A VAST collection of memorabilia detailing almost every aspect of North-East life has a new £1.1m home.

The regional resource centre at Beamish Museum, near Stanley, County Durham, will be opened by Professor Richard Bailey, chairman of the Heritage Lottery Fund Committee for the North-East, on Wednesday.

The building, in the grounds of the museum, houses Beamish's huge collections, built up over the past 30 years, of more than 120,000 photographs, 64,000 books and 76,000 objects.

It has been designed and built to ensure the regional treasures are stored and cared for in the best possible condition.

The picture archive includes glass plates, negatives, transparencies and prints dating from the earliest days of photography in the 1860s, to the present day.

Featuring families at play, rural life, architecture, transport and industry, this archive represents a pictorial history of the region over the past 140 years.

A more literary past is also touched on in the new reference library that has a wide collection of late 19th and early 20th Century books, trade catalogues and other items.

Alongside catalogues for prams, mangles and mowers are encyclopaedias, books on coal, interior decor and, famously, Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management.

The resource centre, funded with grants of £551,000 from The Heritage Lottery Fund, £300,000 from the county council and £50,000 from The Cookson Trust, took seven months to build.