The new Oldham Heritage and Arts Centre will display historic documents, newspaper clippings images and articles from the Oldham Chronicle after the daily newspaper, which had been going since 1854, had printed it's last ever edition in August 2016.
The photographic and documentary archives at the Oldham Chrobicles Union Street office were described as “outstanding and absolutely vital for telling the story of the borough of Oldham”.
Oldham Council worked closely with the administrators of the newspaper to ensure the collection is saved.
The archives are now in public ownership and are set to take pride of place in the new Oldham Heritage and Arts Centre.
The new Oldham Heritage and arts centre is in the restored Grade II former library building on Union Street and will showcase the story of Oldham’s past from its time as the cotton spinning capital of the world to the present day.
The archive is 25.35 cubic metres in size and consists of the firm’s own business records, news cuttings covering key people, events, places, communities, crime and sport (in hard copy and microfilm) plus photographs and negatives or glass slides dating back to the 1930s.
The collection has been boxed and bar-coded before being moved to temporary storage. It will remain in this safe environment until the new collections store – being developed as part of the Oldham Heritage and Arts Centre – is ready to open in late 2019/early 2020 when it will be made available for public use.
The Council is working on grant funding to help with funding the work needed to catalogue this collection.
