PREVIOUSLY unseen archives from a stately home - which once inspired Charlotte Bronte and entertained Charles I - are to go on show.

North Yorkshire County Record Office’s Attics and Acres project opens up previously unseen archives of the Graham family of Norton Conyers, near Ripon.

The project is the subject of a one-day roadshow at Samwaies Hall, on Main Street, Wath on Saturday, July 16.

The project to catalogue and conserve the archive began last summer and involves 70 boxes spanning 600 years.

The roadshow will enable visitors to discover more about the collection, including finding out who was poisoned and who was the black sheep of the family.

Both Charles I and James II are said to have stayed at Norton Conyers and Charlotte Bronte is reputed to have used the house as a model for Thornfield Hall, in particular Mrs Rochester’s room in Jane Eyre.

Original documents will be on show as well as two separate exhibitions. Visitors can have fun playing a fortune-telling Victorian parlour game and take part in a conservation workshop which looks at how an autograph album containing Lord Byron and Queen Victoria’s signatures has been restore and how to preserve family papers and photographs.

The event runs from 10am to 3pm and entry is free.

More information is available from North Yorkshire County Record Office, in Malpas Road, Northallerton, on 01609-777585 or at; archives@northyorks.gov.uk.