Records of the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (England)
Reference: | AE |
Title: | Records of the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (England) |
Description: | |
Date: | 1908-1991 |
Separated material: | Many of the commission's records were destroyed by a fire at Cambridge in 1945. |
Held by: | |
Legal status: | Public Record(s) |
Language: | English |
Creator: | Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England, 1908- |
Physical description: | 4 series |
Access conditions: | Subject to 30 year closure unless otherwise stated |
Publication note: | The Stationery Office has published a number of the commission's inventories and reports. |
Administrative / biographical background: | The commission was established by royal warrant in August 1908, at the same time as similar bodies for Scotland and Wales, to make an inventory of all buildings, earthworks and stone constructions in England up to 1714. A new royal warrant of 1943 abolished the date limit, and the commission set itself a limit of 1850 with discretion to record later buildings of outstanding significance. It is a recording body which may recommend the preservation of particular buildings but has no power to implement its recommendations. Powers to protect and repair monuments belonged to the Works Departments, working through the Ancient Monuments Inspectorate, until 1970, and were then exercised by the Department of the Environment. The results of the commission' s work are made available to the public as the National Monuments Record. Since 1963 this has included the National Buildings Record, which was established in 1941 to photograph and record buildings liable to be destroyed by enemy action. |
Records of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority and its predecessors
Reference: | AB |
Title: | Records of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority and its predecessors |
Description: | The records of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA), established in 1954 to research and develop all areas of atomic energy in Britain. These include the records of the UKAEA's London Office, Northern Group (Production Division), research establishments at Harwell, Winfrith and Culham, and the records of the authority's predecessor body, the Directorate of Tube Alloys. Private papers of Sir John Cockcroft, and of other prominent members of the authority, are also included. For series created for regularly archived websites, please see the separate Websites Division. |
Date: | 1939-2015 |
Related material: | See also: Atomic Weapons Research Establishment ES Department of Energy's Atomic Energy Division Division within EG |
Held by: | |
Legal status: | Public Record(s) |
Language: | English |
Creator: | United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, 1954- |
Physical description: | 102 series |
Access conditions: | Subject to 30 year closure unless otherwise stated |
Immediate source of acquisition: | from 1971 United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority |
Administrative / biographical background: | United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority The United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) was established in 1954 by the Atomic Energy Act. The functions of the authority covered the entire field of atomic energy and radioactive substances. The authority was a public corporation with a board consisting of a chairman and between 7 and 10 members appointed by the Lord President of the Council, who also had powers of supervision and intervention. The Lord President of the Council was directly responsible to Parliament for the authority's activities. In April 1957, the Lord President of the Council's functions with regard to the authority were transferred to the Prime Minister; they then passed jointly to the Lord Privy Seal and the Minister for Science in October 1959, and to the Secretary of State for Education and Science in April 1964. The Science and Technology Act 1965 made the Minister of Technology responsible to Parliament for general atomic energy policy and for monies provided for the authority. These functions subsequently passed to the Department of Trade and Industry in October 1970, and the Department of Energy in January 1974. From 1954, the UKAEA continued the broad division of responsibility which it inherited from the Ministry of Supply, maintaining an Industrial Group centred in Risley, a research Group based at Harwell (including the Radiochemical Centre at Amersham), and a Weapons Group located at Aldermaston, and a London Office responsible for general administrative and financial matters. The recommendations of committees of inquiry appointed to inquire into an accident at Windscale in October 1957 led to changes in the structure of the authority's management and the structure of its Industrial Group. In 1959, the Atomic Energy Authority Act enhanced the powers of the authority and enlarged the board: the authority was allowed to undertake research and development in fields other than nuclear power if required to do so by the appropriate minister; and membership of the board was increased to fifteen. A management committee, the Atomic Energy Executive, composed of the chairman and full-time members was also established. Up to 1965, the work of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority had been related to the areas delineated in the Act of 1954, but in 1965, the Science and Technology Act empowered the Authority to undertake approved projects outside the immediate nuclear field if they could be shown to be commercially viable. The Atomic Energy Executive referred viable projects, emanating from any of the divisions, to the Minister of Technology for approval and initiation. By 1970, the authority was organised into three broad divisions: Central Services, comprising the London Office and Culcheth, in Cheshire, where the authority's Safety and Reliability Directorate was based; Reactor Group, with headquarters in Risley, and consisting of the Atomic Energy Establishment at Winfrith and the laboratories at Springfields, Risley and Windscale; and Research Group, based at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell, and including the Culham Laboratory. Major changes in the authority's functions took place over the next few years. In 1971, the government made known its intention to transfer responsibility for the Weapons Group to the Ministry of Defence. This took effect under the Atomic Energy Authority (Weapons Group) Act, of 1973. Also in 1971, the Atomic Energy Authority Act, transferred the authority's fuel and isotope businesses to publicly owned companies, respectively British Nuclear Fuels Limited (BNFL) and The Radiochemical Centre Ltd (subsequently Amersham International plc). The authority remained the sole shareholder of both these companies. In 1981 the authority's one hundred per cent shareholding was transferred to the Secretary of State for Energy. From April 1977, a new structure came into effect, appropriate to the authority's much reduced functions. The former three-fold division between Central Services, Reactor Group and Research Group was replaced with a five-fold division consisting of the London headquarters (with the Safety and Reliability Directorate at Culcheth), the Northern Division, and research establishments at Harwell, Winfrith and Culham. Health and Safety Branch In January 1958 the Fleck Committee, set up after the Windscale accident of October 1957, published its report on the organisation for the control of health and safety in the authority. In July 1959 a Health and Safety Branch, independent of group control, was formed as part of the authority's headquarters organisation, and separate health and safety organisations in each group headquarters were eliminated. The functions of the new branch were: to advise the authority on the formulation of its health and safety policy; to apply this policy to the assessment and inspection of reactors and plants, including laboratories; and to provide the focal point from which the authority's external relations in the health and safety field could be conducted. The branch had three divisions: a Safety Division, based at Risley, responsible for assessing the safety of reactors and plants, and for providing an inspection service; a Radiological Protection Division, based at Harwell, which was concerned with radiation and other hazards affecting authority employees and the public; and an Administrative Division which provided general services to the two technical divisions, and dealt with the non-technical work of the branch, including liaison with government departments. In April 1971, the Safety Division of the Health and Safety Branch was renamed the Safety and Reliability Directorate. Its functions were to advise the authority on the formulation of health and safety policy, to apply this to the assessment and inspection of authority reactors and plant, and to provide advice and services to government departments and others, including the Health and Safety Executive. The directorate was concerned with developing technology to establish the safety of plants, and the safety and reliability of other industrial processes. |
Records of the Wallace Collection
Reference: | AR |
Title: | Records of the Wallace Collection |
Description: | Records of the Wallace Collection. General files are in AR 1 The Wallace Collection holds all records relating to the exhibits in the collection listed in AR 2. For series created for regularly archived websites, please see the separate Websites Division. |
Date: | 1897-2008 |
Held by: | |
Legal status: | Public Record(s) |
Language: | English |
Creator: | Wallace Collection, 1897- |
Physical description: | 4 series |
Access conditions: | Subject to 30 year closure unless otherwise stated |
Immediate source of acquisition: | Wallace Collection |
Administrative / biographical background: | The Wallace Collection was built up by the third and fourth marquesses of Hertford and Sir Richard Wallace in the late eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries. It consists of eight hundred paintings, in particular drawn from the eighteenth and nineteenth century French schools and pictures by leading French, Spanish, Italian and English painters of the period. Other items, very many from France, include watercolour drawings, minatures, illuminations, bronzes, enamels, clocks, snuff boxes, ivories, medals, glass, furniture, arms and armour. Viscount Beauchamp, later fourth marquess of Hertford, assembled most of the french 17th and 18th century furniture and minor arts, the old masters and the modern french paintings. After his death in 1870, Wallace added the arms and armour and the medieval and renaissance objects of art. The collection is housed in Hertford House, Manchester Square, London bought by Sir Richard Wallace in 1875 and adapted to house the collection. Lady Wallace left the collection to the nation in February 1897. The terms of her will stipulated that the collection could not be lent nor added to, and had to be displayed in a central London location. A committee appointed under a Treasury minute recommended the acquisition and adaptation of Hertford House to conform to the conditions of Lady Wallace's will. Hertford House was opened to the public in 1900 by the future Edward VII. |
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