This year we are marking our 70th anniversary by celebrating our county’s proud and glorious past ((with 70th anniversary logo))

We open our fascinating three-part series with one of the oldest items on show in a Yorkshire museum – a fossil which is about 315 million years old – and we close, in the July issue, with some iconic cloth woven in 2013. Between them we will feature – in no particular order – 68 other items which give a snapshot of our county’s past.

They do not paint a full picture of Yorkshire’s history, or give a comprehensive account of our past but they do give an intriguing insight into the lives of the people who came before us.

Some items would not have had much apparent historic significance in their owner’s lifetimes – a tobacco box, miner’s lamp or a theatre handbill for instance – but they now offer a glimpse of a lost world.

Sport, the arts, industry, medicine, transport all feature and major landmarks in our history figure too: the Vikings, the Romans, the Industrial Revolution are all represented, as are the young men who marched off to war in 1914 and the women who fought their own battle for suffrage. Men who toiled in the mines are remembered alongside a pioneer of flight; some items are huge, others tiny but all reveal something of Yorkshire’s story.

We have worked with museums across the county – and other custodians of our heritage such as English Heritage and the National Trust – to produce this selection of items but not every museum is represented and not all the items suggested have made the final list. To see some of the items which just missed out, go online to yorkshirelife.co.uk.

And to see more items which help to tell Yorkshire’s fascinating story, explore the county’s fascinating museums for yourself.