Liberty of the Rolls

The Liberty of the Rolls was a liberty, and civil parish, in the metropolitan area of London, England.

Liberty of the Rolls
Area
• 1881	12 acres (0.049 km2)
• 1901–1921	9 acres (0.036 km2)
Population
• 1881	546
• 1901	252
• 1921	93
Density
• 1881	45/acre
• 1901	28/acre
• 1921	10/acre
History
• Abolished	1922
• Succeeded by	City of Westminster (parish)
Status	Civil parish
Government	Master of the Rolls
Contained within
• District	Strand (1855–1900)
• Poor Law Union	Strand (1836–1913) City of Westminster (1913–1922)

The Liberty was probably created in the late medieval period by its removal from the Farringdon Without Ward of City of London,[1] and consisted of the part of the ancient parish of St Dunstan-in-the-West that was in the Ossulstone hundred of Middlesex, the rest of the parish was within the City.

It became a separate civil parish in 1866.[2]

Named perhaps after the ancient Rolls House upon Chancery Lane where the rolls of the Court of Chancery of England were kept, or perhaps, like other parishes, the chapel. The site of the house and chapel became the nucleus of the Public Record Office, now the Maugham Library and Provost's Lodgings of King's College London.

It was grouped into the Strand District in 1855 when it came within the area of responsibility of the Metropolitan Board of Works.

It was a civil parish from 1866, which became part of the County of London in 1889 and in 1900 part of the Metropolitan Borough of Westminster. It was abolished as a civil parish in 1922. However, its boundary could be readily seen as that area of Westminster which was the conjunction between the City of London and the Metropolitan Borough of Holborn (and later the London Borough of Camden). This apparent territorial anomaly disappeared in 1994 when the Local Government Commission for England altered the border to place all of the area east of Chancery Lane into the City.