Dramatic Photos

History takes a near miss ...

LOC.

A view over Chancery Lane, Holborn, London, under aerial bombardment during the Blitz. To the right of the photo are the historic precincts of the Temple, home of the Inns of Court and the English Bar (community of Court Advocates). The impressive Victorian neo-Tudor Gothic building on the left is the old Public Records Office. I must assume that this building avoided serious damage. Even if there had been some dispersal of its collection, the building would have been packed with tinder-dry parchment documents and tally-sticks, the records of the Government of England going back to the late-12th century. A half-well placed incendiary would have caused a conflagration that would not bear thinking about, destroying a huge amount of primary source materials for English history. I should know - I spent a considerable time researching in this building in the late-1970s and early- 1980s. Strange, and unsettling, to see it in this photo. I am not sure to what use the old PRO is put these days. As far as I know, all records are now available in the new Records Office at Kew. Knowing the civil service, however, it is far from impossible that some are still stored here ... Ah, happy days (mine, I mean), JR.