Archives départementales du Nord

The Archives du Nord was very quickly given the very rich archives of the Chambre des comptes de Lille which, when this institution was abolished by Louis XIV, had been entrusted to an archivist in charge of its conservation and inventory, Denis Godefroy, who was succeeded by his son.

In the middle of the 19th century, the collections of the bishopric-archbishopric of Cambrai, the officiality and the metropolitan chapter were transferred to the Archives du Nord, an invaluable enrichment since the oldest original document of the Nord (804), the terrier of the Bishop of Cambrai (1275) and four imperial diplomas sealed with gold bulls are preserved there. Alongside the archives of the chapters (including that of Saint-Pierre de Lille, famous for its donation charter of 1066), there were nearly 250 collections of religious establishments.

The courts of justice (including the Parliament of Douai), the provincial administrations (intendances, Bureau des Finances), and educational establishments (including the University of Douai) are also well represented.

Among the archives from the Ancien Régime are: registers of baptisms, marriages and burials kept by the parish priests; notaries' minutes, whether or not grouped together in tabellions, where all civil acts are recorded; documents relating to the communes and guilds; and family titles.

At the same time, the archivists of the Nord have never ceased to be concerned with safeguarding the administrative archives: revolutionary administrations of the department, districts and cantons, the Prefecture, the Sub-Prefecture, the General Council, state, financial and tax administrations, the Ponts-et-Chaussées, the Rectorate and the Inspectorate of the Academy, the courts, prisons etc. It is these archives that have continued to grow since then and which occupy the majority of the 68 km of archives kept today.

In the 20th century, archivists extended the collection to include notaries' minutes over 100 years old, then to family archives, scholars' papers, company archives, architects' archives (including those of Louis Cordonnier), and the century-old archives of municipalities with fewer than 2,000 inhabitants, not forgetting hospital archives (including those of the hospitals of Lille) or chambers of commerce and industry (particularly those of Lille, Roubaix and Tourcoing).

Hauts de France - Nord-Pas-de-Calais

The Departmental Archives, created in 1796, and attached to the Departments in 1986, collect, conserve, classify and communicate to the public all the archives of public bodies that exist or have existed on the territory of the Department, as long as they are of interest for the justification of everyone's rights and as a source of historical research. These missions are set out in legal texts (Code du patrimoine).