December closures

Posted on 8 November 2017

If you’re planning on visiting us across November, December and the festive season, please be aware of the following closures.

On the morning of 21 November the main searchroom will be closed for a general staff meeting.

The searchroom will be closed until 14:00 and we will be unable to produce original documents again until normal service resumes at this time. During this time the microform room will be open, as usual, on a self-service basis.

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 22 December and then re-open at 9:15am on Tuesday 2nd January. Additionally, many of our Parish registers, Bishops’ Transcripts and Marriage Bonds and Allegations are available via Find My Past; and our Cause Papers, Archbishops' Registers, and Retreat hospital archive are available, for free, 24/7 online too.

We will also be holding our annual collections development week on from the 12th to the 15th 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.