Friends of the Peak District project awarded £39,000 Lottery heritage grant

Made possible by money raised by National Lottery players, the project focuses on the campaigns and campaigners of the Friends of the Peak District (FPD) since its inception in 1924.

The archive includes letters, notebooks, drawings, diaries and news cuttings of Ethel and Gerald Haythornthwaite, the environmental campaigners and pioneers of the countryside movement.

Ethel was part of the Government’s National Parks Committee, which led to the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act of 1949, and to the founding of the Peak District National Park in 1951.

The charity pre-dated the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England by two years and helped make green belts part of government policy in 1955.

A major part of the archive is more than 10,000 photographs, including inter-war images of billboards, housing development, litter, industries and traffic.

There are details of vital campaign successes for the FPD.

Volunteers can get involved in helping to tell the story of the Haythornthwaites and the FPD.

There are opportunities to catalogue the archive, identify photos, record oral histories of past campaigners and write articles about campaign highlights.

Click here for more information.