Holdings of Lambeth Palace Library
Introduction
The Library contains over 4,000 manuscripts and immense quantities of archives, dating from the ninth century to the present. Amongst them are some 600 medieval manuscripts, Tudor and Stuart papers (especially the correspondence of Anthony Bacon and of the Talbot family, earls of Shrewsbury), the Carew papers for the history of Ireland, and correspondence and papers of archbishops, bishops, churchmen and statesmen, including G. K. A. Bell, bishop of Chichester, W. E. Gladstone and Roundell Palmer, 1st earl of Selborne.Of outstanding importance are the registers, correspondence, estate records and other papers of the archbishops of Canterbury (Vicar-General, Court of Arches and Convocation), the Faculty Office and the Lambeth Conferences. Also of note are the ecclesiastical records of the Commonwealth period, the records of Queen Anne’s Commission for Building Fifty New Churches, and the correspondence and papers of the bishops of London, including extensive documentation of the Church in colonial America and the West Indies. Amongst the records of innumerable Anglican societies are those of the Church Union, the Church Society and the Incorporated Church Building Society.
Printed books in the Library number almost 200,000, including some 20,000 items printed before 1700. Many are unique, or are distinguished by their provenance or by special bindings.
In 1996, the Library’s holdings were augmented by the transfer from Sion College Library of c.35,000 printed books published before 1850, together with the Sion College collection of manuscripts.
Guide to holdings
The vast majority of the Library's holdings, printed, manuscript and archival, have been fully catalogued in accordance with recognised standards, and are available for research. The author catalogue of printed books is now available online.Automation of the manuscript and archival catalogues is in progress. Many of the latter catalogues have been published, and are available in other libraries. Some are available to purchase from the Library. The indexes to the National Register of Archives maintained by the National Archives also include references to the Library holdings.
Whilst the automation projects are continuing, the detailed pages have been designed to refer researchers to existing catalogues, indexes and micropublications of Library material. The information they contain is based on Melanie Barber's A Handlist of Catalogues and Indexes of the Archives and Manuscripts in Lambeth Palace Library (1998), and the web editors record their gratitude for permission to publish it electronically, and for the guidance it contains.
This Guide is in no way exhaustive, and should not be a substitute for consulting the catalogues and ultimately the original material. It does not currently include the text of catalogues, nor the text of original documents, or images, and there are no plans at present for the mass digitisation of our extensive holdings. Many of these are already available on microfilm, and it is noted in the detailed pages where this is the case. The Library maintains indexes to other repositories all over the world which hold our material in microformat, and is happy to advise enquirers. Often other copies can be provided through our reprographics services, subject to the preservation of the originals and the laws of copyright.