Newcastle University evolved from two colleges founded in the Nineteenth Century as part of the University of Durham, the School of Medicine and Surgery (established in 1834) and Durham College of Science (established in 1871, became Armstrong College in 1904). In 1937, the Newcastle Colleges became King's College and achieved independence from the University of Durham in 1963 when it became the University of Newcastle upon Tyne.The University Archive contains significant material relating to the development of Newcastle University and its predecessors. It includes Annual Reports, Senate and Council minutes and departmental publications covering many subjects.

Contains of 2 albums of letters, including some by people of local significance like Thomas Bewick, Richard Grainger, George Stephenson, George Otto Trevelyan, Robert Spence Watson and Joseph Swan and others written by such household names as A.E. Houseman, Horatio Nelson, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, William Wilberforce, Michael Faraday, William Ewart Gladstone, Thomas Carlyle, Walter Besant, Mary Shelley, Charles Babington, Garibaldi, Victor Hugo, Ellen Terry and Robert Southey. Other letters include a request for an address to facilitate the delivery of a bear skin from David Walton (1859), an account of the pranks of the 'Borrowlow Bogle' from J. Arkle (1856), the refusal to grant Madame de Bury's request that an officer in the Indian Army be promoted by Richard Airey (1860), a description of his house in China by James Bruce Elgin (1860) and a discussion of French politics and her newly-married life in the country by Frances [i.e. Fanny] Burney (1792).