Class Doc
The former designation for Class Doc. - 'Chart.' - indicates the original composition of this varied collection. When established, early this century, the class was intended to provide a home for items of a strictly archival character, mirroring a traditional muniment room with its holdings of title deeds, manorial court records, and accounting papers, as distinct from the broader literary scope embraced by the Library's series of Additional manuscripts. From very early on, however, the already somewhat vague distinction was blurred still further, and for many years the choice between placing a particular manuscript in 'Doc.' or 'Add.' was often resolved through consideration of its physical form alone, rolls and loose documents being added to the former series, bound volumes in the latter. With over 4,100 items at the time of writing Doc. remains one of the least predictable classes in the Library's collections, embracing material as diverse as a third-millenium BC Babylonian clay tablet, defunct nineteenth-century fireworks, manorial papers for estates on the Scilly Isles, and documents relating to the Western Front in 1918.
Boxed manuscript descriptions and a slip-index to Doc. 1-1681 are available in the Manuscripts Reading Room. Doc.1682-1942 are described in two bound volumes, both indexed, which may be consulted on application to the Reading Room Desk. Doc.1943-3626 (largely the Chatteris Ramsey deposit of nineteenth- and twentieth-century manorial material) have as yet been neither catalogued nor indexed, although a basic listing is available. Doc. 3627-4104 are now described in three volumes, each with its own index. These indexes are, it must be emphasised, the sole access points to the collection: with rare exceptions, Doc. material is not included in the main card index of Western Manuscripts.
Contact: Department of Manuscripts (01223 333143; mss@lib.cam.ac.uk).