Agents’ plans boost county records
Shropshire estate agents DB Roberts have donated a unique collection of property records to Shropshire Council’s Shropshire Archives.
Following their recent move from premises in Church Street, Wellington, the Directors of DB Roberts realised that the information which they held about new private housing developments in Shropshire was worth saving.
Chairman of DB Roberts, Bill Brookes, said:
“Since the early 1960s, DB Roberts & Partners have been involved in selling or valuing the new homes on virtually every new private housing development in east Shropshire, going back to well before the days of the area being designated a new town.
“As part of that work, we have accumulated original architects’ scale plans of estate layouts and individual house designs, together with brochures, specifications, price lists and photographs, all of which have been carefully labelled and stored.
“Over the years we have made good use of them, but with storage space now at a premium, we wanted to find a good home for them. Because most of the builders are no longer in existence and local councils are unlikely to have ever held this amount of material, we believe they probably represent a unique record. We asked Shropshire Archives if we could donate them and were delighted when they accepted the entire collection.
Mike Owen, Shropshire Council’s Cabinet member with responsibility for tourism and culture, said:
“We are very pleased to accept DB Roberts donation; this will be of great value to our already treasured archives. I would like to thank DB Roberts for their generous contribution, which I’m sure will benefit local archivists and historians for generations to come.”
Receiving the DB Roberts records, senior archivist Samantha Mager said:
“We are particularly keen to encourage the preservation of records associated with planning and development of the local area. Such records are often destroyed once no longer required for current work. When DB Roberts offered to donate their entire archive of plans and marketing material, we were delighted to accept. It will take us some time to sort all the documents, so they will not be available for public access in the immediate future, but their long term preservation will now be assured.”
