The Magazine Archive

Serving the Community since 1928

In 2017, we undertook a visual inspection of our physical paper archives. Whilst securely stored, time had taken its toll on the paper issues especially those dating back to the 1930’s and those printed during the World War II years. That part of the archive is printed on War Emergency paper of poor quality and is disintegrating as time and handling have taken their toll.

Realising that we could lose a valuable record of Woldingham’s history over time, the only solution was to digitally scan, index and store the complete archive.

The scanning of over 1,000 magazines was a mammoth endeavour and with the help of a grant from the Woldingham Parish Council, this was completed over the course of 2020 and 2021.

In addition to the scanning of the archives, a process of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) was also undertaken which means that each magazine is now fully searchable for keywords.

What does this mean?

While we’re not able to release the entire back catalogue of magazines for general viewing, we are offering a free search service allowing subscribers to request searches for information appearing in the archives.

So, for example, should you want to find out every time a house name or person’s name has been mentioned over the years, we can create a search and supply you the answer and the associated magazines.

To access this free service, please contact us at woldmag.production@gmail.com with your request.