From a duke’s estate plans to Dickens’s own handwritten manuscript, Manuscripti scans, transcribes and restores the documents that matter, for organisations and families alike, from our studio in Northamptonshire.
Councils, police forces, museums and estates trust us with collections of every size. The same care goes into a single family album.
For organisations
From one fragile register to a store room of files: scanned, transcribed, indexed and returned, with the originals cared for at every step.
For you and your family
Old photographs, letters, a family bible or the deeds to a house: we scan, restore and transcribe them, and give you copies to keep and pass on.
The Land Registry is digital, but its records reach back only so far. Families and estates that have held land for centuries prove what they own with the original maps and their descriptions. Scanned, they can show land the deeds have forgotten.
An illustration, not a valuation or legal advice: land values vary, and whether a map supports a claim is for your solicitor and the Land Registry.
From a duke’s 1703 inventory to Dickens’s own manuscript, a few of the collections that have passed through our studio.
IllustrationIn the news
The original plans of the park at Boughton House, the “English Versailles”, scanned and restored to their colours, from which the park is being replanted 300 years on.
In the news
Household inventories from 1703 and a duchess’s travel diaries, scanned, transcribed and made searchable, with software we wrote to help read them.
In the news
Dickens’s original handwritten manuscript of Great Expectations, at the Wisbech & Fenland Museum: a novel that can be read beside the printed text, change by change.
A roll of honour written in gold leaf, scanned under lighting set up specially, so everything written in gold comes out as gold and can be read without handling the original.
Careful handling at every step, from collection to return.
Describe the originals, or send a few photographs, and we suggest the best way to preserve them, with a quote.
Our team collects registers, books and maps and transports them in fireproof boxes, or you bring them to the studio.
Every page and sheet is captured on the scanner that suits it, cradled, flattened or pieced together as it needs.
Entries are transcribed, plans traced into maps and every file checked against the original.
Your originals come back safely, with the digital files in the formats you chose, or hosted online.
Scanning is where it starts. We also read, repair, map and host what we capture.
Bound registers, ledgers and rare books scanned whole, without cutting, on scanners that never touch the page.
Maps, estate plans, drawings, paintings and textiles captured full size and in full colour.
Archived files, case papers and client records scanned at volume, indexed the way you search them.
Difficult handwriting read and typed by people who know old hands, checked against the original.
Fragile and damaged originals repaired by hand with acid-free materials, and scans restored digitally.
Hand-drawn cemetery and estate plans traced into accurate digital maps, plot by plot.
Aerial surveys of cemeteries and estates: every headstone, tree and path on an accurate base map.
See example prices for scanning, transcription and map digitising.
Stains, creases, fading and tears are repaired on the scan, so a photograph or document can be printed and shared as it once looked.
Our work, as reported by the papers and broadcasters who covered it.
Manuscripti began in 2002 at The Elms, in the village of Pytchley, and that is still where the work is done. The elm is how we say where we come from: a studio in the Northamptonshire countryside, a few miles from some of the county’s great houses and record offices.
Our first collections were local, and Northamptonshire is still close to our hearts: the estate plans of Boughton House were scanned here. Today the same hands and the same care serve councils, police forces, museums, estates and families across the country.
Tell us what you hold, and we will suggest the best way to preserve it.
