Aberdeen County Council collection: catalogued!

Many of the archives of Aberdeen County Council are now available to search on our online catalogue.

Partial lists of the collection had previously been available in paper format on the shelves in our Old Aberdeen House searchroom, but we were able to add these paper lists into the online catalogue during the Covid lockdowns this year and last. These have now been checked against what’s in the stores, and additional records catalogued, and we can now make the catalogue available for you to browse.

Aberdeen County Council was formed in 1889 and existed until the formation of the Grampian Regional Council in 1975. Its boundaries form part of the modern Aberdeenshire Council (along with parts of the historic counties of Banffshire and Kincardineshire). It inherited most of the functions of the Aberdeenshire Commissioners of Supply (see AS/Acom for more information about this organisation), and these were expanded under the Local Government (Scotland) Act of 1929 which gave it additional responsibility for education and public assistance (the successor to the poor relief system).

The collection is wide ranging, incorporating minutes of the Council and its Committees, records relating to public health, public assistance, housing, planning, civil defence and education. It's important to note that at this date several Burgh Councils operated across Aberdeenshire too, including Fraserburgh, Peterhead and Inverurie, so you need to work out who would have jurisdiction over a particular area before commencing research

We're going to take this opportunity to highlight a couple of the more unusual items we came across during the cataloguing work. First up is this Tenants Handbook from the 1950s! Subtitled "A compendium of useful information for tenants of the housing schemes of Aberdeen County Council" it provided a guide to utlities and local services provided by the Council, as well as tips on housekeeping and maintenance.

ASActy/7/1/1, Aberdeen County Council Tenants Handbook

The handbook includes photographs of examples of this housing, such as this housing scheme at Aboyne. 

The handbook puts some of its advice in cartoon form:

We also found these War Service supplements in the Teachers’ Superannuation Forms fascinating: they record all the teachers on active service during the Second World War (please note that if the teacher in question is or may still be alive, access to these records is restricted under the terms of the Data Protection Act).  

ASActy/5/12 Aberdeen County Education: Teachers' Superannuation Forms

Also war related, in one of a series of County Clerk's files is a list of war charities that were issued licenses during the Second World War, demonstrating the response of local communities to support the war effort and those in the armed forces. As such charities were very short lived, this is an important record of their existence. 

ASActy/3/17/21 Aberdeen County Clerk's Files: "County General: War Charities Act, 1940 - Correspondence"

And finally: this note explaining the special charges exacted by tradesmen working in the County's schools made us laugh:

The catalogues for Kincardine and Banff County Councils should be following in the New Year, so watch this space!