Carriage maker's archive secured for public

Work will now take place to catalogue and digitise the collection

Items charting the journey of a Derby carriage makers with links to Rolls-Royce have been secured for the county’s archives.

Derbyshire Records Office has taken the archive of Holmes & Co, which was founded in Lichfield in the 1760s before relocating to Derby in 1820.

The Carriage Foundation, based in Matlock, believes the collection is the largest of its kind.

Holmes & Co, which closed for good in the 1970s, began life creating high-end carriages before becoming Sanderson & Holmes, building car bodies for Rolls-Royce.

The company moved with the times when the motor age arrived

The firm worked with many wealthy customers, including royalty and had a showroom in London.

Documents, drawings, and other items dating back to the 1800s have been bought for £32,200 using grant funding and are now in the care of Derbyshire County Council’s record office in New Street, Matlock.

The firm designed Royal carriages

Cataloguing and digitising will now take place to make the collection accessible to the public, some showcasing the firm’s royal links.

The archive includes a bound ledger detailing work commissioned by Queen Victoria from 1849 to 1861, photos of a four-wheeled enclosed landau carriage that the Prince of Wales – later Edward VII – used during his tour of India in 1875 and 1876, and the Maharajah of Kutch’s four-wheeled barouche carriage with collapsible hood.

Designs are being digitised and catalogued

There are also pen-and-ink, watercolour, and gouache drawings of carriage designs from the 1800s.

Council leader Barry Lewis said: “This is a very exciting and valuable acquisition. What a story it can tell about how we used to travel in the 19th Century.”

Follow BBC Derby on Facebook, on X, or on Instagram. Send your story ideas to [e-mail] or via WhatsApp on 0808 100 2210.