Archives

The City of Winchester Trust holds historical documents and illustrations in the Archive Room in the Heritage Centre.
These include:

• Illustrative Documents
  • many photographs from the late 19th century to the present day
  • some engravings of parts of the City in the 18th and 19th century
  • a collection of photographic slides showing various streets within the old walls of Winchester
  • a collection of slides taken from sepia photographs dating from the late 1800s to the late 20th century
  
  
• Planning and Related Documents
  • City Council planning documents
  • Trust correspondence concerning specific planning applications
  • Trust correspondence concerning District Plans
  
  
• Minutes of Trust AGM’s and Trust Council Meetings from 1957 to the present day
• Details of Trust Award Schemes for outstanding design from 1984 and 1987 including presentation boards for the last few years
• A small collection of copies of maps of the City from the Middle Ages until the present day
• A collection of material used in past public displays which can be used for future display

Search The Archives

Two databases have been built containing descriptions of the contents of all the 180 archival boxes and descriptions of all the photographic prints in the archives. As a result a searchable online List of Items in Archival Boxes is now available as is a searchable Archive Photographs List

How To Search The Archive List or Archive Photograph List

Click on the down arrow to the side of the 'Find' box at the top of the index or list. Then click on the 'Open Full Reader Search'. In the box in the left column that appears, type in the word or phrase you are looking for and then press 'Search'. A list of all the relevant entries appears and each entry can be accessed. The first column in the index is the box number in the Archive Room where the item you are looking for is located. The second column is a rough guide to the contents of the box. The third column is a guide to the medium of the item, ie. Photograph, Correspondence, Map etc. The fourth column gives you more detail ie. what the photograph is of, or what the correspondence relates to etc.

NB. Sometimes there are multiple items under the same entry ie. 6 photographs of the Guildhall, but there is only one entry in the index, sometimes 'many' is used implying over 15 (usually correspondence), sometimes the number of items under the same entry is shown after a capital X. Also as it is not always easy to date items in the Archives those of uncertain age are left undated.

Image Gallery

The Trust archives hold several thousand photographic images as slides, negatives and prints. These are being digitised so that they can be viewed on this website. We now have three collections online showing Winchester from the late 1800s to the 1950s.

Archive Enquiries

Anyone wanting to make further enquiries about the Trust archives can e-mail the Archivist Nick Hirst on Nickhirst@aol.com or contact the Heritage Centre on 01962 851664.