The National Trust for Scotland has many tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of documents and a number of archive repositories as well.  The main institutional archives (i.e. the records the Trust has produced over the past 75 years in the course of its business) are kept at the Trust’s central office in Charlotte Square.

There are also several historic archive collections – personal and family papers, estate records and other historical documents – held at a number of different locations throughout Scotland.  Many of these collections are kept in situ at the properties they are associated with, for instance, the Irvine family and estate papers at Drum Castle.

Archival Holdings - Edinburgh
There are many different types of Trust archives held centrally in Edinburgh, whether property correspondence files or the Trust’s own publications.  These include the following series:

• Council, Board and Executive Committee Minutes 
• 2,000 boxes of central property archive files
• Many conservation-related departmental archives
• Annual Reports, Yearbooks, Newsletters, Newssheets and Guides to Properties
• Guidebooks, leaflets, brochures and other publications
• Collections of historical and background information to NTS properties and its history
• Complete runs of the NTS magazine – Scotland in Trust
• Journals, periodicals and other secondary literature
• The ‘Bute Box’ of St Kilda archives
• Other historical archival material relating to Geilston House, Auchenvin House and Barry Mill

Archival Holdings – Property based
Some NTS properties are home to historic archive collections of personal and family papers, estate papers and other historical documents. The National Register of Archives of Scotland (NRAS), a division of the National Archives of Scotland, has surveyed many of these collections. The property based archives the NTS cares for include:

• The Irvine Family papers at Drum Castle
• The Brodie papers at Brodie Castle
• The Lorne Campbell and Fay Shaw collections held at Canna House
• The EA Hornel archives held at Broughton House
• The archives at the Tenement House, Glasgow

Access
If you are a researcher and wish to have access to the NTS archival holdings, please contact the NTS Archivist, Ian Riches on 0131 243 9441 or at iriches@nts.org.uk.  The Trust has produced, and will soon be updating, a set of Archive User Guidelines, which acts as a guide to the researcher who wishes to view the Trust’s archives. Once the reprinted edition is published they can be produced on request.