The earliest records relate to Woodward's will, estates and the administration of his fossil collection. From the 1880s, administrative records of the burgeoning Department of Geology, its teaching, examining, and students, survive alongside papers for the lengthy project to build the Sedgwick Museum. The archives also include the papers of Professor T. McKenny Hughes, Woodwardian Professor 1873-1917.

Comprising numbered and unnumbered field notebooks and sketchbooks. The notebooks include details of: daily excursions and geological features; places visited including working mines and quarries; specimens collected or purchased; expenses; health matters; and include some social history commentary. The sketchbooks include pencil, ink and watercolour stratigraphic sketches of places visited.