14/03/2026 WIP - A short history of Maughan Library and the old PRO

The background

A few days ago, a door frame grievously assaulted me, owing to its jealousy of my height which almost matches that of the door. What had resulted from the attack inevitably excused me from doing sports and (maybe not so inevitably) the mountain of life admin tasks, granting me the unusual luxury of a free Saturday at my disposal.

It was a bright morning for early spring, a rare treat for those who had endured the rainy grey for much of the week.

'I could go to Kew with you,' I offered to my girlfriend at breakfast.

She had planned for the day to review some documents in the National Archives, following a request from a German researcher friend.

'Just sit in the café and read your Orwell Essays I suppose,' she said.

'They have a cafe with big windows facing a very nice garden and pond.'

So there I was, arrived at the National Archives, a brutalist monstrosity sitting behind blooming trees and a lively pond that hosted geese and their geeselings. Between the center pillars, engraved into the white limestones in all caps, yet hardly readable against the background, the building declares its other identity:

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

'That's what the Maughan Library used to be!'

The National Archives (formally known as Public Record Office) main entrance

The History

Chancery Lane - or what it was known as, New Street

The area where the Maughan sits today has been of historical significance since the early days of crusade. The order of the Knights Templar were an elite Catholic order created in 1118 to protect the pilgrims on their way to the Holy Land, Jerusalem, which had been captured after the success of the first crusade in 1099. The Knights Templar were extremely rich, benefitting from the financial return of offering checks to pilgrims in London or Paris, which they could cash out upon arrival in Jerusalem. They first established their headquarter in London in the Old Temple (near today's Chancery Lane Tube Station) but quickly grew too large for their original site. A new site was aquired between Fleet Street and the Riverbank. In 1184, a new church was built and the headquarter transferred to the New Temple (today known as Temple Church, located in Inner Temple).

At around 1160, the Knights Templar had built Chancery Lane, then called New Street, connecting their original site at Holborn Gate to the new site south of Fleet Street, marking the beginning of this remarkable street.

Chancery Lane - and the Lord Chancellor that gave its name

In 1226, the Bishop of Chichester, Ralph Neville, was appointed as the Lord Chancellor under King Henry III. In 1227, the See of Chichester acquired the land on both sides of Chancery Lane, still called New Street then, to build a palace for the Bishop of Chichester to conduct official business in London. This site, through time and convenience, unofficially became the Lord Chancellor's office, as Neville conducted Lord Chancellor's duty in the area.

Neville was a very signifiacnt Lord Chancellor in English legal history. Appointed by the Great Council, which consisted of powerful barons, professional administrators and clergies while Henry III was still in his youth, Ralph wielded great power and independence from the King that his predecessors had not had, paving the way for professionalisation of the Chancery system.

The professionalisation of legal proceedings created a large demand for independent lawyers, who assisted in administration and obtaining writs for the plantiff, and later represent them in court. In 1234, Henry III issued a royal decree forbidding law schools from operating within the City of London. This forced legal clerks and students to relocate. The location of the Chancellor's permanent office, Chancery Lane, then still the suburb between the City of London and City of Westminster, became the obvious choice. The mass migration of legal professionals into the area led to the formation of the Inns of Chancery, which were colleges for lawyers and clerks. The migration was so significant that until this day, the area around Chancery Lane represents the center of all legal business in London. The west side of Chancery Lane, site of old residence and office where Neville conducted his Chancery duties, now hosts Lincoln's Inn, one of the four historic Inns of Court that any barrister must join by law before being called to the bar. The importance of Ralph Neville can still be traced in the street names around the area, such as Chichester Rents and Bishop's Court.

Chancery Lane - and the growing necessity of record keeping

Prior to Neville, Chancery was a peripatetic office, where the Lord Chancellor would travel with the King and provide administrative support as the King delivered his verdicts on disputes. Not long before Neville's appointment to the Chancery in 1226, Henry II (1154-1189) had made it mandatory that a writ must be produced before starting a claim for a land ownership dispute. This was later applied to all legal proceedings, in an attempt to centralise control over litigation previously judged by local Baron Courts.

Under Neville, the Chancery had a permanent office at the Bishop of Chichester's residence at New Street (Chancery Lane). With a permanent location and an increasing demand for writs, Neville began formalising the production and record keeping of all writs, amongst other official documents like charters and letters from the governments. These documents were copied onto parchment before being enacted, while the copies were sewn together end-to-end and then rolled up for storage, in a process called "enrolment". This ensured they were readily available for future reference.

The increasing demand for the centralised justice, aided by the efficiency introduced by Neville's reforms, meant the record of writs rapidly grew in both size and importance. The rolls that were previously managed as part of the clecks' job quickly became so significant in volume that a dedicated post for administration of the rolls became necessary.

From the mid-thirteenth century, one of the clerks began to bear the title of "Keeper of the Rolls of the Chancery", which eventually evolved into the permanent post of "Master of the Rolls" by the fifteenth century.

This marked the beginning of an office and dedicated personne for official record keeping of the government, and eventually became the Public Record Office, and later the National Archive.

Chancery Lane - Domus Conversorum and later Chapel of the Master of the Rolls

In around the same time at 1232, King Henry III issued an order that "for the health of his own soul and for the souls of his ancestors and heirs, to the honour of God and of the glorious Virgin" a home for destitute Jews converted to Christianity. It was in the hope such that, by offering of bribes such a free home and small amount of money for daily maintenance, it would encourage convertion of Jews to Christianity em masse.

The site of the new home for destitute Jews was located on the east side of chancery lane, a piece of land formally a Jewes house confiscated by Henry III. Build at the same time as Bishop of Chichester's palace in the same area, even in absense of concrete evidence, it is hard to imagine the institution was unrelated.

The hoped conversion did not happen. In the 58 years of its existence until 1290, when Edrward I permanently banished all Jews in the UK, the Domus Conversorum has received less than 100 Jewish converts. As conversions stopped due to the great expulsion, the converts were allowed to stay. About 80 converts were housed in the Domus Conversorum at the time of the expulsion, by 1330 there were only 21 people left from the pre-expulsion period.

The increasing vacancy of the Domus was highly convenient for the Chancery, now has a deedicated role for 'Keeper of the Rolls of the Chancery', as the amount of record grew rapidly over the 12th and 13th century. Seen as extra estate for the safekeeping of the records, in 1316 William de Ayremynne became the first clerk who bare the responsibility of both Keeper of the Rolls with Keeper of tho Domus Conversorum, and by 1371 the Domus was formally granted to the Keeper of the Rolls.

(some more history of the Domus Conversorum can be found here)