About Us

History and Contact Details

Personnel

Trustees

Patrons/Honorary Fellows

Volunteers

Benefactors

Event

The Centre could not have been established nor could it continue to thrive without the commitment and dedication of its Patrons, Trustees, Staff and Volunteers and without the support of its Benefactors. More than 10,000 men and women have shared their wartime memories with the Centre. These recollections are preserved, to recommended archival standards, in our archive in Walton near Wetherby.

Since its inception in 1999, the Centre has become a unique resource for anyone researching the Second World War, including authors, television companies, students and family historians. Many authors and historians, including James Holland, Antony Beevor, Patrick Delaforce, Ken Tout, John Nicholl and Charles Glass, have made use of our collections and have acknowledged the Centre in their books.

The Centre has also contributed to several national and regional television as well as BBC and commercial radio, the national and local press and in specialist history magazines. We have welcomed visitors from all over the world, many who lived through or served in the Second World War. In our Visitors Book men and women have listed as their background, for example, Dunkirk, El Alamein, Cassino, D Day, Arctic Convoys, SOE, The Liverpool Blitz, Munitions work, Bomber Command, Far East POW and Auschwitz.

The Centre is committed to sharing our collections with younger generations so that they can begin to understand what it was like to live through this conflict. We have produced two education packs for Key Stage 2 schoolchildren and a DVD, A Film of Wartime Memories, for young people.

Our volunteers, in most regions of the UK, visit those with wartime memories to conduct recorded interviews and collect donated material whilst a team of Centre based volunteers ensure the collections are properly preserved and catalogued and accessible to visitors.

We are currently welcome visitors only by appointment but if you would like to volunteer, donate memories or access some of the recollections held in our archive please contact us at the Centre.

We are a registered charity and rely on donations to continue our vital work preserving our wartime heritage. Please contact the Centre if you would like to become a Friend of the Second World War Experience Centre or if you would like more information about our collections and our work.