ERO @ 75: The Open Day

Well, colour me exhausted!

After a thoroughly enjoyable Heritage Open Day on Saturday, I am sure you will forgive us a brief hiatus in the social media sphere. We all had a great time and we hope you did too. It was great to see so many people, roughly more than 500 came through the door by our closest estimates and every tour was packed. In fact, in the the end we had to lay on a few additional tours to ensure as many people could enjoy a guided tour of our searchroom or a visit to our conservation studio (from which one of my friends returned green with envy, saying “Some of the kit in there…fantastic!” He may have had too much blue icing though.

Our thanks must also go out to all our lovely volunteers without whom the day would not have been possible.

I thought I should share with you a few of the photos from the day, there are many more to follow.

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Lord Petre, Lord Lieutenant of Essex, Councillor Kay Twitchen, Chairman of Essex County Council and Stephen Dixon, Archive Services Manager, cutting our 75th Anniversary cake.

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Welcome to the Essex Record Office

Welcome to the blog of the Essex Record Office.

We will be updating this blog with highlights from our extensive collection, behind-the-scenes peeks at our conservation work and news about ERO events.

The Essex Record Office in Chelmsford

The documents held by the ERO cover almost 1,000 years of Essex history, and take up 7 miles of shelving. Whether you want to trace your ancestors, discover more about this history of your house, your village or town, or the whole of the ancient county of Essex, we will almost certainly be able to help you.

We offer a wide range of facilities for researchers:

  • Expert advice to help you with your research
  • The opportunity to view original documents in our Searchroom
  • The Essex Ancestors online subscription service, and free access to digital images in our Searchroom
  • Free use of genealogy website Ancestry
  • The Essex Sound and Video Archive
  • Talks, lectures and courses 

A researcher hard at work at our map tables

Keen to find out more? The handy video guide below explains everything you need to know about making your first visit to the ERO. In the meantime, you can search our online catalogue Seax and plan your visit  to us in our Chelmsford Searchroom where we look forward to welcoming you.