Bid to create £3.6m home for city archive clears its first hurdle

West Yorkshire Archive Service has won initial support from the Heritage Lottery Fund for a £3.6m funding bid to create a new permanent home for Wakefield’s archives.

The Archive Service’s Wakefield collections are currently held in the old Registry of Deeds building, which is no longer fit for purpose.

Wakefield Council has allocated a site in Kirkgate for a replacement building, where the service will have the space to reconnect communities with their archives.

The archive collections held in Wakefield range in date from the 12th century to the present day.

Most record the development of the West Riding as one of England’s main industrial and manufacturing centres in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries.

They include the 7m entries in the deeds registers which record property transactions from 1704 to 1972 – a unique source of information for the history of houses, families and neighbourhoods.

Wakefield Council leader Coun Peter Box, said: “This is very good news and a big step forward 
in keeping the archives in Wakefield, the seat of the old West Riding.

“The records are part of our heritage and history and I hope we can now move on to developing a bid which will secure funding for this nationally important collection of information.”

Fiona Spiers, Head of Heritage Lottery Fund Yorkshire and Humber, said: “This archive is truly extraordinary – a rich source of the minutiae of daily life in the West Riding which gives us a fascinating insight into the triumphs and the tragedies of 19th-century existence. We believe this project has great potential and by giving it our initial support we hope that it will progress on to securing a full Heritage Lottery Fund grant at a later date.”

A first-round pass means the project meets Heritage Lottery Fund criteria for funding. Having been awarded a first-round pass, the project now has up to two years to submit fully developed proposals to compete for a firm award.