Archive

Number six in our Top 10 most used archive collections are our Quarter Sessions papers. The Worcestershire Quarter Sessions records date from 1591 and include papers relating to crimes such as adultery, prostitution, bastardy, theft, vagrancy and disorderly behaviour. They were held 4 times a year at Epiphany (January), Easter (March/April), Midsummer (July) and Michaelmas...

The last ever stocktaking at the History Centre took place on the 7th and 8th November. This is an annual event which gives staff a chance to catch up on work which will help to improve the service we provide to the public. This year our main focus was to prepare our library stock for...

Number seven in our countdown of the Top 10 most accessed collections is the collection of Diocesan filing. What is Diocesan Filing? Here at Worcestershire Record Office, we have a large collection of mysterious records often referred to by staff only by their reference number—’the 728s’.  These are the records of Diocesan Filing, popularly known as...

This week our behind the scenes tour takes us into our Dark Room – the home of our Digitisation and Microfilming team, made up of John and Jonathan. Our Digitisation and Microfilming team, John (back) and Jonathan (front) What is digitisation? Digitisation is the process of creating a digital copy of an item – whether...

Number eight in our countdown of the Top 10 most accessed collections are our Electoral Registers: A perennially popular family and house history resource.  The earliest Worcester City electoral registers held by the Worcestershire Record Office are dated 1837 and the most recent is from 2005.  For the rest of the county we hold electoral registers...

The County Hall branch of the Record Office closes for the final time to researchers on Saturday 12th November. To mark the occassion of our move and to bid farewell to the branch, we are holding an open day event on Monday 14th November. During the day, there will be the chance to see some...

It’s time for the next installment of our Top 10 most used archive collections feature. This week we have the Vernon Family Archives: The Vernon family are a very old Worcestershire family and have had links with Hanbury, Shrawley and the surrounding area since the early 13th century. Their family seat was at Hanbury Hall,...

Today we start a behind-the-scenes tour of our current branches, based at County Hall and the History Centre. Hopefully by seeing where we are working you will get a better idea of the types of things we do. When we move to the Hive we will let you see behind-the-scenes photos of our facilities there...

This week sees the start of a countdown of our Top 10 most frequently accessed archive collections. We have checked our document production figures for the last couple of years in order to see what our users are requesting to view most often and here we will let you know a bit about each of...

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....