Tyne & Wear Archives Tour

I have been using Tyne & Wear Archives Service for ages. Since the late 1980s, I think. But never have I had the opportunity to look 'behind the scenes', as it were. So the other day I decided to put my name down for just such a 'tour', and I'm so glad I did - it was fascinating.

These days, of course, you can't just wander into the searchroom of TWAS. You have to ring at least a week ahead to book your place, and notify them well in advance about what it is you want to examine. Then you have to wait at the door to be let in. It's all as a result of increased security, of course, as well as the legacy of the days of Covid. 

So gone are the hordes of casual family historians manning the banks of microfilm/fiche readers day after day - these days the searchroom is eerily serene. I mean, there is so much available online these days that you needn't leave your home for 99% of your genealogical research. You may wonder if there is much of a future in having a public searchroom at all, in fact. Its almost like we've gone back to the days of the pre-1980s when the public were not especially welcome, and archives were deemed untouchable. I don't think it's anyone's fault - just the way of things, I suppose.

The two-hour session attended by myself and a dozen or so other local history enthusiasts gave me a bit of a lift, though. You really have no idea how important - and vast - these repositories are until you get close up to them. It's a shame, really, that they can't be more open about access, etc., but, hey-ho, that's another argument for another day.

The TWAS itself forms part of a quiet, (almost) unseen corner of the greater whole that is Newcastle's Discovery Museum. The internal door to the Archives is at the far end of the mighty Turbinia display, and you have to wait for someone to come and fetch you. And so we all followed the leader down through the corridors of the massive Blandford House to the searchroom itself, and thereafter listened to a half-hour intro by Lizzie (I think that was her name - I'm recalling everything from memory, here, so give me some slack). I think we were all startled to learn that a good deal of the seldom-used material of this, and many other archives services, are stored in an underground salt mine in Cheshire! Offering perfect environmental conditions for archive preservation, this complex of tunnels and caverns stretches for miles in every direction - extending out under the Irish Sea, apparently. Wow!

We were then separated into two groups and took it in turns to, firstly (for my group), have a little tour behind the scenes in the upstairs storage rooms, and then to afterwards have a look at some choice bits and pieces that had been laid out in the searchroom itself.

The enthusiastic Ruth took us on our upstairs tour, first, then. Up several flights of stairs and onto a floor dedicated in its entirety to the storage of seldom-seen archival stuff. We only saw a fraction of it, of course, but it really was an eye-opener. Among the many, many items of interest, Ruth showed us a beautifully decorated town charter from 1685 - the collection's star item - complete with an image of the soon-to-be-deceased monarch King Charles II in it's top left-hand corner. Then there was their oldest item: a minor charter from the 1180s, for goodness sake - blimey!

Next it was back to the searchroom and into the hands of Rachel (and Lizzie again) for a presentation of some of the more notable (and famous) items of their holdings. Swan, Parsons, Bewick and Armstrong all featured prominently; together with bits and pieces re. the Team Valley, Doxford Shipyard (Wearside) - as well as the extraordinary story of how a huge icebreaker vessel was built, then dismantled for transportation purposes, then re-assembled in Russia for use on a landlocked lake! These old industrialists were mental, man! An interesting 'fact' here, too, about the comparison between the shipyards of the Tyne and the Wear: if you wanted a good, strong, reliable vessel made quickly and efficiently, then you went to the Wear; and if you wanted something a bit 'special' or unusual, you went to the Tyne. Interesting, eh?

There was actually a great deal more to the two-hour session than I have been able to recall here. Please, please, keep a look out for future such tours - I guarantee you'll not regret it. My thanks, then, to Lizzie, Ruth and Rachel for their time and effort (I hope those names are right) - and a mention, too, for Alison, a fourth archivist who was quietly working away on some research in the background. She didn't partake in the 'presentation', but I exchanged a few words with her before I left as we've known each other for years - her as an archivist for 28 years and me as a regular searchroom user for at least as long. It was nice to see her again.