Estate and Family Papers 

The Hickleton papers, relating to Earls of Halifax, contain a substantial series of estate management records, reflecting the family's wide ranging interests. These include coal mining, iron working and river navigation in South Yorkshire.  

The Halifaxes were also early patrons of  the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust and gave part of their lands at Garrowby to the Trust for conservation. 

Family letters can be a valuable source of personal views and social commentary on  a wide range of issues, including the environmental and natural history. In these letters from the Tuke archive, Daniel Tuke is discussing a new publication - On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin - and is sceptical of its theories. 

The Milnes-Coates archive is a large collection including the personal papers of several members of the family. The papers of Lady Celia Milnes-Coates include a significant cache of papers on her work as a Women's Land Army organiser during the Second World War. As well as letters to and from individual Land Girls, the papers also include detailed information on agricultural practice and farm acreage, stock and productivity in North Yorkshire both pre- and post-War. 

Famous for their chocolate, the Rowntree family were also keen naturalists and are well connected to the study of natural history both in Yorkshire and beyond. Arnold Rowntree (pictured above in an Eagle Eye comic strip) - along with Francis Terry - gifted the land at Askham Bog in the 1940s which created the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust. He was a keen naturalist, and his son Michael was also a keen ornithologist, leaving a large series of papers on his birdwatching trips in the archives.