A changing landscape
Reading David Annal’s article on Death Duty Registers (FT July) reminded me that I found these an invaluable source of information during the life-span of the much-missed Family Records Centre. When the impending closure of the Family Records Centre was announced I asked a staff member whether all the IR/26 and IR/27 reels were going to join copies already in the microfilm reading room filing cabinets at Kew. I recall that the response was that they were going to be donated to the Society of Genealogists, which I, as a long-standing member, thought an excellent idea.
In the years between the FRC closure and the pandemic I spent many hours at the SoG, where film copies of IR/27 were already held, but, to the best of my knowledge the reels of IR/26 never materialised; whether because they never were donated or because there was insufficient filing space I cannot say.
The only material available on TNA’s website, as far as I recall, related to legacies and their recipients from wills and administrations proved in ‘Country’ Courts 1796-1811 and although this digitised data was freely available on the computers at the SoG the same facility is not one of the freely accessible sites at the London Metropolitan Archives, which is where I do all my researches until the SoG again has a permanent home and accessible reading
