New home for country’s archives
8:50am Tuesday 21st December 2010
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Cumbria County Council has successfully completed the move of more than a million historical documents from their former home at Carlisle Castle and other store rooms to a new state-of-the-art
archives centre in Petteril Bank.
If all of the documents that are now being stored in the £8.2m building were piled up on top of each other, the stack would be more than four miles high.
It has been a mammoth task taking years of planning and the dedication of scores of volunteers and archives officers to arrange the transfer of Carlisle’s unique archive collection, says the county
council.
The archive, which includes the Royal Charter of the City of Carlisle from 1316 which bears the seal of Edward II, provides an unrivalled insight into the places and people of Cumbria from the 12th
century to the present day and also preserves vital practical information on things such as boundaries and rights of way.
Ten Cumbria archives staff are now moving in to work in the new building to complete preparations for the opening of the new archive centre to the public, which is now expected to happen in April
2011. Previously the county council had hoped to open the new building in January 2011, but construction delays and other complications have meant that it has now been decided to open slightly
later than planned so the archive service can fully showcase its new home.
The project, nine years in the making, has been possible thanks to a £4.8m grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund – the largest grant the fund has ever awarded in Cumbria.
It has allowed the dilapidated, Georgian, Grade II* listed Lady Gillford’s House to be fully renovated and transformed by the addition of a new innovative glass-fronted building which houses the
main archive vault and public study area.
Cumbria’s archive treasures are now housed in a temperature- and humidity-controlled hi-tech vault protected by an inert gas fire protection system which would douse the room in gas to kill flames
rather than water, which would damage the documents. The thermal mass of the vault’s solid concrete walls provide a naturally cool environment to protect the precious papers.
Photographs and films are stored in an even cooler vault which, like all the archive storage rooms, has moving electronic shelves. The new vault has the capacity to store the whole archive as well
as 25 years of projected growth.
Once open, Cumbria Archives Centre (Carlisle) will have a range of amenities on offer which local people will be able to access such as educational facilities for groups of young people and adults,
temporary and permanent exhibitions, a bookshop and community spaces for people to get involved in all sorts of cultural and learning activities. The panelled billiard room in Lady Gillford’s House
will be licensed for weddings.
Coun Gary Strong, Cumbria County Council’s Cabinet member responsible for archives and libraries, said: “This has been the mother of all house moves. But I’m delighted we’ve completed what, in many
ways, is the most important part of the whole project – logging, protecting and transferring these vital historical documents.
“Archive staff will be working hard over the coming weeks and months to get the new centre ready for opening to the public. It’s important that, when we do open, everything is right and ready for
public use.”
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