Treasures Hunt among County Archives : Cumbria County Council

Users of Cumbria County Council's record offices are being asked to nominate their top "treasures" from the county's archives. The items will form part of an exhibition of the 30 records most valued by the people of the region from among the many thousands in the archives of the north west.

Councillor Tim Heslop, Cumbria County Council Cabinet member with responsibility for cultural strategy, said:

"This project will show how much record offices are treasured by the growing number of people who use them. The archives are not dry and dusty documents, but a means of illuminating the history of the county and explaining the present. The record offices are places where people make fascinating and sometimes exciting discoveries. "This is the first time that users and the service have joined together in such a project, so I do urge researchers and users of the service to take part."

The competition is part of the North West Archives Festival 2003. Its aim is to find and display 30 items in archives in the north west which can be termed "treasures of the region" and which illustrate the wealth of information in the region's archives. They will be items which have a cultural, historical, social, political or aesthetic significance for the history of an organisation, for local people, the north west region, the UK or even the world. It is hoped to put the "treasures" on show to the public in record offices throughout the region.

Closing date for nominations is July 31 and members of the public can make their nominations to any of the county's four records offices in Carlisle, Barrow, Kendal and Whitehaven, or via the archive service's website. Cumbria Archive Service will judge the top three from the county to go forward to the region.

In comparison with other English counties, Cumbria Archive Service is one of the busiest, with the third highest number of visitors in 2001-2002. The number of visiting researchers rose by 36 per cent between 1996/97 and 2001-02. The most popular research topic is family history, but many visitors are researching local history. Some inquiries are of a legal or official nature (about land ownership or court hearings, for example) and the record offices are also well used for educational purposes, by school pupils, students and academics.

Hundreds of new items are added to the holdings of Cumbria Archive Service each year and recently-acquired material includes records of theatrical productions at the Century Theatre in Keswick, letters from a young tuberculosis patient describing her treatment in gruesome detail, and the archives of a Barrow brewer and glass plate negatives giving an insight into the resort of Grange-over-Sands in the early 20th century.