Archives and Special Collections: Subject guides - Religious Archives

Religious Archives: Contents Page

• Christianity (Western)
• Other religions
• Further information

The Brynmor Jones Library holds a wide variety of religious archives and manuscripts, from significant numbers of Quaker records to the Toba Batak research papers of Dr Harry Parkin. With the notable exception of the latter, and some Zionist papers in the Sykes family collection, the holdings are concentrated in the area of Western Christianity. Institutional records begin with the medieval account rolls for the nuns of Marrick Priory and the monks of Selby Abbey. Later religious archives tend to be those of individuals, such as the Christian Socialists, Conrad Noel and Stanley Evans, and small pressure groups and charities in the church, such as the Anglican Evangelical Group Movement and the East Riding Clergy Charitable Society. The papers of individual clerics, such as John Hymers, are sometimes embedded in landed family collections, which also include Roman Catholic sources in the Chichester, Constable Maxwell, Langdale and Stapleton papers. All major sources for the Church of England are listed here, but smaller examples given from landed family collections should be regarded as a sizeable sample only. This guide makes no claims to being exhaustive and the diligent researcher will find scattered throughout the landed family and estate papers (including estate papers held in deposits made by large firms of solicitors such as Crust Todd and Mills) extracts of parish registers, wills of individual clergymen, grants of advowsons and papers on tithes and church-building and restoration. [N.B. A subject guide to the Landed Family and Estate Papers held in the Brynmor Jones Library is also available from the Table of Contents to the Subject Guides]. The guide has been divided, firstly, into broad religions (the order reflecting the prevalence of material) and then subdivided into denominations and institutions.