News

Why are we moving?

  • 21st October 2011

It’s a huge amount of effort to move an entire Record Office to new premises, so some may question why exactly we are doing it?

When Worcestershire Record Office first opened in 1947 it was situated at the Shire Hall in Worcester city. In the mid-1950s additional space was added with the acquisition of the St. Helen’s church and it has been since this date that we have operated across two branches. In 1985 the Record Office moved to a purpose-built building located on the County Hall campus in Worcester. In 2001 the branch at St Helen’s was closed, and a new History Centre was opened on Trinity Street in the city. We have now outgrown our current homes. By moving to the Hive we have the opportunity for the first time in over 60 years to be united together in one building. This means our users will no longer have to travel several miles in order to enjoy the benefits of both of our branches!

So, what are the benefits of having the Record Office branches all under one roof?

Our new state-of-the-art facilities at the Hive will offer:

  • Increased access to our resources – the Hive will be open from 8.30am until 10pm and we will be making available self-service resources during these extra hours, such as surrogate copies of records on microfilm.
  • Increased storage space – which means we will no longer have to keep tens of thousands of our boxes out at external storage facilities. Not only will this save us a lot of money (we currently spend c.£30,000 a year in outstore fees), but it also means our users will no longer have to wait for deliveries to be made from the outstores to view records.
  • Improved storage facilities (which will all conform to the standards set by BS5454!)
  • Space to grow – we will have enough storage space to allow for approximately 15 years of new deposits.

    • The new facilities on offer will be a vast improvement on our current situation and we hope they will serve to attract new users to our service.

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