Parish Chest of Radwinter

This is the kind of 'sure coffer' required by Thomas Cromwell's injunction of 5 September 1538. The parish register was required to be kept in this. Two locks were stipulated; the parson having the custody of one key and the church wardens that of the other.⁷⁴ Eventually, and because the parish was formerly the unit of local government, other vital documents of local administration were to find their way into it. So that, by the modern age, the phrase 'parish chest' has come to denote the wealth of information relating to individual communities.⁷⁵

The earliest form of chest was known as the 'dug-out', a name also applied to the rudest type of boat, since bothe were hollowed or dug out of a tree. This suppled the further designation of 'trunk', still in popular use for many a large chest.⁷⁶

Parish Chest of Radwinter