New Road Guest House

The Swindon and Wiltshire History Centre only 5 minutes walk from us and contains the county's repository of historic documents dating from the 12th century. As well as being a state of the art facility for the county’s and borough’s records, it also houses the local studies library, the archaeology service, Wiltshire buildings record, museum service and the conservation service.

The modern building is the home for hundreds of thousands of artefacts and paper records from across the county. The centre, which is equivalent in size to five football pitches, has enough paper records inside to measure seven miles if they were all lined up. In particular it contains:

· Marriage records for the five registration districts in Wiltshire: Devizes and Marlborough, Trowbridge, Warminster, Salisbury & Swindon.

· 105,000 historic wills dating from 1540-1858

· Photographs, newspapers and other published material on the history of the county.

· Comprehensive files and information about historic buildings within the county.

· Records, advice and information on Wiltshire's archaeology.

The temperature controlled archive rooms holds 70,000 photographs, 2,600 microfilms, 3,000 maps and 18,000 books. The oldest record is 855-years old and has to remain in a special environmentally controlled tank. Among the collections is an extensive range of documents relating to the Great Western Railway including photos, driver logs and receipts.

The centre also has a collection of more unusual items including a 400-year-old Ethiopian prayer book, a Scout log book with bark covers and a memorial card made by Swindon Town football club fans when they beat Arsenal in 1969. Documents including a letter from William Morris and hundreds of letters from Beatrix Potter form an important part of the substantial collection of National Trust archives held by the Centre.

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