Staff at North East Wales Archives on Clwyd Street, Ruthin, say 'it could have been much worse'

Ruthin was severely affected by the floods made worse by Storm Christoph throughout last Wednesday (January 20).

The North East Wales Archives for Denbighshire, situated on Clwyd Street, was among several buildings affected in the town.

The archives, only set up in April 2020, has recently been closed due to the Covid-19 lockdown.

It also has a site in Hawarden, which collects Flintshire records.

Staff in Ruthin say they were 'relieved to find' that their collections managed to remain untouched during the floods, despite damage done to the basement.

A statement posted on their Facebook page read: "Ruthin experienced some awful flooding on Wednesday night and with the gaol being situated right next to the river the staff were very worried about what they’d find the following morning.

PIC: North East Wales Archives Denbighshire and Flintshire (Facebook).

"NEWA (Ruthin) were extremely relieved to find that although the water did flood the basement of the gaol the archive collections managed to escape without any damage.

"We’ve lost conservation supplies and equipment and some of the buildings heating and cooling machinery has been damaged but all of these are replaceable unlike our unique and priceless collections, we have been very lucky.

"The Museum Service has part of their exhibition located in the basement level and again we’ve been fortunate that the Gaol is a robust building and although the water flooded the entire basement, most of the original artefacts were at a level the water didn’t reach.

"We will be undertaking some conservation cleaning of some artefacts but after initial assessment, it looks unlikely we will lose any. There is a lot of sludge, water and debris to clean up but it could have been much worse.

"Our thoughts are with our neighbours whose homes and businesses have been affected at this time."