Event date
3. Oct 2026 10:00 AM
Category
Local cultural event
2021 King’s Lynn & West Norfolk Borough Council
King's Lynn Book Festival
See the original “Red Register of King's Lynn”!
3. Oct 2026
10:00 AM
King's Lynn
King's Lynn & West Norfolk Borough Council
During the King's Lynn Book Festival, the original Red Register will be shown at the historic King's Lynn Town Hall.
On the morning of Saturday 3rd October the doors of the Town Hall will open at 10am.
At 10.15am Dr Paul Richards FSA, noted historian of Lynn and of the Hanse, will give a short talk about the Red Register and you will be able to view the book itself. By kind courtesy of the Borough Council and the Norfolk Records Office, the archivist, Luke Shakell, has permission to show us this wonderful artifact. This is an extraordinary opportunity as the book is normally protected in the archive and only a facsimile can be viewed by the public.
This showing will be followed at 11am by the scheduled session: 'Scandi Noir : How it All Began'. There is a rather interesting segue joining the two sessions, come and find out. The Red Register session is open to all who have King's Lynn Book Festival season tickets and to those who buy tickets for 'Scandi Noir: How it All Began' featuring Stein Ringen and Orjan Karlsson and chaired by Christopher Page.
Tickets for that session are £16.50 per person and include this bonus viewing of the Red Register.
Tickets are available at: https://klbookfest.littleboxoffice.com/browse
About the Red Register
The Red Register is reputedly the earliest paper book in England. It is the core record of the borough's government for almost the whole of the fourteenth century. It contains not only memoranda of the matters which came before the mayor and the community in the Guildhall but also copies of wills of local and foreign merchants, including Hanseatic merchants, with property and interests in King's Lynn.
The Red Register of King's Lynn c.1300-1395 has been accepted into the UNESCO Memory of the World in 2026. It joins such documents as the Domesday Book and the death warrant of King Charles I.
As the UNESCO entry states:
This makes the Register an outstanding source for studying life and society in the fourteenth century, a period when Lynn was England's third most important port, acting as a hub for international trade with France, the low countries, Scandinavia, Iceland and the Hanse in Germany.
As an archival document, the Red Register is unique and irreplaceable.
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