Grant to chronicle Dolgarrog aluminium factory history

ARCHIVISTS are celebrating after they landed a ?14,000 grant to build a historic record of an aluminium works. Conwy Archive Service is to get ?14,526 to improve its Dolgarrog Aluminium Works archive. The records chronicles the rise and fall of an industry which witnessed a major disaster when a dam collapsed in 1925. The grant is in a ?300,000 windfall from the National Cataloguing Grants Programme for Archives, 2009, to 11 UK collections. Other archives concern The National Portrait Gallery, a Glaswegian carpet firm, and former Poet Laureate Alfred Tennyson. Conwy Council’s senior archivist Susan Ellis said: “We’re delighted that our bid has been successful, especially against other strong applications. “The collection shows the importance of the Dolgarrog Aluminium Corporation in the creation of the village and to the lives of local people. With this funding we will employ an archivist to catalogue 50 boxes of records salvaged from the company, and promote the collection within the local community and beyond.” The grants provide essential funding for cataloguing without which archive collections would be inaccessible to the public. The National Archives Programmes Manager Melinda Haunton said: “Cataloguing is a vital but often under-resourced archival practice. Without cataloguing, the rich potential of archives can be lost.”