Dr Adrian Gregson, County and Diocesan Archivist, writes: Our collection of Worcestershire wills and other probate documents relating to the Bishop of Worcester’s Consistory Court and subsequently Worcester Probate Registry is heavily used by researchers. They may be family historians, architectural historians, people interested in their local village, or the pattern of trades, population trends and a host of other topic areas. We hold over 1,000 boxes of them dating from 1493-1925.
Unfortunately, a large number of the 17th-century documents were too fragile to produce and, in a county whose population burgeoned in the 16th and 17th centuries and was at the heart of the Civil Wars as well as developing industries, the lack of access to this material has hampered research.
We were therefore very pleased that NMCT generously awarded a second grant to support their conservation and preservation, allowing a further 15 boxes to be dealt with, adding to the original assistance from NMCT in 2020, which allowed some 2,600 documents to be conserved. We will now be able to provide access to documents from 1622 which will represent an additional 4,500 (approx.) individual wills since we began the Project.
The collection is becoming increasingly popular with researchers. In 2015 approximately 4% of all original material issued in the searchroom were from the wills collection, increasing to 6% in 2018 and 10% of all original material issued in 2022-2023.
The principal benefit of this project has been to make a further range of years of probate records open to study by family, local and economic historians. Around 1500 wills, inventories and other documents have been repaired, covering 1617-1623. As well as being available for research, the records are in a fit state should a customer be interested in copies, and additionally they are now suitable for a full-scale digitisation programme, should that be contemplated in the future.
