Highlights from Trafford Council’s collection of 100,000 building plans dating back to the 1850s are the focus of a new exhibition at the Local Studies Centre in Sale and online.
Brick by Brick: Trafford’s Historical Building Plans picks out some of the most detailed and interesting blueprints from the Council’s planning department archives.
The collection features many thousands of private houses as well as schools, churches, theatres and businesses spanning 139 years up to 1989.
A huge grant-funded project involving Council staff and over 20 volunteers – all learning valuable and enriching skills – is now under way to make the plans searchable online.
Articles about particularly notable premises, such as Sale Grammar School and Brooklands Hotel, written by staff and volunteers, will be added regularly to the exhibition website until it finishes in May and range of plans will be on show in the Local Studies Centre.
The plans, of local and national interest, document a unique era in the history of sport, leisure, visual arts and culture in 19th and 20th century Britain.
Many are hand-drawn, often coloured, on paper, parchment or linen, and serve as a record of the growth and development of the borough.
To help deliver this exciting project, Trafford Council was awarded grant funding from Archives Revealed, a partnership programme between The National Archives, The Pilgrim Trust and the Wolfson Foundation, dedicated to cataloguing and unlocking archives in the UK.
A Project Archivist, Dani Bool, was appointed in July 2024 and more than 20 volunteers were recruited to help reorganise and catalogue this previously inaccessible collection.
Catalogued plans can now be studied in person at the Trafford Local Studies Centre via pre booked appointments, with more being constantly added to the searchable lists.
Volunteers gaining valuable experience included Katie Waldie, whose experience helped land her a job with the National Archives in London. She said:
“I absolutely loved my time volunteering with the Trafford Local Studies team.
“With the help of welcoming and kind staff, I learnt how to handle fragile plans as well as repackage and catalogue them.
“Since leaving, I was offered a dream role at The National Archives. I am certain I would not have secured this without the skills I developed while volunteering.”
