Churchill College began to collect papers in 1965, beginning with those of Clement Attlee. The Archives Centre was purpose-built in 1973 to house the papers of Winston Churchill. His papers relating to his life after 1945 were given to the college by his wife, but those concerning his life before 1945 remained in family ownership (though housed in the Archives Centre) until 1995, when they were bought for the nation. The grant to purchase the papers included funding for a dedicated team of archivists to catalogue them. The catalogue took a team of five archivists five years to complete. It was finished at the end of 2000 and was made available online 12 months later. More recently, the Churchill Papers have been digitised.