News from Gloucestershire Family History Society

We are sad to report that in July, we lost our long-standing committee member and former Chairman, Dr Hugh Kearsey. Hugh was also president of Oxfordshire FHS, and had a keen interest in the Cotswold Canals Trust, to which any donations in his memory may be made: https://www.cotswoldcanals.org.uk/. Hugh will be sorely missed.

Dr Hugh Kearsey

Re-opening of the Family History Centre

September was a busy month for the Society. After much work, we were finally able to open the doors once again to the Family History Centre. Initially for one day a week, following this successful trial period, we are now open on Tuesday and Wednesday (morning and afternoon) and Thursday (morning only). Pre-booking is essential, and the form with further details can be found at:

http://gfhs.org.uk/partial-reopening-of-the-family.../ 

Also in September, we were delighted to contribute a series of short films promoting family history to the Gloucester History Festival (click here to view the talks). Another highlight of the Festival was Rose Hewlett’s presentation “Defending Gloucestershire's Coast”. This drew on her recent book “The Gloucestershire Court of Sewers, 1583-1642”, which contains a wealth of family and local history information.

Click the image to see Rose's presentation

And finally, we were privileged to have been gifted the lifetime work of Bryan Sysum, who passed away in 2019. Bryan created about 30 ring binders of local history information. We’ve scanned some of these so you can view them on our website, www.gfhs.org.uk   We hope they can be appreciated, if not for current accuracy, but for Bryan’s skill and dedication to his interest in history.