With increasing public interest in the area of historical climate change and in models of climate change in general, comes a corresponding increase in the importance of maintaining open, accessible and usable research data repositories. In this paper, we introduce an e-Science data repository containing extensive research data from palaeoclimatology. Initially designed to support internal collaboration and organise data, the sharing of research outputs became an increasingly significant role for the service over several years of practical use. We report on data preservation and interoperability assessment currently under way. Finally, we discuss the ongoing significance of open research data and capacity for analysis in the area of climate research with palaeoclimatology as a case study.