Records at Risk Grants funded in 2025
Here are the projects that were awarded Records at Risk Grants in 2025, to save significant physical and digital records across the UK facing immediate peril.
The Ballast Trust
The Ballast Trust is a charity that rescues and processes business records. This Records at Risk Grant has enabled the Business Archives Surveying Officer for Scotland, who works at The Ballast Trust, to save the archives of Ballantine Castings Ltd.
Ballantine Castings Ltd was formed in 2014 following the demise of Ballantine Bo’ness Iron Company which had a rich and expansive history of metalwork in the UK and internationally. The liquidation of the company in July 2025 left behind a rich archive including drawings and plans, catalogues, quotation books, purchases ledgers, invoice books, and project files which provide a unique insight into the company’s late 20th and early 21st century projects for sites including Glasgow Green, Westminster Bridge, Waverley Station, and Big Ben.
This is likely to be one of the most significant and complete archives of iron work in the UK, and no collection of traditional cast iron patterns of this scale is known to exist in Scotland. Both the patterns and the company’s documentary history are intrinsically linked, and it would be a significant loss to the foundry’s story if only one part of the collection was to survive. With the help of this grant, the Surveying Officer coordinated a response between various heritage organisations and the insolvency practitioners, acting quickly to save this large and complex collection.
Records at Risk Grants are delivered in partnership with The British Records Association and The Business Archives Council. This grant was kindly funded by The British Records Association.
We are very grateful for this grant and the prompt response from the team at The National Archives which has enabled us to act quickly and ensure the safe transportation, relocation, and preservation of the archive of Ballantine’s Castings. This has also enabled us to continue working with partners to salvage and preserve as much as possible of the vast pattern collection.
Kiara King, Archivist and Director
Ballast Trust
The Science Museum Group
The Great North Eastern Railway (GNER) Archive has been at risk of disposal ever since the railway closed in the early 2000s. However, the Science Museum Group can now use their records at risk grant to secure what has been identified as the most complete paper archive of a rail franchise in the UK, not including Northern Ireland. This is according to the Railway Industry National Archive Project (RINA), which aims to survey the records of the privatised rail industry.
The Science Museum Group will use the grant to secure the transport and storage of the archive. They will undertake conservation assessments and remove the archive from its unsuitable, hazardous packaging, facilitating its long-term survival. Once the archive is safely housed in archive stores, work will begin to promote its existence and establish a funded cataloguing project.
The GNER Papers are an excellent case study of how a UK rail franchise operated. This is the beginning of a long-term programme which will make this fascinating archive available for the public.
Alison Peterson, Senior Curator of Archives and Railway Collections
Worcestershire Archives and Archaeology Service
Lea & Perrins’ Worcestershire Sauce, the global brand now owned by Kraft Heinz, has been manufactured in Worcester since 1837. Recently the factory’s archives were deposited with Worcestershire Archive and Archaeology Service – they will use their records at risk grant to make these unique records available for public research. The collection charts the creation of the company through to the 1980s and includes financial records, publicity material, legal documents on trademarks and patents, photographs, employee records and maybe, just maybe… the recipe itself!
This is such a significant local resource, about local people and local history, but it tells an international story which will be of interest to anyone who has ever had a taste of the famous sauce.
Dr Adrian Gregson, County Archivist
Worcestershire Archive and Archaeology Service
Hunter Archaeological Society
In 2009, the Archaeological Research and Consultancy at the University of Sheffield (ARCUS), a commercial archaeological enterprise, closed down during a redundancy drive. ARCUS left behind a paper archive of national importance containing more than 2000 Archaeological reports produced on various sites across the UK, including the industrial sites of Sheffield, South Yorkshire, and Derbyshire. Hunter Archaeological Society made efforts to sort, index and prepare the archive for digitisation but building closures at the university, and thus the loss of storage space, had put the records at high risk of imminent loss. This Records at Risk Grant will give Hunter Archaeological Society the time and resources needed to digitise and archive the reports in full.
It would not have been possible to make this unique archive publicly available without additional help. This grant has directly enabled the digitisation and archiving of these valuable records which, for the first time, will be freely available to researchers.
Colin Merrony, Founder of Commercial Services at the University of Sheffield in 1992 and Committee M
Hunter Archaeology Society
Re-Dock
Filmmaker, Tim Brunsden, has documented LGBTQ + culture across the UK since 2006, capturing performances, protests, and personal stories at events like Liverpool’s Homotopia Festival and London’s Duckie. His collection—spread across 500 MiniDV tapes and 25 ageing hard drives—features rare footage and interviews with trailblazing figures such as Terence Davies, April Ashley, and Bette Bourne. The historically significant material has been held in a fragile temporary format and was at risk of becoming unusable but Re-Dock can now use their grant to stabilise the collection, log the contents, and begin preparing it for long-term preservation. Working in partnership with the North West Film Archive, Homotopia and the Liverpool Records Office, and with support by a dedicated team of volunteers, Re-Dock will log the video material and lay the groundwork for future cataloguing.
This funding allows us to begin preserving one of the most significant LGBTQ + video archives in the North West. Stabilising this treasury of collective memories will offer us deeper insight and understanding of LGBTQ+ social heritage, enabling audiences to access the archive more easily in the future. This is about more than just saving tapes—it’s about reclaiming LGBTQ+ histories and making them visible
Colette Whittington, artist
Explore York Libraries and Archives
Explore York Libraries & Archives will use their funding 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.
Currently in private storage, this material is suffering from mould, dirt, and a historic carpet beetle infestation. Explore already holds a portion of the DeLittle archive, so this recently discovered material will complement the collection and help complete it. Brought together for the first time since the factory’s closure, these two sets of records offer significant research and outreach potential for York’s printing heritage.
We are delighted to receive this grant, which will secure the future of the records at risk and enrich the DeLittle archive we hold here at Explore. We already use the firm’s records regularly, particularly for our engagement programmes, and with the addition of this new material we expect access to increase even further.
Julie-Ann Vickers, Head of Archives
Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick
The archives of the National Association of Colliery Overmen, Deputies and Shotfirers (NACODS), found in the former union headquarters in Barnsley, are an important and hitherto inaccessible source on one of Britain’s key industries during the 20th century. After nine years in an unheated and otherwise empty building, the archives were damp to the touch and insect pests were identified in the main storage area. The Records at Risk grant has funded specialist conservation work to dry and de-infest the collection, allowing the eighty boxes of archival material to be safely transferred to the Modern Records Centre’s stores.
We are very grateful for the Records at Risk Grant which has enabled us to stabilise this important archive collection which was thought to have been lost to researchers. The mining industry was a key part of many British communities and conservation of the NACODS archives helps us to preserve some of their stories.
Anna O'Neill, University Librarian
Dreamland Trust
The Dreamland Heritage Trust is excited to have received a grant from The National Archives’ Records at Risk programme. The DTH is responsible for a unique archive containing a variety of items from the history of the Dreamland Amusement Park in Margate. We hold a range of documents such as adverts ranging from 1928 onwards, a wide variety of photos documenting original rides covering the last 100 years, various small artefacts such as parts of historic rides, ticket stubs and promotional buttons, as well as detailed documentation of the Save Dreamland campaign in 2013 which ensured that the park is still open for visitors today.
As a small charity, we have not been able so far to find a permanent location for our archive. Currently we are using storage in an old container which is held on disused and rat-infested land; not only does this present a significant risks to the health of our collection, it also presents challenges to the health of our volunteers in accessing our collection.
With the NA grant, we will focus on ensuring that all documents, photos and posters are in good state, and will secure temporary storage for our other artefacts in a safe location. This will then provide us with the opportunity to move towards a more permanent and healthier storage for our archive.
Dreamland Trust
Dreamland Trust
Mountain Heritage Trust
We are delighted and enormously grateful that The National Archives have recognised our Records at Risk application by awarding us the equivalent of six months’ rent for our offices and archive on the side of Blencathra in Threlkeld near Keswick, Cumbria. This will offer us some much-needed financial certainty as we finalise further grant applications and seek other funding opportunities and will place the Mountain Heritage Trust on a much firmer footing for the years ahead.
Mountain Heritage Trust
BMT Media
We are delighted to receive a ‘Records at Risk’ grant from The National Archives to begin to digitise and store 1000s of artworks, photographic negatives, 16mm/8mm film, professional video tapes and amateur photographs in West Yorkshire to build our ‘archive of the ordinary’ – everyday life in Leeds & West Yorkshire. These films, photos and oral history tapes are degrading and would be lost forever if not for the grant. We eventually aim to show the link between working class history, music, politics and the family by organising this material in our ‘Ordin-archive’ to make this accessible and interact with our community, to prompt memories, and champion under-represented stories.
Daniela de Moura, Production Manager
BMT Media