The trust is responsible for the preservation of the 20,000 newspapers in the Mercury's archive.

The Mercury is the oldest continuously published newspaper in Britain and the archive has a full archive dating back to the middle of the 18th century, with substantial copies going back to the 1720's and lots of individual copies going back to 1714.

Papers are currently in the process of being microfilmed, so that they can be enjoyed by generations to come. In 2005, the trust, which was set up to do the conservation work, was given a £305,000 Heritage
Lottery Grant to help with the work and restore the archive room at the Mercury offices in Sheepmarket, Stamford.

Since that work was carried out, the room has been fireproofed and contains moveable shelves for the archives, which are contained in special archival acid proof boxes.

Alongside the room, there is also a reading area, with a computer and microfilm viewer.


If people wish to use the archive they can visit by appointment.
Friday afternoons is the volunteers' day and that is a good time for people to come.

The trust is in the process of expanding the volunteers to another day in the week, but it is not yet finalised.

Otherwise it is by specific appointment when someone will be present to supervise them.

The trust only allows visitors to use the actual newspapers in exceptional circumstances, and in almost every case they will be expected to use the microfilm. The microfilm dates back to 1864 at present, but this will be back to 1819 later this summer.

There is a complete run (as far as it exists) on microfilm in the nearby Stamford Library.

Appointments can be made by writing to John Smith via the newspaper office, or by e-mail, stammercuryarchive@tiscali.co.uk

Access to the archive is free, but inquiries answered by trust staff will be charged at a minimum of £10 per inquiry, depending on how much time is spent.

Print-outs from the microfilm reader will be charged at 50p each; and £5 for a CD bearing up to five images, with a £1 for each further image up to a total of 20 images and 50p/image for further images beyond that.

Larger orders will be by negotiation. The trust is not able to handle credit/debit card transactions.