Outside visit to Wakefield Archives

Rotary Club of Birstall Luddites
Outside visit to West Yorkshire History Centre.
On Mon 4th March Luddites partners and friends assembled at the West Yorkshire History Centre in Wakefield
for an outside visit organised by Rotarian David.
    
The evening started with an introductory talk by the archivist on the archive Service, the
"Medieval Magnified" exhibition and a tour of the building. 

The building is a West Yorkshire Local Government archive centre with offices in Wakefield, Bradford, Calderdale, Kirklees and Leeds.
The centre provides access to all types of records and information and conservation of the stored information. 
The centre holds records of schools, housing, council minutes, public health, transport and Deeds. These are all stored in environmentally controlled strongrooms with use of barcodes to find items.

The archivist led the visitors through the "Medieval Magnified" exibition showing the earliest record, a 1138 record of the Fountains Abbey Charter. Also a Charter from 1215 from Nostel.
The tour of the building led upstairs into staff-only record racking floor showing racks and boxes with barcodes.
The tour ended in the public offices where visitors can search for information.
Club members were interested in a local map of the Batley Birstall area from 1910 showing Birstall as Burstaill.

Big thanks to David for organising the visit..