Conservation Storage – Plan Chests & Drawers

Cambridgeshire Archives recently relocated from Shire Hall, Cambridge to its new home at The Dock, Ely and opened to the public once more at the end of 2019. The £5.3M Archives project followed a National Archives' assessment of the Shire Hall basement accommodation, leading to the redevelopment of the former Strikes Bowling Alley.

The interior of the existing building was completely removed and the existing ground floor raised by one metre, with reinforced concrete to add strength and new interior walls to provide storage vaults and staff and public accommodation. The archive vaults incorporated new mechanical and electrical services (to ensure the correct environmental conditions for the archived documents), new lighting and zoned sprinklers for fire protection.

The archive – which conforms to BS4971:2017 recommendations – houses in excess of 850 tons of historical documents stored on more than seven miles of mobile and static shelving, plan-chests and rolled maps storage units. Mobile shelving is principally used in order to ensure that the available floor space – and height – is fully maximised.

The archive contains a wide variety of stored items from records of the County Council, original maps, records of parish churches, business and other authorities – along with parish registers of baptisms, marriages and burials. The Ely facilities also include meeting rooms for the public to have appointments with registration staff, and a Search Room for using the stored documents.

In 2017, Fife Council announced that it would be sourcing steel storage systems for a one off project to fit out a new area for its Libraries, Art, Museums and Archives (LAMA) Department at its Bankhead Central Depot. The requirement was for the installation of high density storage systems to house various service items, such as museum objects, archives, textiles and fine art, and included the supply, delivery and installation of plan chests, mesh picture racking, library shelving, drawer cabinets and glazed-front object cabinets.

All products were made from steel to the BS EN 10130:1991 standard with a powder coated finish accredited to BS3900. The project manager Michael O’Gorman commented: “The LAMA storage requirements were varied and they required a range of solutions. The opportunity to procure such a broad range of storage systems from a single supplier was advantageous. The installation crew worked flexibly, working around other contractors on site and adapting to changing timescales. On completion, all necessary training was provided, with snagging items attended to quickly. I would recommend the Rotadex products and team to others.”