A CUTTING-edge new home to store some of the county's history has officially opened its doors.

The Herefordshire Archive and Records Centre (HARC), set within the Rotherwas Enterprise Zone, will provide ideal storage conditions for the county's historical documents for generations to come.

The energy efficient building was designed by Hereford architects, Architype, using the German passivhaus system.

Collections and archives manager Elizabeth Semper O’Keefe said: "We are excited to be welcoming our users to HARC and the first impressions have been very positive.

"This is a building with so many possibilities for future use and I want it to be a busy centre for local and natural history of which the county is proud."

HARC features a spacious research area; a separate meeting room for school sessions, lectures and community events; and an exhibition space.

There is also a state of the art archive conservation lab where specialist staff will repair documents and make them safe for researchers to use.

HARC is also the home of Herefordshire Council’s Archaeology and Historic Environment Record services and the Biological Records Centre is based there too.

Volunteers helped prepare the archive collections for the move to HARC and continue to contribute now the building is open.

In the busy research room, volunteers support the staff by welcoming visitors and offering advice and support to those who are unfamiliar with IT research resources. There are also opportunities for volunteers to support the archive team in cataloguing and indexing archives.

There will be a chance to explore HARC during the Heritage Open Day on Thursday, September 10. Regular tours of the whole building will take place between 10am and 1.30pm and there will be talks by the architects on the energy efficient principles underpinning the project.