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 and our work, a chance to see inside our environment-controlled store and a visit to our Library and 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.

We will be hosting a talk and tour at The Historic England Archive on two dates in 2025 that you can sign up to attend: Thursday 1st May and Wednesday 16th July, both 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.

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 Charlotte.Hill@HistoricEngland.org.uk

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

Historic England Archive Talks and Tours