Air raid posters, postcards, adverts, engravings and photographs are among hundreds of historic Dorset images now available to buy for the first time.

The Dorset History Centre, which was threatened amid cost-cutting last year, has opened up its archive and put copies of more than 300 unusual, attractive and striking documents for sale online.

Prints on offer cover a wide range of themes, including agriculture, maps, transport, churches and wartime – some dating back hundreds of years.

There are rare photographs of people and places from the early 1900s, plus etchings, paintings, drawings and engr-avings going back much further into our local heritage.

And vintage documents such as recruitment posters, sales bills and advertisements are also among the snapshots of the past for sale.

The prints come in three sizes, priced between £9.95 and £13.95, and ordering is only through the website.

The centre in Dorchester is run in partnership by Dorset, Bournemouth and Poole councils and holds thousands of archive documents.

More images will be added over the coming months.

David Gillard, chairman of the partnership’s Joint Archives Advisory Board, said: “These are not just part of our heritage – they are delightful and appealing in their own right, and the kind of prints many people might like to put on their walls.”

The centre cut back its public opening times as a cost-cutting measure last year, meaning the complex is closed to the public on Mondays. The move is part of an approach to help support and develop the county’s award-winning Joint Archives Service.

Last April, county council leader Angus Campbell put forward a plan – since backed by all three councils – to give the service breathing space to find other funding options.

County archivist Hugh Jaques said the arrangement would ease the pressure on limited staff resources. He said: “The use of Mondays will, I hope, encourage new and existing volunteers to support a variety of projects and allow the service to provide access and use of the archives in a different way.

“The councils agreed to support the service until 2010 so ways can be found to make it more self-sustaining.”

The service will still have to freeze two staff vacancies and cannot open six days a week.

Visit dorsetforyou.com/dorsetpicturesonline.