PLACE537 Purchase of Holmes & Co Archive

Purchase of the Holmes & Co archive from the owner (the Carriage Foundation). This is a unique archive of historical documents which was purchased at auction in February 2024 by the Carriage Foundation, to safeguard the archive and give Derbyshire Record Office time to fundraise the purchase price and buy it from them. The Carriage Foundation are selling the archive to DRO at the price it was purchased at auction (£32,200).\r \r The full cost of the purchase has now been secured through grants from the Friends of the National Libraries and the V&A Purchase Grant Fund, each of which is paying 50% of the price. There is therefore no financial impact for DCC in purchasing the archive. The purchase will not affect the overall insurance value of the archive collections at DRO (currently £6million), nor incur any other financial liabilities: the archive is small (6 boxes), in good condition, and requires minimal processing to make it accessible to the public.