Northumberland Archives
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nlandarchives.bsky.social
Northumberland Archives
@nlandarchives.bsky.social
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Accredited archives for the county of Northumberland and Diocese of Newcastle. Housed at Woodhorn, near Ashington, and at Berwick Library. northumberlandarchives.com
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nlandarchives.bsky.social
📜 Just 2 spaces left! Join our WW2 Records Workshop at Northumberland Archives and uncover life on the Home Front — from wartime work to air raids & Civil Defence.

🔍 Discover what the records reveal and learn how to research your own stories: tinyurl.com/52fkfa4z
October 24, 2025 at 9:45 AM
nlandarchives.bsky.social
⌨ Read our latest WW2 Project blog on the Mitford Welcome Home Fund (1944–46): tinyurl.com/3mw5xpb9. Discover how Mitford community raised money with whist drives, dances & raffles to thank returning servicemen & women after WW2. 📧 Sign up to our WW2 newsletter: eepurl.com/jlGMpM #HeritageFund 🤞
September 9, 2025 at 8:08 AM
nlandarchives.bsky.social
📢Join us for a Berwick Heritage Open Day talk by Phil Rowett: Put That Light Out – Wartime Law in the Berwick Area 🕖 Sun 14 Sept, 7pm (online). Discover how locals dodged wartime laws, ending in a 1946 stolen ambulance stopped by police gunfire! 🎟️ Book: tinyurl.com/55hs2ecw
September 8, 2025 at 1:46 PM
nlandarchives.bsky.social
📢 Join us for our first WW2 Talk: Conscientious Objectors in North East England with Stuart Anderson. Explore the hidden wartime experiences of conscientious objectors on the Home Front. 🎟️ Book via Eventbrite: tinyurl.com/s8z9znuj 📧 Sign up for our WW2 Project Newsletter: eepurl.com/jlGMpM
August 27, 2025 at 9:28 AM
nlandarchives.bsky.social
🎺Heritage Open Days announcement🎺

We're going to be bringing #TheArchivesJob to Woodhorn Museum!
13 Sep 2025
The escape room and museum entrance will be free, but booking for the escape room is ESSENTIAL:
www.heritageopendays.org.uk/submission-e...
August 14, 2025 at 9:53 AM
nlandarchives.bsky.social
As part of our WW2 project, Berwick Record Office has created an exhibition, displaying this weekend Friday 15 - Sunday 17, exploring North Northumberland’s contribution to the Far East Campaign. The exhibition will be on display at St Andrew’s Wallace Green Church in Berwick.📍
A poster advertising the exhibition featuring a black and white image showing 4 soldiers in their Far East uniform for hot weather.
August 12, 2025 at 7:56 AM
nlandarchives.bsky.social
Have you had the chance to see our new WW2 Home Front Exhibition, exploring the stories of ordinary Northumbrians, at County Hall? The exhibition uncovers both tragic & courageous stories from Northumberland Archives. Follow our social media to stay up to date with our WW2 project. 📣
A shaded black-out lamp used during the war is displayed in a cabinet. A woman looks at an exhibition board about wartime food.
August 8, 2025 at 2:23 PM
nlandarchives.bsky.social
Are you going to be at #DCDC25 next week? @durham-university.bsky.social

There for #HistoryDay on Tuesday?

Stop by our escape van and say hello!

#archives #GLAM #escaperoom #archivesjob
Jo and Amy chilling outside of the van. the van is decorated with a muti-covered livery and has a the "Archives Job" logo on the side, over the window.
July 24, 2025 at 1:59 PM
nlandarchives.bsky.social
We've just released some extra tickets for our escape van!
If you're going to Allendale Show (16 Aug) or Glendale Show (25 Aug), we'll be there too!

Booking via eventbrite:
Allendale Show
www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1415124047...
Glendale Show
www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1461732935...
July 4, 2025 at 1:12 PM
nlandarchives.bsky.social
Announcing our latest exhibition!

Art Deco 100
Celebrating art deco design around Northumberland

County Hall,
Morpeth
Now until 1 Aug 2025
July 1, 2025 at 9:32 AM
nlandarchives.bsky.social
At Northumberland Archives we have a small collection of programmes and posters from some of the early festivals, as well as the 'Northumbrian Anthology No.3’ - a collection of dialect competition entries from the gathering held in 1973.
📜🖼️📖
Collage of documents from Northumberland Archives. NRO 7791/2/5 Colour photograph of The Morpeth Gathering, Morpeth, Northumberland, showing the Mayor greeting the horsemen who have ridden through the town. NRO 10563/1 Extracts from ‘Northumbrian Anthology No.3’ - ‘When we were Young - N. Thompson’, ‘Childhood Memories – Nan Chrisp’, ‘Wor Delight – R.A. Wood’
April 24, 2025 at 10:47 AM
nlandarchives.bsky.social
🌼 This weekend marks the 57th Northumbrian Gathering in Morpeth – time to dust off those Morris dancing bells and Northumbrian bagpipes!

www.northumbriana.org.uk/gathering/in...

Short 🧵follows...

#archives #history #dialect #northumberland #bagpipes
Collage of documents from Northumberland Archives about the Morpeth Gathering. 📸 NRO 8134/1 poster from the 10th Morpeth Gathering along with programme particulars for the 7th gathering and poster imagery of the ‘Morpeth Gadgie’. NRO 7791/2/5 Textual description of Morpeth Gathering
April 24, 2025 at 10:40 AM
nlandarchives.bsky.social
The puzzles for the Disrupt the Archives escape room are coming together!

Playtesting is revealing where to tweak the puzzles and where players might need a bit more help.

But, is it ethical to use your colleagues as guinea-pigs?

Asking for a friend...

#archives
Northumberland Archives at Woodhorn: the study centre. This is usually where researchers sit and peruse documents. This morning puzzling took over! The puzzles are laid out on the map table and desks ready to be tested. A four-digit lock in focus. The rest of the puzzle is a sheet next to the lock - if you look closely you can see some of the creepy crawlies that eat archives on the sheet! A set of tally sticks in the foreground with a set of coloured paper cups placed upside down on the desk behind them. The paper cups have roman numerals written on the side. In the foreground is a tangle of pink Heritage Open Days bunting. In the background is the archive study centre desk which has a series of photographs stuck to it for the purposes of this puzzle...
March 20, 2025 at 11:12 AM
nlandarchives.bsky.social
Disrupt the Archives project is spending all week developing our escape room.

Today: electronics supported by NCC IT staff AND filming with November Club theatre company.
A hat helps the characterisation of a gang boss! Using Micro:Bits to programme potential puzzles.
February 25, 2025 at 5:09 PM
nlandarchives.bsky.social
On the release of the new Bridget Jones film, we wanted to share some more of Mary Hannington’s diaries:

She saw the film ‘I was a spy’ and wrote "Edmund Gwenn (what a canny Burgomaster!) and Anthony Bushell made a bonny German secret service agent – handsome and callous.”

See alt text for more
NRO 11029 – Mary Hannington is photographed walking down a street in Newcastle. She is wearing a long light-coloured overcoat which is belted at the waist. She has on a cloche hat, a scarf, dark gloves and dark low-heeled shoes. She has a handbag under her arm and is carrying several parcels. There are passers-by heading the opposite direction to the right of the picture and the window of a shop on the left. A double decker bus (or tram?) can be seen in the background to the right. Picture of a page of Mary Hannington's diary (NRO 11029). Monday Oct 30. Small photographs of actors have been pasted at the top of the page. Mary's diary entry is hand written below. Part of it reads: “Tonight went to the Queen’s to see ‘I was a spy’... The film was jolly good, production and acting, splendid. Madeleine Canoll was good also Conrad Veidt, Herbert Marshall, Edmund Gwenn (what a canny Burgomaster!) and Anthony Bushell made a bonny German secret service agent – handsome and callous.”
February 17, 2025 at 10:35 AM
nlandarchives.bsky.social
Happy Valentine's Day! ❤️
Forget #bridgetjonesdiary- we have the diaries of Mary Hannington.
Entry from 1935: local amdram production, including a certain Billy in the cast...
"Wish, by the way, I could keep my thoughts away from that young man because he’s a silly a** – birds of a feather though!!"
Photograph of Mary Hannington (1914-2003). Mary is perching on the railing of a boat at sea. She is looking windswept and fabulous. The is wearing a dark pencil skirt and a light jumper, topped with a scarf tied over her hair. She is next to a lifeboat which has a lifeboug attached to it. The lifebouy has the name "Sandhill" visible along the top. Photographs from the Evening Chronicle of the production of "Ruddigore" that Mary attended in 1935 and wrote about in her diary. She wasn't very complimentary of the newspaper photographer, writing "I could have done better myself with my brownie [camera]". Scan of Mary's diary. (NRO 11029) Mary has a humorous tone of voice, shown in this diary entry, remarking on the actors and local coverage of a production of ‘Ruddigore’.
February 14, 2025 at 11:31 AM
nlandarchives.bsky.social
This Holocaust Memorial Day we look in our collection at a postcard collected by Mr Thomas Holliday when he visited Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1972.

A necessary journey that does not get easier, an unthinkable tragedy that feels incomprehensible today. We shall remember.
Black and white postcard of the gates to the Auschwitz concentration camp. The infamous slogan "Arbeit macht frei" can be seen above the gates. NRO 07173/53 Photograph of the gates of Auschwitz taken by Sarah, an archivist at Northumberland Archives.
January 27, 2025 at 9:37 AM
nlandarchives.bsky.social
From our friends at the Surtees Society:

Stockton-on-Tees 1600-1835: Urban History in Regional
Context Day School
Saturday 5 April 2025 9.45 - 16.00
Venue: River Tees Watersports Centre

Contact martin@peagam.co.uk for further details
January 24, 2025 at 11:49 AM
nlandarchives.bsky.social
STOP PRESS! 🛑

The Woodhorn site will be CLOSED tomorrow due to the predicted adverse weather conditions.

The archives study centre will be closed to researchers and staff will be working from home.

We're sorry for any inconvience this may cause.
Extract of a document. NRO 00452/D/8/1/1 Journal of wind and weather conditions and daily activities, relating to wrecks, 1772. Part of the Lord Crewe collection. https://northumberlandarchives.com/exhibitions/crewe/1.html
January 23, 2025 at 11:37 AM
nlandarchives.bsky.social
Buzzing with ideas!

We just hosted students @northumbriauni.bsky.social studying computer games.

We showed them around the archives and asked them to come up with an idea based around what they saw. We just want to make all of their ideas now!

Archivist simulator - yes please! #archives
Zoe and Shaun, PhD students, holding up their brainstorm and sketches for an archives computer game. They went for an immersive AR game that could be used in the archives to learn more about what we hold, guided by a friendly barn own!
January 22, 2025 at 11:34 AM
nlandarchives.bsky.social
As part of our Heritage Lottery funded project "Everyday Life in a Northumbrian Manor" we offered a small grant to our volunteer groups.

Our group in Hexham used their grant to organise a family history morning at the Abbey this Satuday. See poster for details. #archives #history #familyhistory
Poster for event at Hexham Abbey on Saturday 18th January 2025. The text reads: Is your family from Hexham? An exhibition at Hexham Abbey North Transept Saturday 18th January 2025 10am-1pm The Manorial Project Local and Family History Research from Manorial Court Records
January 13, 2025 at 4:10 PM
nlandarchives.bsky.social
Escape room project update 🗝️

Our group of young people in Hexham started work on the narrative of their escape room - plotting characters, themes and jeopardy!

They then created a treasure hunt for each other with clues leading to random objects around the room.
#archives #taskmasterUK #NHLF
Joe Hufton leading a session with young people at Queen's Hall Studio, Hexham. Joe is stood in the middle of the picture surrounded by young people sat on bright yellow chairs. They are grouped around tables. The brick wall at the back is painted black and has a sign saying "Q H Studio" in white. Theatre lights can be seen overhead. The bare concrete floor of the studio. On the floor is a 1960s knitting pattern and a brass lamp. A group of young people gathered around a table. They have some pieces of yellow paper on the table and two of the group are holding pens. They look like they are thinking hard and involved in intense discussion. A group of young people looking intently at Joe (who is out of shot) as he gives them instructions on how to set up their treasure hunts using the random objects that he brought along for them.
January 13, 2025 at 9:46 AM
nlandarchives.bsky.social
New deposit bought with a grant from The Friends of the Nations' Libraries.
10 volumes of minutes of The Merchants and Taylors Company of Morpeth 1608-1708.

The Company was one of seven guilds that formed the town council. They were responsible for making decisions affecting the town. #archives
Detail of a page from the minute book of the Merchants and Taylors [Tailors] Company of Morpeth. The pages of this volume are a bit crumpled and slightly torn at the edge. The writing is in secretary hand and the text dates this entry to 29th December 1615.
January 6, 2025 at 10:56 AM
nlandarchives.bsky.social
Woodhorn Museum will be closed in the new year for restoration works:
6 Jan 2025 - 21 Jan 2025

We will still be open as usual during that period. (See website for opening hours.)

If you are coming to vist us, please be extra careful when walking from the main gates to the #archives entrance.
Traditional Christmas card with a small rotund man dressed in red with white hair, a bald pate and a beard drinking an outsized tankard of beer. He has an oversize corkscrew on his belt. The cartoon is surrounded by stylized foliage on all four sides. The text at the top right of the card reads "Wishing you a Merry Christmas". There is some further righting on the left of the card "YE SILVER KING", possibly hand-written. We do not endorse imbibing a vessel of alcohol larger than your own body. Please drink responsibly (obvs).
December 18, 2024 at 3:56 PM
nlandarchives.bsky.social
Sunday 15th December marks the official opening of passenger services along the Northumberland Line. 🎊

To celebrate here are a few pictures from the #archives of the train stations as they were:

Bedlington, Ashington and Seaton Delaval

#history #trains #northumberland #northumberlandline
Black and white photograph of Bedlington train station. Hand tinted postcard of Ashington train station. Black and white photogrph of Seaton Delaval train station.
December 13, 2024 at 4:28 PM