A New Chapter for the Churchill Archives Centre
Preserving the Past, Shaping the Future
Our New Strategy
Home to over 640 collections, including the papers of Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher, the Churchill Archives Centre is a world-renowned repository for twentieth-century history. In 2024–25 alone, the Centre engaged with more than 4,000 researchers, students and visitors. To ensure we can continue preserving these remarkable collections, while expanding access and impact for generations to come, we are embarking on an ambitious new development plan.
By 2025, it became clear that the Archives Centre had reached a critical turning point. Operating out of a facility over 50 years old presented several growing operational challenges, including:
Capacity Constraints
Limits on physical storage space mean we must expand our footprint so that we can continue to acquire significant national and international papers.
Environmental Controls & Sustainability
Maintaining precise temperature and humidity controls in a half-century-old strongroom is increasingly energy-intensive and costly.
Public Engagement
Currently, our reading room doubles as our display and classroom area, meaning that public events directly reduce our research capacity. A dedicated workshop and display space will allow us to increase researcher capacity while hosting far greater numbers of school students and public visitors annually.
Security & Perimeter
We need to modernise security infrastructure and site perimeter controls to a standard commensurate with the quality of the collections we hold.
The Vision: A Purpose-Built New Archives Centre
Accordingly, in January 2026, the Governing Body of Churchill College voted in favour, in principle, of constructing a brand-new, state-of-the-art Churchill Archives Centre within the College grounds.
A dedicated new building will address our long-term storage, preservation and public-access needs in a single step. The new Centre will provide secure, Passivhaus-standard strongrooms, expanded reading-room facilities, a dedicated workshop and events space, and flexible learning environments that will enable us to reach new audiences and share our collections more widely than ever before.
Transforming the Heart of College
Additionally, relocating the Archives Centre will create a second major benefit: the release of the existing Archives Centre building at the centre of the College site. The College plans to repurpose this prominent location as a vibrant student hub, with the potential to bring together library, tutorial, welfare, teaching and social spaces under one roof.
Why a new building?
A new, purpose-built, Churchill Archives Centre will deliver significant benefits for researchers, students, visitors and the wider College community.
It will:
Safeguard our internationally-significant collections for the future: through state-of-the-art, sustainable archival storage.
Increase capacity for new acquisitions: ensuring that important national and international collections can continue to find a permanent home at Churchill.
Expand access for researchers: with larger and more flexible reading-room facilities.
Transform public engagement: enabling more exhibitions, events, school visits and educational programmes
Create dedicated spaces for learning and outreach: allowing us to host a wider range of public and academic activities without impacting research services.
Support sustainability: through modern, energy-efficient Passivhaus-standard storage facilities.
Benefit the wider College community: by freeing the current Archives Centre building to be redeveloped as a vibrant student hub in the heart of the College site.
Importantly, this project will not be funded from student support or educational budgets. The new Archives Centre will only proceed if dedicated external funds can be secured specifically for the project, ensuring that the College’s commitments to scholarships, bursaries, teaching, welfare and research remain unaffected.
Key Milestones
Proceeding with construction is subject to securing planning permission and raising dedicated external funds. Our campaign will be designed so that fundraising will not divert resources from core College activities. At present we are in a “scoping phase” of our fundraising efforts, and more detail on targets, proposed new-build location, and donor recognition / naming opportunities will be made available in the coming months.
Project Leadership
To guide this transformative project from concept to completion, two complementary leadership groups have been established:
An External US Advisory Committee: Providing global strategic counsel, outreach, and international fundraising support particularly in the USA.
An Internal Taskforce: Spearheading project delivery, architectural planning, and campaign management.
Outreach & Events
Our convening power attracts world leaders, scholars, and school groups: from the biennial Roskill Lecture (in 2026 given by Dame Karen Pierce DCMG) to international conferences. We have recently hosted a major conference on Geopolitical Risk, and an event for schools to mark 80 years since the Nuremberg Trials (videos opposite); a new building will provide dedicated space to stage these global conversations.
Get Involved & Stay in touch
We welcome interest, advice, and philanthropic support from alumni, researchers, and friends of the Archives Centre worldwide.
Contact us:
If you would like to discuss the future vision, learn more about our development plans, or arrange a private tour, please get in touch:
Support the Archives Centre
Your support helps us safeguard world heritage as well as inspire future generations of historians and scholars.
From the UK: you can donate online with a recurring gift, or as a one-off donation, using the form below. Alternatively, you can request a donation form ([email protected]) or call us on +44 1223 336197 or +44 1223 331660 to donate securely over the phone.
From outside the UK:
US donors can visit cantab.org/churchillarchives or use the button below to make a tax-deductible donation to Cambridge in America in support of the Archives Centre.
European donors can make donations in support of the Archives Centre by using the button for Giving Europe: