Transactions of the Leicestershire Archaeological and Historical Society, 66, 105-120
From the time of their earliest recorded mention the Leicester archives were kept in the town hall in the custody of the town clerk. Eighteenth-century antiquaries used them freely, but subsequently their condition deteriorated. Mid-nineteenth-century historians found them in chaotic order and affected by damp and rats. Spurred by members of this Society and of the Leicestershire Literary and Philosophical Society, the reformed corporation of Leicester authorized some conservation in the 1840s and the provision of a muniment room in the new town hall in 1878. Meanwhile, in the new Town Museum (opened in 1849), collections of documents relevant to the history of the county had been deposited by local antiquaries; and this Society pressed the Town Council to include a muniment room in a proposed extension to the Museum. It opened in 1930, with Leicester's first professional archivist. In 1932 some of the town's historic records were transferred there (the rest followed in 1951 and 1952). During World War II, under the scholarly and energetic direction of Eleanor Cottrill, it rescued from destruction a wide range of historical documents and acquired major collections such as the Leicester Archdeaconry Records and the Leicestershire Records of the Society of Friends.