W.R. Mitchell Archive

The W.R. Mitchell Archive is a unique collection of oral history recordings, photographs, and other materials collected by Dr. W.R. (Bill) Mitchell over a 60 year period to record the past history of Yorkshire, Cumbria and Lancashire.

Bill Mitchell is a journalist, historian, and author of over 100 books and articles on the Dales. He joined ‘The Dalesman’ magazine in 1948 and was its editor from 1968-1988. From the 1980s onward, Bill Mitchell toured the region recording on cassette tape the memories of local people on a wide range of topics, but particularly the everyday experiences of people, as remembered and told by Dales people in their own words and dialects. In 1996, in recognition of his work, he was awarded the MBE and was made an honorary Doctor of Letters by the University of Bradford.

By 2010, Dr. Mitchell had amassed a collection of over 600 audio tapes, with an accompanying collection of 10,000 photographs and some video footage, of his interviewees.