<<Can anyone tell me if it is possible to have access (on-line?) to documents held in the Birmingham archives? I have spotted on the A2A site that they hold the "Sheldon papers" that include manorial records for Brailes in the 15th century. Having traced back a family to the early 1500s in that village, I'd love to see if these archives can help me get back even further (especially if they've been transcribed!)>> I don't know anything about the Brailes manor court rolls specifically, but I will be amazed if they are accessible on-line. It would be best to ask Birmingham Archives direct, though ([email protected]). I'm also pretty sure they haven't been published, so your best chance at using them would be to get someone to photograph them digitally for you (Birmingham do allow photography of medieval manor court rolls, or they did two years ago when I photographed some there). But while court rolls of this period can be very informative once translated and explained, the originals are not easy to use - they're in Latin, written in a difficult hand (with nearly every word heavily abbreviated), and conceal their information behind terse formulaic phrasing whose significance is not always obvious. Matt Tompkins