Archive

We continue resharing the letters of Gunner Bert Clements, read by Naomi Taylor. They are a collection of letters sent home from the trenches by Bert, and which were later deposited in the archives. They give the insights of one soldier out of millions who served in the war. We originally put them out over...

Books are not only vital for education, but provide much needed recreation and mental well-being for people from all walks of life, and for many the best and easiest means of access is still through their local library. But the ease of access to books we enjoy today was not always the case and that...

The Droitwich timber-framed building trail is now available as a printed leaflet to pick up from around the town. Over the past couple of years we’ve shared about the Charles Archive, the incredible collection of maps, plans, photos and notes by timber-frame architects F.W. ‘Freddie’ and Mary Charles. The did a lot of work over...

On Saturday come and have a tour of Worcester experiencing art inspired by local history. Over the past month we have been helping the Hidden Histories project by taking local groups on tours of the archives and by proving copies of maps, photos and other documents about the history of Worcester, such as the gloving...

Worcestershire Archives and Archaeology Service have been awarded an eighteen month grant by the Wellcome Trust to conserve and catalogue a range of archival collections relating to hospitals, health professionals and associated organisations. The project will build on our previous Wellcome funded project cataloguing, digitising and conserving mental health records from Barnsley Hall and Powick...

In Mental Health Awareness Week we look back at the life of the Jane Freeman, nail maker, and her extraordinary resilience in the face of poverty and illness. Here at the archives, we are fortunate to hold records from Powick Hospital, formerly known as Worcester County and Lunatic Asylum, which closed its doors 30 years...

The next of our Explore Archives workshops is all about the Poor Law and Workhouses. It’s a topic that may bring to mind Oliver Twist (although certain details Dickens used were wrong) or you may remember an elderly relative. There were two times of the poor Law, old and new, and we’ll look at what...

There’s a way where you can both support our work and provide a gift to yourself or a friend at the same time. Our Adopt a Document scheme allows you to select and adopt a document, whilst helping with important conservation work. Keith Parsons’ son in law adopted a document on his behalf. Keith is...

In 2018 Historic England funded Worcestershire Archive and Archaeology Service, in partnership with Worcester City Historic Environment Record, to fully catalogue the practice archive of F.W.B and Mary Charles Chartered Architects. A selection of the archive was subsequently digitally captured and the resulting images have been made publicly accessible online.  Now, in 2019, The Vernacular...

The Wolverhampton Express & Star newspaper recently announced the launch of its on-line archive of digitised images from its vast collection of photographs produced in a pioneering partnership between the Express & Star, the University of Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton City Archives and the National Lottery Heritage Fund. Amazingly, the original archive contains over 1,000,000 photographic prints,...