Salted away: Cheshire salt mine to store National Archives
The mine in Winsford is the size of 700 football pitches, stretches to 100 miles and is still growing as approximately 1m tonnes of salt are mined every year. The unique space now houses DeepStore, an ideal facility for documents as it has consistent temperature and humidity and is naturally free from ultraviolent light, rodents and flooding. It could house every piece of archive material in the UK. DeepStore currently stores more than 1m assets and documents, and is being used for some of the National Archives
-
A worker in one of the caverns of the DeepStore vaultsPhotograph: Graeme Robertson for The Guardian
-
A tunnel into the salt mine and storage vaultsPhotograph: Graeme Robertson for The Guardian
-
One of the mine tunnelsPhotograph: Graeme Robertson for The Guardian
-
Workers filing documents in the underground facilityPhotograph: Graeme Robertson for The Guardian
-
-
Boxes of filesPhotograph: Graeme Robertson for The Guardian
-
Walking through the underground filing sytemPhotograph: Graeme Robertson for The Guardian
-
A safety warning at the entrance to DeepStorePhotograph: Graeme Robertson for The Guardian
-
A safety warning at the entrance to DeepStorePhotograph: Graeme Robertson for The Guardian
-
-
Workers' safety equipment for use in the storage areaPhotograph: Graeme Robertson for The Guardian
-
Workers' safety equipment for use in the storage areaPhotograph: Graeme Robertson for The Guardian
