Colour photograph of a man wearing a black t-shirt and purple gloves, standing in an aisle between rows of shelving. He reaches up to remove or replace a box from the top shelf of the left-hand side of the shelving.
A volunteer retrieving a box from shelving in the Historic England Archive store at The Engine House, Swindon. © Historic England Archive View image record DP181167
A volunteer retrieving a box from shelving in the Historic England Archive store at The Engine House, Swindon. © Historic England Archive View image record DP181167

Talks and Tours at the Historic England Archive

Come and find out more about our Archive here at the Engine House in Swindon. Our tours are designed to introduce you to the Archive collections and include: a presentation about the history of the Archive, a chance to see inside our environment-controlled store and a visit to our Library and a look at our Public Search Room.

We are the Archive of England's historic environment. We are located in The Engine House, which was built from the 1840s and was formerly the Great Western Railway's Chief Mechanical Engineer's Office and Drawing Office. We are a public archive of architectural and archaeological records and hold over 14 million historic photographs, plans, drawings, reports, records and publications, covering England's archaeology, architecture, social and local history.

Talks and Tours

We will be hosting a talk and tour at the Historic England Archive on 2 dates in 2025 that you can sign up to attend:

  • Thursday 1 May, from 10:00am to 12:30pm
  • Wednesday 16 July, from 10:00am to 12:30pm

These events are £10 per ticket to attend. We also offer a series of free tours in our Heritage Open Days offer, which takes place on a Saturday in September.

Book a space on the tour

Parking and accessibility

The tour will involve some walking, including up and down some staircases, so please take that into consideration when booking. The Archive is also quite cold, so you will need to bring warm clothing with you.

Unfortunately we do not have parking facilities for the general public, so we would encourage you to get to the site via other means or use the Swindon Outlet car park (however there is a charge for this).

We do have limited access to blue badge parking if needed. If you would like this, please contact Charlotte Hill (Engagement and Projects Manager) at [email protected] 

If you have accessibility requirements and would like to participate on the tour please do contact the above email address in advance so that we can put the necessary measures in place.

Also of interest

Historic England Archive and Library
A Short History of the Historic England Archive

Archive Customer Services

  • Address

    The Engine House,
    Fire Fly Avenue,
    Swindon,
    SN2 2EH
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