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Gloving in Worcester was a very important and lucrative trade. For hundreds of years the manufacture of gloves involved many thousands of employees both inside factories and working from home. Census returns show the different roles performed in the gloving industry. Many of these roles allowed women to work from home, combining work with childcare...

Records from the Sandys Archive reveal how fashion evolved across generations. Clothes tell us a lot about the past. They offer insights into changing tastes, social attitudes and everyday life. The Sandys family of Ombersley created and kept a wealth of records that today help us trace changes in style from the 18th to 20th...

In today’s blog, we tell the story of Lilly Pearson, a young woman admitted to Powick asylum whose time is recorded in records we hold over 100 years ago. Alongside patient files which are catalogued covering the period 1890’s-1980’s, we hold admission and discharge registers and volumes containing patient case notes from the late 19th...

Worcestershire Archives and Archaeology Service are privileged to have a deposit in their collections connected to one of Worcestershire’s most distinguished naval heroes, Admiral Sir William George Tennant. In this article, we will take a look into the life of Admiral Tennant. Born at Quatford, Shropshire in January 1890 to Edmund and Mary Tennant, William...

One of the interesting collections we’ve come across as part of our retroconversion project are four cricketing memorabilia books, collected by three members of the same family – Ruth Jackson, the depositor, and her mother and aunt Frances and Eleanor Bomford. We have three autograph books and a scrapbook, compiled on and off over 96...

This month, the Explore Your Archive campaign is #EYAarchitecture, so we thought that it was a great time to focus on some of our marvellous collections. Whether its timber framed buildings, New Towns,  churches, public buildings or stories of the architects themselves, we have something to interest you. Conserving timber framed buildings Freddie Charles (1912-2002)...

With the upcoming opening of the new Scala Worcester Arts Centre, Worcestershire Archives and Archaeology Service takes a delve into the history of this historic Worcester building. The building we now see on Angel Place was built in 1922 and officially opened on the 27th November 1922. A December 1922 edition of The Worcester Herald...

For National Limerick Day, we would like to highlight perhaps our tiniest archive. It is National Limerick Day this month because it’s the 214th birthday of Edward Lear. He was the English artist, author and poet who popularised limericks in his 1846 Book of Nonsense published for children. With this in mind, we took a...

Today, 16th of May, marks 380 years exactly since the supposedly humiliating surrender of Hartlebury Castle during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms (also known as the English Civil War). This event in 1646 was recorded by a single contemporary commentator, Henry Townshend of Elmely Lovett. He recorded that it was a place “which put...

On 23rd April 1932, during the F.A. Cup final between Newcastle United and Arsenal, a refereeing decision would create controversy and change the result of the game. The referee, one W. P. Harper of Stourbridge, allowed an equalising goal for Newcastle that appeared to go out of play before ending in the net. Newcastle would...