Archive

Worcestershire archives have been used in a new project looking at 17th and 18th century petitions. It’s great to see our resources used in new ways and contribute to different research projects and we’ve enjoyed hearing about what they’ve been up to and reading some of the stories. ‘The Power of Petitioning in Seventeenth-Century England’...

How the Female Friendly Societies of the 18th and 19th centuries gave women support, friendship and financial security in the hardest of times.   Before the establishment of the welfare state, support for those unable to work was limited; you could turn to the workhouse, poor relief or charity, but for many the answer was...

In The Hive atrium are four large mosaics of photos, with faces made up of hundreds of photos. Moving to The City is a 2 year arts and archive project working with local community groups. Using the archives as inspiration, and photography as a way to engage and work with people, we explored the idea...

Sophie is a student on the University of Liverpool’s Archive course. She has come to us for a placement, finding out about how we do things as well as carrying out a cataloguing assignment for her course. She’s written this blog about her time here, working on the Sandilands Plan Nursery archives. I had always...

This is the fourth and final of our compilations of the letters of Gunner Bert Clements, which were read by Naomi Taylor as part of the Worcestershire World War One Hundred Project. It meant we were able to share them more easily via social media to a wider audience, and also use them with school...

The 3rd set of letters of Bert Clements letters cover early 1916. Twenty-one letters by Gunner Bert Clements of Kidderminster are here in the archives, providing one man’s perspective on the war. They were read by Naomi Taylor for the Worcestershire World War One Hundred project to make them more accessible, and we are combining...

A journey, this time one of work not leisure is the diary of the voyage from Antwerp to San Francisco and back to England by the sailing ship ‘James Kerr’ between 1901 and 1902 written by W. G. Bennett of Edelston, Battenhall Road, Worcester. This ship was built in 1892 by T. Royden & Sons,...

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...