The collection of documents listed here is incomplete. Important series of records, such as the signed minutes, the register of share transfers and all the ledgers are missing. Other series, such as the correspondence registers and out-letter books, are represented only by the last volumes. Most of the engineering records from the time of the construction of the Bridge were already missing, it seems, in 1869. (See DD/0008/1009-1010.) Tierney Clark had possibly kept them himself.
The Company's record keeping practices were fairly simple. Under the terms of its Acts its accounts, with the related vouchers, had to be produced every year at Michaelmas before the justices of the peace at the Surrey quarter-sessions for audit. The fact that comparatively few bills and receipts and account books survive may indicate that they were normally discarded after this had been done. In the Company's last years, and probably earlier, a simple system for keeping correspondence was used. Out-letters were copied in full into copy-books. Incoming items were kept in annual bundles and their date, and brief details of their contents, entered in a register. Many of the items received in 1879 and 1880 were never entered, although the notes of their contents endorsed on them indicate that it had originally been intended to do so.
Hammersmith Bridge Company