Access to archival material

Plan your visit

The British Motor Industry Heritage Trust Archive is located at the British Motor Museum.

Address

British Motor Museum,
Banbury Road,
Gaydon,
Warwickshire,
CV35 0BJ

Read more information about how to get here on our Find Us page.

Archive Reading Room opening hours

ARA Archive Card

The British Motor Industry Heritage Trust Archive is now accepting the ARA Archive Card. To access the Archive Reading Room, you must hold a valid ARA Archive Card.

To apply for an ARA Archive Card, you will need to complete the initial registration process prior to your visit. Facilities are available onsite for visitors who are unable to complete the initial registration before visiting.

Full details can be found, about registering for the ARA Archive Card, on the official website.

Requesting archival material

Before your visit, please use our available catalogues to help you find relevant documents:

The National Archives Discovery Catalogue

Nick Baldwin Collection Catalogue

- Documents must be ordered at least ten working days in advance. Prior to visiting the Reading Room, you may pre-order up to five documents which our staff will retrieve ahead of your arrival. Please submit your document pre-order request, ideally no later than midday the day before your visit, to archive@britishmotormuseum.co.uk
Due to limited storage space, we cannot accommodate pre-orders exceeding this limit.

- Please note that due to limited resources we are unable to retrieve archives from our repository without advance notice.

- Archival material can be accessed provided that the requested material is catalogued, in reasonable condition for handling, and not affected by closure periods or restrictions imposed by the owners.

- If a document has been digitised, microfilmed, or exists in another surrogate format, you will be asked to view the surrogate copy. This prevents unnecessary handling of the original document, ensuring its preservation.