CHANGES at a County Durham archive will set the beginning of a “new era” for the service, as it prepares to move to a new local history centre at the start of next year.
From January 2022, Durham County Record Office’s search room will briefly close to the public to allow staff to begin packing the extensive collection of records in preparation for a move to a new state-of-the-art facility.
Throughout the preparation, the public won’t miss out on the service after it was announced that access to expert advice and guidance from the service’s archivists and specialists will still be in place.
Read more: Pictures: 12 photos of Durham from the archives
It will also continue to respond to public enquiries by email and process online requests, as well as delivering its education programmes, online history talks and courses, and digitisation projects.
While some might think that moving an archive might be an easy task, it won’t be a straightforward process, with around six miles of archives, which is currently stored in Durham County Council’s County Hall headquarters, needing to be rehoused.
Despite having to uproot hundreds of years of history, it won’t be moving far. Early next year, documents and all the other artefacts in the archives will be relocated to a new purpose-built building, which forms part of the council’s history centre project on the outskirts of Durham City.
The development, which is due to open to visitors in 2023, includes the refurbishment of the 19th Century Grade II Listed Mount Oswald Manor House.
The project will bring together the council’s archive, heritage, and registration services at a single location, alongside a café and an exhibition space showcasing the lesser told stories of the county’s working people.
Cllr Richard Bell, Cabinet member responsible for the record office, said: “Our archives chart more than 900 years of history in records which span almost six miles.
“Whilst the move to the new history centre is massively exciting, it is also a huge undertaking which requires a lot of preparation to ensure the new history centre can open on time.
“Each item in our collection needs careful handling, specialist packaging and thorough cataloguing, all of which takes time.
“Restricting visitors from the search room, as we did during the Covid lockdown restrictions, will allow the team to prioritise its workload, focussing on packing for the move, to make sure we are ready to welcome visitors in the new history centre from 2023.”
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