Week and we will be unable to answer any enquiries over the Christmas break.