Huge collection offers gateway to the past

An Aladdin’s Cave of treasures providing an in-depth insight into the history of the Newark area lies in the unlikely setting of an industrial estate.

Newark and Sherwood District Council’s Resource Centre, on Brunel Drive, Newark, opened to the public in 2006.

It is home to more than 60,000 items that form the council’s museums reserve collection.

They range from prehistoric mammoth teeth, found in a gravel pit at Hoveringham in the 1960s, to one of the first laptop computers from the 1980s.

Stuffed animals, agricultural equipment, radios, Civil War siege coins, and police knuckle dusters sit on row after row of shelving.

A folding bicycle used in the Operation Market Garden landing at Arnhem during the second world war is mounted in almost pristine condition on a wall.

Hidden away in one of the many thousands of boxes is one of the earliest photographs, a Daguerreotype from the mid-19th Century of Mrs Eliza Shaw, a librarian at the Newark Mechanics Institute.

Old signs and photographs from a bygone age are displayed around the centre, which is kept at a constant temperature and humidity to preserve the artefacts.

Members of the public can explore the wealth of history at the centre and use it for their own research.

There are more than 16,000 photographs, given to the museums service over the years, available for people to look at and reproduce for their own records.

Mr Allan Towler, of Naseby Avenue, Newark, is one of four volunteers working to catalogue the photographs.

So far 12,000 have been catalogued, with another 4,000-5,000 to go.

Notes are made of where they were taken, what and who they show.

The information is typed into a computer system on which 95% of the centre’s items have already been catalogued.

Mr Towler said they hoped to be able to cross-reference photographs with different descriptions to make them easier to find.

Mr Glyn Hughes, the district council’s collections and learning manager, who oversees the centre, said every response from someone naming a person in a photograph was invaluable.

He said the photographs were particularly useful for people researching their family history.

The resource centre is open Wednesdays and Thursdays from 12.30pm to 5pm, Fridays from 9am to 1.30pm and Saturdays from 9am to noon.

Admission is free but appointments must be made.