Archives department of Seine-Maritime

Beaurepaire also took care of the judicial archives and by 1895 he had cleared the Palais de Justice, Rouen main courthouse, of all its ancient records prior to 1790 and transferred them to the departmental repository: cleaning and processing this bulk of ledgers and records from the Parlement, the Chambre des comptes, the Cour des aides and other jurisdictions, indeed represented a very heavy task for him and his staff.

With a capacity of 9,5 linear kilometers, "the most beautiful repository in France" (as it was then said) soon became too small to cope with the increasing flow of archives.

The archives had to be removed from the repository, the most precious parts of the collections being transferred to rural castles in the department of Eure.

In the 1950s an ambitious project for a new administrative center including a skyscraper specially designed to house the archives was launched and achieved.

But in the 1970s the ever-growing flood of archives produced by administrations (and also coming from private sources) made it clear that another storage facility would soon be needed.

In 1981 the Department bought part of the old Fromage textile factory in Darnétal (industrial town east of Rouen).

The Department archives in fact remained a State service until the enacting of decentralisation laws (22 July 1983) which placed them under the authority of conseils généraux (County Councils) from 1 January 1986.

The archives of Seine-Maritime count four activities: In December 2006 staff was composed of 55 agents, among them four state civil servants.

The collections of the great abbeys are among the oldest and most prestigious holdings (Fécamp, Saint-Ouen de Rouen, Jumièges, for example).

Also to be pointed out is the operation of preservation of the Havre Shipyards archives in 2000, which represent almost 12 000 items for the files (about 1 linear km) and about 60 000 technical large size drafts, blueprints and plans.