A watercolour miniature in the KAS collections.

The Manorial Documents Register (MDR) is the official index to English and Welsh manorial records and provides brief descriptions of documents and details of their locations in public and private hands. The National Archives at Kew now provide online access to this resource. Manorial documents include court rolls, surveys, maps, terriers, documents and books of every description relating to the boundaries, franchises, wastes, customs or courts of a manor.

The Library is currently involved in a project to digitise the estate plans held within the Gordon Ward archives.

Sir Thomas Wyatt the Elder was born c.1503 and died 1542. The son of Sir Henry Wyatt, he became a Sheriff of Kent in 1522, and by 1524 held positions at court, including that of Privy Councillor. He undertook foreign diplomatic missions from 1526, becoming High Marshal in Calais from 1528 – 30, achieving a knighthood in 1535.

The KAS collection includes a number of Twysden/Twisden family portraits that are currently housed at Bradbourne House. When, in November 1937 Sir John Ramskill Twisden died leaving no heir these portraits were bequeathed mainly to the Kent Archaeological Society, with others going to the National Portrait Gallery.

British History Online provides a digital version of "A history of the County of Kent: volume 2", originally published in 1926. This volume deals with the religious houses of Kent, including accounts of the early history of Canterbury and Rochester cathedrals.

I came across this video (slightly dated) on the weekend where the London and Surrey 'Earth Mysteries' groups have a day trip around some of the Kentish prehistoric sites.

Here are a couple of photos of the library room as it was before the fire in 1977.

For a short period of time the Oxford Dictionary of Family Names has made its database available for free. "This huge, new dictionary is the ultimate reference work on family names of the UK, covering English, Scottish, Welsh, Irish, Cornish, and immigrant surnames. It includes every surname that currently has more than 100 bearers, and those that had more than 20 bearers in the 1881 census."

The National Archives are making digital records available on their website free of charge for as long as our Kew site is closed to visitors. Registered users will be able to order and download up to ten items at a time, to a maximum of 50 items over 30 days. The limits are there to try and help manage the demand for content and ensure the availability of our digital services for everyone.

In response to the challenges created by the global public health crisis of COVID-19, Project MUSE is pleased to support its participating publishers in making scholarly content temporarily available for free on our platform. With many higher education institutions moving into an exclusively online learning environment for the foreseeable future, we hope that easy access to vetted research in the humanities and social sciences, from a variety of distinguished university presses, societies, and related not-for-profit publishers, will help to support teaching, learning, and knowledge discovery for users worldwide.

The UK has rainfall records dating back 200 years or so, but the vast majority of these are in handwritten form and can't easily be used to analyse past periods of flooding and drought. The Rainfall Rescue Project is seeking volunteers to transfer all the data into online spreadsheets. You're not required to rummage through old bound volumes as the Met Office has already scanned the necessary documents - all 65,000 sheets.

The Government has recently published advice on how copyright laws will change in the event of a no-deal Brexit. The library will certainly be affected by changes to the management of 'orphan work' images. See the paragraph below for details. If this comes to pass the Library will create a new policy to apply to those requesting the use of orphan works from within our collection.