Landscapes unlocked

Children enjoying a field trip; walkers admiring Peak District landscapes; a warden proudly carrying out her National Park duties. 

These are among thousands of images from the Peak District National Park’s archives, revealing a fascinating history throughout the 20^th century to the present day.

Now, thanks to funding of £45,000 achieved through an Archives Revealed grant, the collection – made up of over 40,000 images – is to be catalogued, along with the creation of an online resource. 

Landscapes Unlocked will be the first publicly accessible collection from a UK national park and is believed to be the largest collection for the area, unique in being compiled by a single organisation. 

A partnership between the Peak District National Park Foundation, the Peak District National Park Authority and the Derbyshire County Council Record Office, the archive offers a visual record of the National Park’s development and the people who have lived, worked and visited over the decades. 

It is particularly timely as next year [2026] marks the 75^th anniversary of the Peak District’s designation as the UK’s first national park.

The majority of images are 35mm slides but there are also black and white negatives, contact prints, photographic prints and medium/large format transparencies.

The cataloguing project is funded by Archives Revealed, a funding partnership of The National Lottery Heritage Fund, the Pilgrim trust, the Wolfson Foundation and The National Archives. 

The goal of Archives Revealed is to ensure that significant archive collections, representing the lives and perspective of all people across the UK, are made accessible to the public for research and enjoyment.

When the image archive has been catalogued, a curated online collection of around 3000 images will be available to the public on Derbyshire County Council Record Office’s online image library, Picture the Past. Stories developed around the collection will also be shared on Google Arts & Culture. The remainder of the collection will be secured in archival conditions at the Derbyshire Record Office for long-term curation and protection.