ONE of the region's forgotten medieval art treasures and drawings of lost County Durham landmarks can be viewed on the Internet from today.

Staff at the British Library, in London, have trawled through its vast archives for historic paintings and documents relating to the county. The results have been put on a website, to make them more accessible to North-East people.

Among them is a miniature, taken from an illuminated manuscript on the life of St Cuthbert. It illustrates the moment when St Cuthbert's coffin was opened, 11 years after his death in 687AD, and his body found to be undecayed - a sure sign of saintliness.

Not only was the corpse uncorrupted but his clothes, the text states, seemed to be perfectly new and wondrously bright. It was made in Durham in the 1180s as part of Bishop Puiset's revival of the saint's cult and was housed in Durham Cathedral until the Tudor period. Cuthbert is not shown as a monk of his own day but as a late 12th Century bishop, dressed in the kind of rich vestments that Bishop Puiset would have worn.

The website is part of the British Library's Reaching the Regions programme, working in partnership with the North-East Museums Libraries and Archives Council and the Beamish Museum, near Chester-le-Street.

Professor David Rollason, from Durham University, said: "The Reaching the Regions programme is helping to make important historic collections kept at the British Library far more accessible to a wider audience, by creating a regional presence for the national institution."

The main focus of the website is given over to more than 50 drawings of lost or much-changed buildings in County Durham, by the 18th Century artist, Samuel Hieronymous Grimm. These include a view of Durham Castle, the Cathedral, and the North Gate at Elvet Bridge, which was demolished in 1820. Another shows the medieval church of St Nicholas, demolished in the 1850s, flanked by shops and houses.

Others from around the county include Hartlepool, Barnard Castle, Butterby Ferry and the manor house of Beaurepaire, now known as Bearpark, near Durham.

Visitors to the site can also view the earliest map of Durham. Commissioned in 1569 by Lord Burghley, the map charted the new possessions of Elizabeth I in the area.