This would have been where the episcopal registers, administrative papers and title deeds were preserved under the general superintendence of the diocesan chancellor.
However, there are some exceptions: the Canterbury Cathedral Library and the Borthwick Institute for Archives at the University of York are similarly designated.
Other churches within the Anglican communion, in Scotland, Wales and elsewhere, normally operate in accordance with their own specialist legislation – as do many other Christian denominations.
The status of various Welsh county record offices as diocesan record offices was the result of an agreement with the Representative Body of the Church in Wales, made in 1976, which gave Welsh parishes the option of claiming facsimile copies of their deposited registers.
[2] Prior to that date the only officially recognised Welsh repository had been the National Library of Wales, first designated in 1944.