Work gets under way on demolishing Doncaster Archives building

Work has got under way on demolishing the building used to store thousands of historic documents and artefacts relating to Doncaster’s history.
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Doncaster Archives, in King Edward Road, Balby, closed its doors in 2019, with all documents and items within its extensive collection moved to outside the town while a new base is created in Doncaster.

The former Balby Junior School became the archives and Local Studies unit in the early 1980s, becoming a haunt for local historians and people keen to discover about the town’s past.

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But the building’s days were numbered when structural faults were found, forcing the building in King Edward Road to close.

The former Doncaster Archives building in Balby.The former Doncaster Archives building in Balby.
The former Doncaster Archives building in Balby.

A Doncaster Council spokesman said: “Since then all of the archival holdings have been removed from King Edward Road and almost all have been placed for the time being in storage facilities outside Doncaster.

"These facilities are approved by The National Archives for the storage of archival material. The records will not, however, be accessible until they have been brought back to the borough.

"Work is now underway to prepare a new research centre for the Archives and Local Studies Library within the town of Doncaster. In the meantime, although Doncaster Archives & Local Studies Library staff can continue to respond to general enquiries, full responses to more detailed enquiries will not be possible for the most part until the archives and local studies collections have been rehoused.”

The archive includes documents dating back to 1194 and an archive of newspapers from as far back as 1786.