A Moving Story - What We Did This Month
The final countdown to the move is on - come with us on a monthly peek behind the scenes!
We’ve been working through our collections and getting them ready for transport to our new centres. In June 2025 we received 1,000 custom-made archive boxes at our Duke Street site. Our last delivery – or so we thought.
Things are constantly evolving, and in February we took delivery of almost 700 more boxes. They are now safely in our strongrooms, ready to be filled for the move to their new homes.
Our conservators have been repackaging large, oversized items, such as maps and plans. The work has unearthed a few hidden gems, one of which is some handmade paper with a witch’s watermark, given to us in 2022. It was from Wookey Hole paper mill in Somerset - the witch is a local legend and is used as a logo.
We now have the support of 32 volunteers, carrying out invaluable work including indexing, transcribing, repackaging, and research.
In February, Archives and Local Studies Manager Paul presented a project update to our volunteers. Volunteer Officer Katie reflects that ‘It was wonderful to welcome 21 volunteers, both long-standing and new. Thank you to everyone who attended, asked questions, and offered valuable feedback.’
We have been searching our collection of official Town Guides for potential Gems. These short booklets, some dating back to the 1920s and 1930s, contain information and photographs about an area along with adverts from local businesses.
Archives Assistant Hannah has found that ‘They’re proving a rich source of material for possible Gems – we’re looking through the guides town by town, and digitising images we’d like to add to the Gems shortlists.’
It has also been a busy month for our Learning Programme. All of our education Loan Boxes have been loaned out to schools, with a waiting list, and Learning Officer Chloe has been carrying out new online learning sessions with primary schools.
In her research, she recently found an image of school children learning to write in our Macclesfield photograph collection. Chloe says that ‘In our Victorians online session, we spend time discussing how students were discouraged from writing with their left hand, so it’s brilliant to have some evidence to show this from our collection.’
Somehow we also managed to fit in a very important visit to our new Crewe centre that helps us know what we are working towards.
This is ‘eyes on’ work by the whole team across all of our collections for the first time in 40 years - and we continue to be delighted by them!
By Michael Keegan, Archives Assistant
