NRS-17814 | Cessnock Branch rates registers [Hunter District Water Board]

This series consists of the Cessnock office set of Rates registers maintained by the Hunter District Water Supply and Sewerage Board for properties supplied by the Board in Cessnock, its environs and nearby townships.The series is organised by triennia, and, within each triennium, by municipality or township. The entry for each property carries an entry number, known as the Register Number; these numbers run continuously from volume to volume within each triennium, and properties are normally referenced simply by register number, without regard to volume number or locality. During the 1925-1928 triennium, the entry for each property includes both its current register number and the register number it bore in the previous triennium, but this practice is discontinued thereafter. At some time subsequent to the closing of the series, however, each entry has been annotated (in blue or red pencil) with the number of the property for the succeeding triennium also.The 37 volumes of this series were originally labelled on their spines; many labels survive, but not all are still legible, and most of the volumes of this series have suffered damage to their spines. Where spine and labels have survived, each volume is identified by the dates of the relevant triennium and the names of the localities which it covers. Unlike similar series kept at other branch offices of the Water Board, the registers maintained at the Cessnock branch office were not numbered sequentially. Such numbering as is still legible appears to apply only within the limits of separate triennia, and this numbering seems mostly to have been ignored in the current arrangement of the series. The final triennium was never completed; the last group of volumes were labelled for 1937-1940, but the series was brought to a close at the end of June, 1939.The information recorded about each property normally includes at least these items: Register Number, Assessment Number, Situation (street and, sometimes, house name or number; Lot and Section numbers also appear in a separate column), Tenant, Ratepaying Lessee, Owner, Owner’s Address, Description of Property, Assessed Value and the details of the rates payed on the property, including any arrears. Rates were normally due every six months; assessments were normally made annually. Provision is made from the beginning of the series for the recording of both Water Rates and Sewerage Rates. From 1931 provision is also made for rates to be levied for Stormwater Drainage.This series is very closely related to two other series. A new branch office of the Water Board was established for Cessnock and its vicinity during the 1928-1931 triennium, and from this time on properties in this area are recorded in the present series of registers. Earlier coverage of Cessnock, back as far as the 1907-1910 triennium, was provided by the series of registers kept at the Maitland office, now NRS 17813. Five volumes which originally formed part of the Maitland series, from the 1925-1928 triennium, were transferred to the new Cessnock office after its establishment, and became the first section of the present series (item nos. [AB3581]-[AB3585]). A third set of registers was maintained at the Newcastle office; this is now NRS 17810, of 275 volumes, covering Newcastle and its environs during the period from 1892 until 1939. The three sets of volumes constitute three independent series, numbered and indexed separately, but the register numbers of individual properties for each triennium were assigned to each series in blocks, so that these numbers would run, as nearly as was practicable, continuously across the three series within the triennium.