THE Lake District Holocaust Project has secured a grant of £80,000 to help make their archives available.

The Arts Council England will award the funding which will see work carried out in time for the 80th anniversary of the arrival of the 300 Jewish children in the Lake District in 1945 after surviving the horrors of the Holocaust.

The archive will celebrate the story of the Windermere Children with a collection of interviews with workers and the children.

Their story is currently told as an exhibition in Windermere Library but it has been a long-term ambition of the project's team to inform people about what has been found throughout the years.

Trevor Avery, director of the Lake District Holocaust Project, said the archives will be made available online for people to check what the team has collected over 18 years of research.

Mr Avery said: "We have spent so much time interviewing people while they were alive that now we want to get the archive into such a shape where people can see what we have. 

"We have been doing archaeology for four years now at Calgarth, and we have amassed a lot of objects and artefacts - I don't think people are aware of the scale of what we have."

READ MORE: PM leads tributes to Holocaust survivor who found sanctuary in the Lake District

Mr Avery said that the fund would be used to employ an archivist and outreach workers.

He said: "The archivist can put it into a database available to people. We want to make it available online as much as possible so people can see what we have. 

"We will be using high-end technology with Staffordshire University, and we will be scanning the objects in 3D, which means that when you see them displayed on a screen instead of seeing just a flat photograph you will be able to move the object around.

"We are transitioning towards a new home for the archive."