Current Projects
Reuniting the DeLittle Records
Explore Archives are delighted to have received a Records at Risk grant from The National Archives. This vital funding will allow us to appoint the National Conservation Service to stabilise, clean, and repackage the records of the DeLittle Wood Type Manufactory, a York firm active from 1888 to 1998. DeLittle was one of the UK’s leading wood letter manufacturers, and during its heyday, the firm served a national and international customer base. The collection includes 131 volumes of business records as well as bundles of type design specimen sheets. Dating from 1889 to 1985, the records reveal the firm’s daily business over the course of a century, with details of orders, customers, wages, and accounts. Prior to June 2025 this material was in private storage and suffering from mould, dirt, and an historic carpet beetle infestation.
Explore already holds a portion of the DeLittle archive, so this recently discovered material will complement and help to complete the collection. Brought together for the first time since the closure of the factory, these two sets of records offer significant research and outreach potential for York’s printing heritage.
The Poor Law in York
As part of a placement partnership with the University of York we were delighted to have Jo Parsons, a student on the IPUP course working with us. Jo worked with a selection of our Poor Law Union records to develop a timeline of how the poor law was administered in York and how that developed and changed throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.
You can view the timeline by following the link here.
Past Projects
On the Drawing Board
In 2018, Explore York Libraries and Archives received funding from Archives Revealed and the City of York Council to catalogue and repackage the City of York Architects’ and Engineers’ plans [1801-2000s].
The collection comprises thousands of drawings covering all aspects of York’s built environment including: civic buildings, housing, bridges, sewers, parks, transport, the city walls, street improvements and more. Many of the drawings are works of art in themselves; others offer a new perspective on the city. Together, they provide a unique resource for charting the changes to York’s architectural heritage over two centuries.
Fundamental to this project was a new way of working with volunteers, who were responsible for listing and repackaging the plans with the oversight of an archivist. Overall our 34 volunteers:
- contributed over 2600 hours of their time
- listed over 10000 individual plans
- repackaged over 600 boxes of archives
This approach allowed us to catalogue many plans over a short period, thereby making these wonderful drawings available to all.
Past Caring
In 2016, Explore York Libraries and Archives received a grant of £156 560 from Wellcome, the world’s largest health charity, for a two-year project to catalogue and conserve the healthcare and Poor Law records of the city. The project included the archives of the York Poor Law Union and Workhouse [1830s-1950s], York’s Medical Officer of Health, the Department of Health, and the Department of Housing and Environmental Health [1850s-1970s]. Together, these collections comprise over 1500 volumes and 350 boxes of material. Encompassing nearly two centuries of social, economic, and public health history, the records tell the story of York’s struggle to improve the lives and health of its citizens against the backdrop of rapid population expansion, inadequate housing and unemployment.
The aim of the project was to make these extraordinary records accessible to everyone. A professional conservator treated the collections and, in September 2018 we launched a fully searchable online catalogue. To achieve our aims, we enlisted the support of a team of over 30 volunteers who helped to list, clean and repackage the collection. Since their release, these collections have become the most requested material in our reading room. Our audio-drama, The Nuisance Inspector, is based on these collections. And Clements Hall Local History Group has been carrying out extensive research on our Poor Law collections: Clements Hall Local History Group – Making ends meet on Nunnery Lane: revealing local poverty in the Victorian period.
