Painstaking work to conserve Ireland’s oldest paper documents begins

Medieval ecclesiastical register from the Diocese of Armagh, in a conservation workroom at the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland in Belfast. Photograph: Liam McBurney/PA

Work has begun to conserve and digitise one of the oldest paper documents still in existence on the island of Ireland.

The ecclesiastical register, which dates back to the medieval period, is about 650 years old. It belonged to the former archbishop of Armagh Milo Sweteman.