| Activity | The main function of the Department grew out of the requirement in the 1694 Charter that a register be kept at the Bank of assignments and transfers in the Bank's capital stock. This duty fell on the First Accomptant and the department was known as the Accountant's Department through to 1980, when the title Chief Accountant was changed to Chief Registrar and the name of the department to Registrar's Department. The Department moved to Gloucester in 1990 and on 18 December 2004 Registrar's Department closed and the gilt registration business was taken over by Computershare.
The National Debt Act 1715 (1 Geo I Stat. 2, c19) authorised the Bank to manage the issue of a new stock, 5% Annuities, in the same way as it managed its own stock. From around 1720 all government borrowing from the public came through the Bank. Later the Bank offered registration services for other organisations wishing to borrow on the London market, both commercial concerns and overseas governments.
Although the way the work has been organised has changed throughout its history, as has the means of doing it, the site and the amount of it done, the basic activities remain recognisably the same.
Stock registration involves issuing the stock, recording ownership, recording changes of ownership, ensuring transactions are legitimate, and paying dividends. The stock registers, recording details of individual holdings in the managed stocks and the stock transfers, which were used to transfer ownership of stock, are summarised below under Transactional records.
There are, however, considerable complexities in the work and substantial records on legal issues, precedents and procedures have been created throughout the life of the Department. Where the records clearly derive from specific administrative units they are summarised under Offices and Agencies. Where the file series are more general or central to the Department, they appear under Subject and Policy files. Papers relating to specific borrowers and issues are under Case papers.
Records concerning matters of departmental organisation and location are summarised under Administrative records.
The lives of the Transfer Offices shown were as follows: Consols (also Consols 3%), 1851-1966; New 3% and Reduced, 1881-1890; Bank Stock etc, 1881-1946; Colonial and Corporation (Commonwealth and Corporation from 1954), 1900-1965; War 3 1/2%, 1933-1966; Transport Stocks, 1948-1966; In 1966 these separate offices were merged into a single Transfer Office.
The Accountant's department moved out of Threadneedle Street in the 1920s, as part of the rebuilding process, with the intention of returning to the new building in 1940. However, the department was evacuated to Hurstbourne, Hampshire during the Second World War (1939-1945), at the end of which time it became obvious that there was no longer space for the deparment at Threadneedle Street. Therefore the department returned to the offices at Finsbury Circus in 1945, where it remained until the opening of a new purspose built building at New Change in 1958. The department remained at New Change until the removal of the renamed Registrar's Department to Gloucester in 1990. |