Leicestershire's Thomas Cook archive goes online

An "internationally significant" archive from one of the most famous names in travel has begun to go online.

The Thomas Cook collection features travel brochures from as early as 1858, a selection of staff uniforms and some 60,000 photographs.

Leicestershire County Council said if all the boxes of diaries, letters and other records were laid out, it would make a line 250m (820ft) long.

The project, funded by a £40,000 grant, will continue until April.

The entire Thomas Cook archive was acquired by the county council in 2019, following a nationwide bidding process to find a new permanent home for the collection.

Thanks to the project funded by the National Archives, items which can already be searched online include staff magazines, volumes of contracts and agreements and historic travel brochures.

The oldest brochure dates back to 1858 with the first continental brochures appearing from 1865.

Most of the collection dates from around 1890, with samples from nearly every year being kept.

The wider archive from the company's 178-year history includes minute books and staff records, posters, travel guides, timetables, glass and china and even a model of a Nile steamer.

Project Archivist Jennifer Roach said: "The Thomas Cook archive is internationally significant, as it provides a detailed historical record of the man and company which created international package travel as we know it today.

"It is a great honour for us to have been chosen as the permanent home of the Thomas Cook archive and we believe it is vital that we can make the material as accessible as possible."

Six items from the archive collection were sold by liquidators of the travel firm.

These included a 3,000-year-old Egyptian statue that was bought for £150,000 by a Leicester museum.

Follow BBC East Midlands on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. Send your story ideas to [email protected].