The Daysh Papers include administrative material generated by the North East Industrial and Development Association, correspondence, cuttings, reports and papers covering such subjects as agriculture, production, development and employment. It includes Geological Survey of Great Britain Wartime pamphlets, Whitby Survey photographs, several reports on water resources and some material relating to the Far East, for example, a paper (with maps) on the History of railway enterprise in China.The collection also includes a draft article by Professor G.H.J. Daysh: The development of the university in relation to the development of the City, the North-East, and in some aspects, of the country as a whole. There are also many historic pamphlets, predominantly from the Eighteenth Century but also some printed in the Seventeenth and Nineteenth Centuries, such as An argument concerning the militia (1762) and several sermons. Although Professor Daysh (1901-1987) had been the Head of the Geography Department at Newcastle University (then King's College), the papers were given to the Library by Tyne and Wear Archives.

The papers held at Newcastle are a substantial repository of the personal papers and plans of Sharp. The major part of the collection consists of papers collected from Sharp's Oxford house on his death by the now-retired Professor Brenikov of this University. The papers were subsequently put into storage. Their significance realised they were deposited with the University Library Special Collections. The principal elements of the collection are as follows:

• Files of information and correspondence relating to individual texts, including unpublished works

• Files of information and correspondence relating to individual plans. This includes, for example, work on historic cities, new villages, new towns and overseas commissions and competition entries

• Original plans for many commissions

• Extensive documentation on key planning cases where Sharp appeared as a witness at public inquiry e.g. Oxford Roads, Kepier Power Station Durham, Clarendon Hotel Oxford

• Extensive books of press-cuttings on all of the above

• Typescript of an unpublished autobiography and manuscript autobiographical notes

• Typescripts of government information films, radio talks, lectures

• Documentation on unsuccessful commissions

• Correspondence regarding the formation of the Civic Trust

• Lecture slides

• Miscellaneous personal correspondence

• Creative writing i.e. poetry, novels, radio plays etc., largely unpublished

Collectively these resources demonstrate the evolution of Sharp's thinking both in terms of individual commissions and over the course of his career. They illustrate important issues about the process of undertaking planning commissions in the period e.g. fees charged, numbers of staff employed, briefs set etc. They provide a rich source of information on how commissions were received both by clients and professional and local audiences. Additionally they are a rich source of material on how competing arguments and ideologies of urban evolution were advanced.