Funding has enabled a local history group to preserve more than 200 of its photographs on CD.

The money, provided by the County Durham Foundation, will ensure Wheatley Hill Heritage Centre's archive photo collection will survive, even if the paper originals do not.

A spokeswoman for Wheatley Hill History Group said: "We have been considering for a while the best way of making the photographs available for viewing."

The group had first thought about publishing a book, but costs were too high.

It was then decided to place some of its treasured photographs on to CD, which can be accessed through a computer.

The work has been carried out by Trevor Croucher DataGraphics, of Skipton, in North Yorkshire.

The result is a very sophisticated interactive CD containing information about each image, together with a title page, navigation page and an index for names.

The two categories that appear on the first CD are The Colliery and The Village.

The spokeswoman said: "If the first batch is successful, then we would consider producing a further CD containing a further two categories and it would be our overall aim to eventually commit our entire photograph collection to this type of medium."

The CD is on sale for £10 from Broadmeadows, Durham Road, Wheatley Hill.