THE RELOCATION OF MANCHESTER ARCHIVES

Manchester Archives are now taking bookings. Opening hours will be as those for GMCRO. The office is located at 56 Marshall Street, New Cross, Manchester. Marshall Street is between Rochdale Road and Oldham Road and be accessed quite easily from the Shudehill Metrolink stop.

It is essential to book a place in advance and it will also be necessary to book collections stored on site two working days in advance. Two weeks' notice (see below) will be required for archive material which is in deep store. The details required are: your name; the day and time of your visit; telephone number; details of documents you wish to view with as much information as possible (you can check the online catalogue for details) and whether or not you require laptop access. Please note that it is essential to have a CARN readers' ticket. This can be applied for at GMCRO so long as you have a drivers licence with a picture and/or a utility bill with your address on it.

Marshall Street will house the most regularly used and important archive collections from the two service, including church, court and hospital records. Also available will be the Manchester City Council and Committee minutes and the Local Studies Broadside collection. No Manchester Local Studies microfilms or digital sources will be available at Marshall Street. Some items that were previously kept at Marshall Street will be housed at Elliot House (see below).

Opening Hours

Monday 9 am to 5 pm

Tuesday 9 am to 5 pm

Wednesday Closed

Thursday 9 am to 5 pm

Friday 9 am to 5 pm

Saturday (second and fourth of the month only) 9 am to 12 noon; 1 pm to 4 pm.

Manchester Archive email address is: archiveslocalstudies@manchester.gov.uk

The new archive reading room is a lot smaller than the previous one at Marshall Street. It is very compact and slightly strange as the windows are blocked from the outside making viewing the street difficult, however there were no great problems that would effect researching. Obviously it is essential to book material two days in advance, so a careful check of the catalogue and/or a phone call to the office is highly recommended. This is certainly a great improvement on the old archive reading room at Central Library. It appears that articles will be withdrawn from the deep store every second Wednesday. Orders will need to placed at least two days before any pick up.

THE MANCHESTER ROOM@CITY LIBRARY (LOCAL STUDIES)

The Local Studies Unit is located in the City Library at Elliot House, 151 Deansgate (at the junction of Lloyd Street ), Manchester. A wide range of Local Studies and microfilm/microfiche sources will be available on demand. Not all of the readers have been transferred from Central Library, so a system has been created for booking based on two hour slots throughout the day i.e. 9am to 11am, 11am to 1pm and so on. It has been decided that they will only allow a maximum of two sessions to any person per day, however there will be no limit on the machines that are not booked. I have booked by using the email address above or you could try phoning (0161) 234 1979.

Available material will include: a very large collection of parish records on microfilm including the Collegiate and Parish Church of Manchester (later the Cathedral) and many more from outside the Manchester area; Manchester Newspapers; GRO Index of Births Marriage and Deaths on microfiche; Census returns; Election rolls/registers; Cemetery registers; Withington and New Bridge Street workhouse records; pre 1900 Poor Law Rate Books; National Probate Index; a large collection of lending and reference books and maps. There are also electronic resources available such as the local images collection, Ancestry and CD-ROMs.

Obviously there is not space for the full Local Studies collection to be stored at Elliot House and some material has been stored off site. Items such as the Miscellaneous Collections, non digitised images, maps or newspapers not specifically covering the City of Manchester.

Opening Hours: Monday to Thursday 9am to 8pm, Friday and Saturday 9am to 5pm.

The new location is breathtakingly refreshing compared to the interior of Central Library. Clean, bright, airy, carpeted, fairly comfortable chairs and everything that wasn't Central Library, including a sprung floor. Most of the microfilms that were available are on hand, together with the local Manchester newspapers and the "imports" from GMCRO. The Manchester Guardian is available online. There are a total of 18 microfilm/fiche readers, some that read both and some that are only suitable for either film or fiche. Three of the microfilm readers that project an image from above have been transferred from Central Library. The computer facilities have been greatly improved...more and slightly newer than previously. My first impressions are very favourable.

THE STORY BEHIND THE MOVE

FOR many years it has been planned to bring the Greater Manchester County Record Office and Manchester Archives and Local Studies together under one roof. A previous plan, the Mackie Mayor Project was shelved due to the fact that no Lottery Heritage Fund money was forthcoming. The following announcement has been made.

Plans for a major refurbishment of Manchester's town hall complex, improving services to the public and investing in key civic buildings and spaces, have been given the go-ahead.

Manchester City Council's top-level Executive approved proposals for a project lasting up to five years. At its heart are the goals of maintaining the historic complex for future generations while enabling the buildings to deliver state-of-the-art services.

The Town Hall Extension, Central Library and St Peter's Square will all benefit from the programme, scheduled to start this year and run until 2014. It is estimated the work will cost up to �65 million which will be partly offset by other savings.

One important aspect of the plans is the creation of a new Customer Service Centre on the ground floor of the Town Hall Extension. This would bring together a number of key services in a welcoming environment and enable visitors to resolve different enquiries in a single visit. For example a resident could pay their Council Tax, check out their housing benefit entitlement and borrow a book from a new family and community library.

The new family and community library, which it is proposed to call City Library, will also be created on the ground floor alongside the Town Hall Extension. This follows the success of similar community libraries elsewhere in the city, for example North City Library in Harpurhey, which combine library facilities with other council services.

The refurbishment will create more desk spaces in the Town Hall Extension as office space is used more effectively, enabling the Council to vacate office space elsewhere in the city.

The Grade II*-listed Central Library will be sympathetically restored to increase access to the City's library collection and offer more than the traditional range of library services provided in the current building.

The Archive Reading Room will bring together Greater Manchester County Records Office, Manchester Archives and Local Studies and other partners to provide improved public access to Manchester's rich archive heritage.

Other planned elements include a 'Mediatheque' facility from the British Film Institute and the collections of the North West Film Archive. This will be a series of state-of-the-art spaces, including a cinema and ICT suite, where residents will be able to browse and view a range of Manchester-related films and television programmes.

The Library Theatre, currently in the basement of the Central Library, has outgrown its present home and needs to relocate to update its facilities, increase its audience capacity and expand its educational work. An options appraisal, looking at potential new homes, is currently being carried out and its findings will be reported to the Executive in April.

This was released on 1st May 2009:

Manchester Central Library, one of the city's best-loved buildings and the third busiest library in the UK will be sympathetically restored as part of a wider programme of upgrades to the Town Hall complex, improving services and investing in key civic buildings and spaces.

The refurbished library, due to open in 2013, will also feature a new Archive Centre of Excellence to celebrate and showcase Manchester's rich heritage bringing together the collections of a number of archives from across Greater Manchester along with the North West Film Archive and the British Film Institute Mediatheque.

Picture copyright: Gerard Lodge

For quite some time it has been possible to search the Manchester Council Burials Site at the following link:

http://www.burialrecords.manchester.gov.uk/

It has always been possible to search the index free of charge. Very recently (and very quietly) the facility to search the complete site free of charge has been made available at Manchester Central Library. Anyone wishing to search the site free of charge should go to the Local Studies Unit and ask a member of staff about the availability of this service. When the move takes place the service will be available at Elliot House.

Just in case anyone is wondering why the move will take so long take a look at this link. This video does not show the thousands of books that are on view to the public...so this relocation is a big task.

This site is CONSTANTLY being updated. In order to keep track of these updates just click on the Google button . This will add this site to your Google home page or Google Reader.

CONTACT MFHR AT:

mail@manchester-family-history-research.co.uk

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Last update: 12th July 2010